-oO0Oo-

The road past the glittering white Hotel runs straight as it can into the distance across the marshy floor of the glen.  Beyond the barely visible concrete bridge it vanishes into the brown and green of the heather covered wall that climbs obliquely to Rannoch Moor.  A smudge of yellow crawls up the thin zig zag scribed on the heather.  Cold as the day is you can almost feel the heat of anger from it's attendant multicolored train of followers.  Intermittently one or two drivers escape from the trap of on coming traffic and blast away up the road.  As the head of the line hits the hairpin it seems to pause before heading off in the opposite direction.  Nearing the top of the climb the line breaks up, gaps appear as it lengthens and trickles up and over the edge disappearing from sight, the yellow and white head remains though is quickly obscured by a puff of steam.

Damnit this thing needs an extra two gears below first, I thought I was never going to make the layby.  I hate having a queue of traffic behind me.  It's not just because I'm a kind soul who doesn't like being the cause of anyone's misery but angry driver cause horrific crashes when they just cant take any more and do something stupid.  I wouldn't have guessed this road would attract quite so many people or that they would all be in such a hurry to get somewhere.  So at a guess I just leave the poor little thing to cool down now then try and find how all that steam got out before filling it up again.  It would have been wise to familiarise my self with expected problems before I left, I would feel better if I had some confidence in being able to keep my sole form of transport and current residence in running order.

I wander over to the butty van at the edge of the parking area and get a role and sausage with my brew.  The slight haze over the glen doesn't quite hide the glint of white at the far end or the ruler drawn line of the road far below.  The tourists snap each other posing on the crenellated wall round the view point, I don't detect any accents from further away than Ayrshire, day trippers mainly.  It's nice to know that Scotland still holds some appeal for the Scots, that not everyone feels the need to hop on a plane and weekend in Spain.  Good to see that the appeal of live televised sport beamed into your living room 24 hours a day hasn't pinned everyone to the sofa every Saturday.

Up on the moor the small spatters of open water, the lochlets are iced over.  The white of the frost is gone from the vegetation, burned off by a sun that isn't as lacking in heat as it would appear.  Big patches of dusty blue white glitter either side of the road. *pah*

I see the other VW far ahead, pulled in as far as it can get in one of the blocked up stopping places.  What is it about Argyl?  Are they scared that people might actually stop and enjoy themselves?  Every potential place to pull off the road has a ditch and several large boulders to prevent you doing so.  There are miserly strips of pavement every so often complete with an over flowing litter bin and the obligatory "no overnight parking" sign.  It's hardly a indication of overt friendliness to visitors.  I'm convinced if it's not the same year as mine it's not a kick in the shirt off it.  There seems to be something very wrong about the way it's leaning away from the road.  As I draw closer I can make out the damage to the rear end, this is no small glitch like my water pipe, I doubt very much if any amount of duck tape is going to stick the axel back on.  I slow but to my shame my first thought is not of being any assistance but rather I hope to god it doesn't happen to me.  I pull in just in front of the crippled van but there is no one around accept my help even if I could have been of any.  It's a damn shame.

I was keen to make Oban that day, the seaside proper, and I was more than a bit jumpy now about what other mechanical failures could befall me.  I didn't push it but kept to a steady 50 across the moor, there was plenty of room on the wide straight roads for those in more of a rush to pass me by.  As the hills of the glen started to close in around me the bright sun was quickly swallowed by the cloud cover.  It was here where the road started to descend that I saw him walking.  He was hardly dressed to cross the moor on foot, a black denim jacket and jeans isn't your usual walkers choice.  He wasn't thumbing for one but some misguided sense fellowship made me stop and offer him a lift anyway.  I cleared the maps, tapes, tobacco, mints and other assorted shit from the passenger seat and shoved open the door promptly knocking him in the ditch.

"shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that" I blurted as I dragged him out of the ditch. "I was wondering if you wanted a lift, is that your van back there?"
"yea, it was" he looked at my own twin of his and smirked "I wouldn't mind a ride"
He climbed aboard and I clambered back to the driver seat. There was no traffic to pull out into though I looked twice and indicated. There may not be many other road users out here but as a matter of course they are usually flying on and spend more of their attention on the scenery than the road. "Where are you headed?" I asked "Do you want to go back for anything?"
"No no" he looked in the back, taking in the loosly loaded gear; spilled piles of clothes, clean but unpacked cooking pots, scattered books and tapes, a loosly folded sleeping bag "I don't think you have room for much more in here"
"Yep, everything I own, all my worldly goods" I was proud, I could detect no criticism in his voice. He was short and wide, if he hadn't leant up against the passenger door I would have felt cramped sharing the small cabin of the VW with him, the curly red hair suggested celtic blood, I wondered if his name would bare me out.
"Andrew by the way, Andrew Lipton" he said as thought picking up on the thought, he looked at me expecting a name in return. 
I considered lying, new start and all, new life, new name but I told him given name anyway. "Lachlan, they call me Lachie"
"they?"
"my friends, my friends call me Lachie" I snorted, like I ever had that many friends that they needed a group title. "What happened back there, to the van I mean?"
"Oh god, my own stupid fault. I was picking up some equipment from Glasgow, she's a bit of a work horse old Bessie, and I think I may have slightly over estimated her capacity or underestimated the load or something. She was right down on her haunches when I left the city and I thought I was never going to get up some of those hills. As we coasted down I guess I wasn't paying attention, too busy looking at frozen tarns. I just touched the verge and the next thing I know I'm fighting to keep us out of the ditch. We hit a massive bump and Bessie, me and everything else took off, she didn't survive the landing. I'm buggered if I can't get her fixed, I don't have any other transport and buses are a bloody rarity out here."  I hadn’t had the Volkswagen long but I felt a pang of anxiety at the thought of it being brutally ripped apart.  

I let him yak on about what he thought had gone wrong with Bessie, how the struts or the under something might have been corroded or stressed or something, how Bessie came to be called Bessie.  “The number plate was BES 251E?, Your Grandmother?  Well I never.”  He told me the tail of where he found her and how much she cost and what he had for lunch.  To tell the truth I was watching the road and the hills and the water falls.  I like tracking the path of the old roads when I drive in the highlands, here the old road is used now as the route of the West Highland Way, a long distance footpath popular amoung students and hard men up from the city.  The idea is to walk it’s entire length but most don’t do the whole lot in one go anymore.  You