Hunting the White Car Man

hunting the + + + +

W H I T E C A R M A N

I was cycling down the back road on the way to work when the white car whizzed by me, it must have been at 60 miles an hour. I don’t know about cars much but it had the rings right which I was thinking is an Audi (like the joke what do cowboys drive? Audi, pardner!), and it had zoomed down the slope of the road so fast towards me it woke me up rather, the complete whole of me whereas previous it was just my senses that had kept me on my way, particularly my sense of smell.

There had been a badger a huge dead one on the road just before the shop situated by the crossroads, a shop that has fruit and veg outside as well as barbecue coals and firewood ever available, however what puts me off about the shop is there’s nowhere to chain your bike only lampposts and car park buffers none of which will quite allow one to slip a D lock around it to secure their cycle. No you have to wheel your bike a fair few metres along to the village signpost and even then it only just fits around, the D lock, and even then it’s enough of a tight fit that if you’re rushing or miffed about something and can’t really be doing with stopping at the shop to get milk or chocolate that you end up dropping the D lock once or twice while the car and van even lorry or tractor drivers look on from their cabs from behind daytime sun windows where you’re not sure they’re even there, or if these vehicles are driven by unthinking robots.

The badger was say one hundred metres before this shop. (My daily commute being: House – road down to village – crossroad with shop – road on to work). I first saw it two mornings before when it was freshly dead, upside down and with his or her great claws pointed at the sky a look of certain rictus death on its face. My dog, Mitre, from my childhood weighed 20kg and this badger was longer and wider than the badger - although maybe a little slimmer - but it had the wild sinew muscle that a dog who is old and needed lifting onto his bed - like Mitre did in his later years - would surely lose to in a animal fight.

And this morning, the morning of the Audi the badger was still there, magnificent and still dead but the smell had started, ammonia and summer death and while I couldn’t see the maggots when I coasted past at 15 miles an hour, inside me playing was the video loop of when you turn over a dead animal and it’s alive with maggots and they stink and it all stinks and you maybe won’t eat noodles that day.

So when this Audi cowboy drove on past me I was already in a bad place death wise. It’s the waste, you know. And even just before the Audi on the road to work I had had another pungent smell to cope with, that had floated from behind a hedgerow where if I stood on my pedals I knew there were scrubby fields and a copse and plenty of rabbits, and more and more fields beyond.

Definitely another dead animal infected with post death maggot ammonia squatters. It’s so sickly sweet (sweet is a terrible adjective when it comes to death) and pissy and it makes me feel terrible. And this white car went whizzing but at as I say at sixty mph at least and the thought I had was of a deer stepping out of the opposing hedgerow at the same second this early morning arse hole was booting down the country roads and I was imagining the violence of the collision which surely would have of sent the deer, even a big one not like the little ornamental looking muntjacs you see around our way, flying through the morning what fifty, or sixty, feet. There are probably sums and physics that could calculate this for me but it’s really unimportant to statistic-ify the truth of this potential death, of what would happen to that deer if indeed one had stepped out.

But I tutted and oh-deared as the white car whizzed by, thinking oh what can I do, not even a post online Facebook etc would really communicate the sudden anger I felt at this situation where all people care about is slamming through the country roads like there’s no tomorrow. And even though I knew the car was already quarter or half a mile on something made me break to a halt and turn, head myself back toward the shop on the off chance I could do something about this.

Remembering that the cross roads even at this stupid hour of a Friday could be backed up by something vast and shitty, agricultural like, I thought good, something to maybe stop this bastard!

I peddled back.

Woe be him because after a frantic spell of cycling over the small brow in the road that hid the crossroads from where I had stopped I was again able to see the white Audi. It had indeed been banjaxxed (Irish Joe has really imbued this phrase into me at work) in its zooming at the junction by a huge lorry contraption which had wispy hay and straw poking out from its sides and there were what I would soon find out to be pigs in it. So many.

The pigs were being driven towards me ie so it would have of passed me if I had kept on my original direction, but the driver had to do a huge turn from the commensurate A road, I don’t know which one, I never do, they are roads that’s all, in order to follow my original way. [People talk for hours about which road this road oh wow you used that road, yeah I raged against the satnav’s instructions, haha! Like it’s clever. I know the M25, A1, M11, the rest … pah ]

Anyway. This turn was big enough that the Audi pardner had had to stop and wait for him to finish his turn. I guess they only didn’t beep in frustration because, to be fair to the cowboy, someone in charge of tonnes and tonnes of metal vehicle and the hundred or more pigs inside it maybe wasn’t someone who would be intimidated by a fool in a white car.

I peddled on until I could just make out the registration and at this point the pig driver had turned enough in order for the Audi to continue on and although I had no real idea what my plan was I fumbled my phone out and thumbed the camera icon and I aimed it at the car and kept pressing. The pig driver roared past me and gave me a nod, which I still take as a sign that what I would eventually do was completely alright. His pigs looked out from the bars like innocent plaintiffs in a big court trial and then they clanked away, littering the road with their loose hay and straw.

The Audi was now gone baby gone. I was stuck at the crossroads and had lost a good few minutes of my journey. In order to make this worthwhile I decide I knew I would have to do something about it all. My heart was racing like a fell runner downhill, very quick and bumpy. I thought about it and thought that I wasn’t too worried about missing a day of work as I had done extra shifts already this pay period and as a zero hour worker I wouldn’t get sacked so I coasted to the village sign and D locked my bike and walked into the shop, texting as I went to the supervisor to tell them that I wouldn’t come in today. Was Ill. I bought Coke and fresh nice-smelling warm pastry things, it’s good this shop in getting nice fresh produce that clearly aren’t made on site. I also bought a milkshake.

Then I left and already had a text back from Jane my supervisor in which she called me lovey and said Okay see you next time stay safe.

Thanks Jane.

I unlocked my bike with no problems from the village sign, hadn’t even had a single problem putting the D lock on come to think of it, and fifteen minutes later I was walking my bike into the shed and soon was in my front room glad that my housemate was out, having spent the night round at this girl he was seeing. I turned on the TV and made tea with splashy milk of course and sat back on the sofa, nibbling on my pastries, supping the tea and wondering what on earth I was going to do about this fast white Audi.

There was another deer who did actually get hit and die a while back. It was on another road, a B road I think, which runs at a right angle to my house, five miles of swerving road with a level crossing halfway along and several nice houses whose niceness was somewhat undone by their proximity to this fast road.

It was along here on the way home from ‘borough I had been cycling when a huge hiss jumped at me from just ahead and I knew straightaway I’d got a puncture. But I thought I would have enough air in the tube to get me home. No. It was far too gone and maybe hundred feet on my front tire had pancaked so badly I had to step off and push along the road, road with no real path, just a grassy verge that the council hadn’t cut back since spring. And now it was autumn and everything was falling to the ground leaves and twigs and of course thorns, a viper fang of which had impaled my tire and burst my tube. I had maybe a puncture kit in the shed at home, waterlogged likely on the shelf under the subsiding roof, the wet rot patch, possibly made by wasps and or with fungus. Rusty metal parts and repair kits with their signage all faded and killed off.

I wouldn’t of have attempted to repair the puncture anyway, I’m too self-conscious to do such a semi technical and highly visible procedure on the roadside. So I pushed along with at least three miles of the way remaining, and as these cars whizzed by me, somehow in a manner that didn’t seethe me as much as the white pardner’s car, despite being in greater numbers, myself on the verge and my bike on the asphalt, I got wind of something ammonia sour and horrible and of death. The cars kept whizzing by, I kept pushing. The smell doubled in magnitude every few of my strides, and I was wrinkling my nose and remembering dead carp on the shores a of a small lake we walked to once, maybe a dozen good sized fished hailed out of the water and festering in the sun, the reek catastrophic and putrid and again of maggots. Culled for disease maybe, the carp.

In the untamed verge I caught glimpse of animal fur, brown to orange in its spectrum, in a flattened dish of the grass. [There’s an ‘L’ of a difference between fattened and flattened!] The smell seemed actually to decrease now I was almost at its source. I turned back to check the road and a tractor was approaching, and with it being not a wide B road I had to haul my bike onto the verge and wait for it to pass, with the deer I could see now it was a deer only a foot in front of me. This deer was far bigger than the badger and certainly bigger than our old dog. The tractor drew level just as I was close enough to see the broken angle of the poor deer’s neck and to admire its spots so white and lovely. I was glad I couldn’t see its eyes. It was fat but not I think pregnant.

I didn’t turn to see if the tractor acknowledged my stepping up on to the verge in order to make his passing clear and easy. Normally I do it’s a tiny badge of honour for a cyclist to get given a small wave or nod by a real driver though I shouldn’t say so really, plenty of cyclists are very angry at their reputation as not being fully paid up road users.

Road tax doesn’t exist, you know!

I had eaten the maple pecan pastry first and now had the rest of the pain au chocolat to demolish and I was seriously considering making a coffee to drink it with as coffee pairs so much better with chocolate especially darker choc; so much better than tea. Then I remembered I had things to do. I had the Audi’s registration.

I was pleased. I had got home and scored an albeit unpaid day off and hadn’t just slammed on the telly, I had a purpose and with a nice bit of search engineering, don’t expect massive amounts of details of how and where I looked online, it’s again just numbers and stats like how far that proposed deer would have been shunted by his cat, I had found the white Audi owner and also looked at his Facebook pic, which was odd as I realised I hadn’t even noted a silhouette of his as he had whizzed past. His name was ____ ________ and according to big old blue Facebook he lived in Ipswich which does makes sense as in that’s not that far and it was in that direction. I didn’t really like his face nor the few things I read about him on his profile – interested in: women – “gays no but lesbians yes” (?!), rally, england football and cricket, and golf; religious views = F**k that ; – political views = F**k that. What a guy. [The ** were his, not a censorship by me.]

I formed an opinion straightaway based on his hobbies. I don’t mind cricket and I like to play football rather than follow it, the tribalities and the teams etc are increasingly tiresome the older you get. Golf though that is not for me at all, I went to a sports bar once in Bedford warming myself up before a date with a girl and there was this table of men older than me, I would of have been early twenties then, watching a golf tournament on a big undersaturated screen, all the golfers in their awful peach polo shirts, or lime coloured, all baseball capped and it was all wobbly shots of nigh invisible golf balls sailing through the countryside towards the green, slightly more visible when the shot switched to the balls bouncing high on the fairways, on the way to the hole. The men laughingly compared the professionals swing with their own and each other’s and it was all so tepid and I had to laugh to myself behind my sparkling lager as I waited for the hour to come that I would go to the nice pub and meet this girl.

The men’s talk got less jesty and more serious as it became clear to me the golf on the big screen was at a fraught point; it was a championship at stake. But to me it was all dull men swinging metal and getting clapped and lauded for it, by yet duller men.

I realised that a peach-coloured polo shirted golfer was facing off against a lime shirted man to with the golf. The men on the table, a quartet, were split on their loyalties to the professionals.

One of the men, a big blonde who had shaved far too close, said to a smaller man topped with dark gelled hair I felt I could smell, Why don’t we make this interesting?

At this point I leapt up, and said WELL IT WOULD REALLY BE SOMETHING TO MAKE *THIS SHIT* INTERESTING!!!

I must have of laughed fifty times to this after then.

Shame I only thought it but didn’t say it and I left soon after for the date which I enjoyed, as did she, and we dated a few times more before things fizzled out.

The other thing I learned about the Audi man was that he worked at Med First, which it seems is a company who get doctors to work at hospitals and clinics short term. Locums. Now this didn’t really surprise me, I have worked in a hospital before and knew there was lots of gaps that needed covering by these locums. My job there was as a cancer facilitator, booking them in an keeping an eye on their pathways. Patients with cancer. I heard that all hospital doctors get harangued somewhat by these medic recruitment companies, calling up the hospital and asking to be put through to them even when they may be busy on shift to try and offer them up some extra work at extra high rates.

A guy who drives a fast white car at 60 like a bozo seemed just the kind of sticky leech who would suck the life spirit from a doctor by talking him into giving up his much needed rest by offering him £150 an hour whatever they get to work a few nightshifts in Cambridge London Ipswich or Peterborough. _____ ________ was a real fucker.

Now I knew his name and where he worked it was a piece of cake to find his house. Again, search engine tomfoolery got me this.

Morning was ticking along and I needed to get going. I went to the loo then filled my water bottle then stuffed a charger in my pocket and put some things in my bag, walked out the house, and foregoing my bike, along to the bus stop. The bus comes at 47 past the hour until 3.47, and I only had a few minutes until 8.47. Never a good idea to leave it to the last minute with these quiet bus stops out in the sticks, the drivers treat each circuit from their bus station in town and back like they’re trying to break a record at Brands Hatch!

Soon the bus came and I was on it at the back having wended my way past the vertical tartan trolleys the old ladies take on the bus that they always park in the aisle. The driver waved off my attempt to pay him. Quite surprised I’d got on I think. I was the only person under 80, and therefore not in possession of a bus pass. I guess this made him lazy when it came to actually processing a fare.

I got off in town from my free bus and went to the train station. On the bus I’d checked train times, and again I was in luck a train was going direct to Ipswich in less than fifteen! I used this time to stock up on a few snacks then bought the train ticket, thinking if I’d have got on at one of the village stations on the route I might not had to of have paid at all as there are no barriers there and this line is a bit slack for ticket inspectors. Hey ho. I still saved on the bus.

It was quite busy this train and I had to wedge myself into a solo seat near the unisex toilets. This wasn’t very nice as I was subjected to yet more unpleasant smells (my life is just on big stink!) everytime some bugger used the facilities. I didn’t even like drinking or eating near these toilets. The proximity to all those shit germs was rather off-putting.

I gazed at ____ ________ some more on his Facebook profile as we went along. I didn’t go too mad in trying to find out more about him from other online sources. I thought this would sour the energy I’d churned out since white Audi boy zoomed past, and his face was keeping my anger focused and righteous. But I still didn’t know what I would do when and if I came into contact with him. I decided by the time the train rolled into Ipswich station, and knowing what I had in my bag, that I would have a plan down pat. And so it was, an hour and a half later, ninety minutes of sipping water and eating the occasional snack and wrinkling my nose as the automatic doors slid open and close like some kind of insalubrious Star Trek episode which smelt of British piss and was sound-tracked by flushing and sensor taps and convectional hot air, that we were all deposited in Ipswich. Once disgorged from the train we made are way, walking too fast too close together over the bridge, ticketing our way out of the barriers. As predicted, I’d made it to Ipswich unmolested by a ticket person, but yeah I would have of had to get off at a stop earlier I think for a chance to avoid barriers. And that would be far too far from ____ _______. Even Steven.

Whirling away from the station were a cloud of those who’d got the same train as me. I hung back at the rear of this busy, eyes-down cloud and then went to a line of taxis. I got in and gave the driver the name of a road about 300 metres from ____ _______’s road, thinking I didn’t want to risk stupidly giving someone lawful a headstart should I need to be apprehended at any point. [“Who may have a grudge against ____ “ Say chief, look, someone got a taxi right to his house the day of the incident!”]

It was as long as my maps app predicted to get to the adjacent road, 10 minutes. Ipswich was medium busy. I paid the driver who hadn’t talked mercifully whilst driving. He had a little card reader. I added a small tip to round up the price. I got out and fiddled in my bag - I had brought a cap and put it on now. I’m sure ____ ______ wouldn’t know me from Adam but thought it wise. Then I strolled to his house, sure that the Audi wouldn’t be there. He’d be busy at work annoying doctors, or else out in the country roads still whizzing around, or even out in town doing whatever it is men who like sport and rally and lesbians do. It shudders me to think.

When I did get to ____ _______’s house, then, I was actually pretty shocked to find the famous Audi there. Oh, pardner! You rode it home for me! He had backed into the drive so the front was right in front of me.

So then. I had a plan to action and I could do it now. I had slowed right down on seeing the Audi, and by the time I was at its side I was almost immobile. I looked at ___ ______’s house. It was whitewashed and bitty, the face of it, and several large cracks were present. The driveway was grey and also cracked, and weeded. A recycling bin overflowed with garden rubbish. Dirty net curtains lined every window. If he was inside, I couldn’t really tell.

I looked all around me. No one was around. A few cars had passed me on these residential roads, but not many. I dropped my bag to the pavement and stooped down to it. I was jittery. I made a meal of opening the bag, the zipper seemed to get caught every centimetre I pulled it. But soon I had enough space to delve my hand inside and bring out the knife. When it was in my hand I went very still for a long moment, thinking did I have the bollocks to actually do this. Then I thought of the deer I sometimes see on the way to work, all noble and handsome yet afraid, and of the violence of a high speed collision that sends such a beautiful deer smashing through the air to a final indignity of laying dead while its family can do nothing but run away, then laying there for days until some half-arsed council person drives out to it in a truck with an open back and throws it in and sneers at the bloodstains left on the roadside grasses and takes it away to be, I don’t know, burned or something .

I thought of the badger. Of the golf men. Of a white car man enjoying a kickaround, six-a-side at a floodlit 3G pitch, and a life lived with such little self-awareness that he flaunts his sexual peccadillos (the lesbians) on a public forum. My face soured and I plunged the knife into the front tyre. It simply bounced back. I tried again, and it slipped to the side, I growled and punched the tyre which hurt. I tried half a dozen jab-stabs into the tyre, trying to focus on the same spot each time. No! I couldn’t even penetrate the fucking thing. Wished I had brough a sturdier blade. This one was more of a steak knife and was prone to bending when thrust against something even tougher than the welldone steaks I prefer. Changing tact, I rested the tip on the tyre, haunched down, and with all my might tried to force the blade through with my weight rather than with a stab. I got purchase pretty quick, and worked it in until I could rest for a moment without the steak knife falling away. I rechecked my environs, which remained unpeopled. A car did go by but I pretended to by tying my shoe.

After my momentary recuperation I was ready to try and force through the knife to the inner tube. I grasped the handle in both hands…

Then an upstairs window clattered open. HOY WHAT THE FUCK, ____ _______ shouted.

I froze, through the knife under the car on a reflex. Looked up. ___ ______ had gone and a loud stomping told me he was coming my way. I got to my feet and hotfooted it to end of the road.

Another HOY. I cast a look back, ____ _______ was by the front of his car. I stopped. There was enough space between us for him to know that chasing me would likely prove unfruitful. I kept my eye on him and edged backwards, keen to keep a large margin between us. He unfurled the wanker hand gesture at me. I kept backing off, but didn’t respond. I was in a mind actually to go back and engage him. I’d come all the way to Ipswich after all. He got to his knees, always an eye on me, and surveyed his car. TRYING BURST TYRE? I think he yelled know. It was a bit comical with his pronounced yokel accent. Then he ducked even lower and reached under the Audi. FUCKING KNIFE MATE? (I think). I was at least 75 metres away by now.

I came to a decision. I suddenly turned, and ran, and fast, without looking back. Back to the road the mute driver had disgorged me. I ran its length in well under a minute, and circled back until I was at the other end of Audi pardner’s road. A few people were milling about now, and looked at me with a degree of suspicion, perhaps unused to men running fast around the streets in jeans and coat and cap. Taking me for a criminal, maybe. I looked at my surroundings. Someone gasped as I bent over a knackered brick wall into someone’s front garden and picked up a garden gnome. It was heavy, good quality, not hollow like some. The people cowered now. I thought of the badger. Ammonia. Maggots. Councilmen. Recycling bins. Cracked walls and driveways. Zero hours. Jane Fucking Lovey text. Banjaxxing. I ran as fast as I could toward _____ ________’s house, wielding my gnome.

White Audi man roared out of his drive that same second, turning my way. I had enough reaction time to leap out the way but I didn’t. I dived towards his windshield as he went at twenty maybe even thirty into my body.

When I awoke, I smelled sickly-sweet, and maggots were partying in my eyes and mouth.

JS Harding is a novelist and humour writer who has written for BBC Comedy and NewsThump. His psychological thriller, Under Rand Farm, written under the pen name LJ Denholm is available via Amazon, while his forthcoming humour novel, The Good Dr Grevaday? is slated for release in early 2022.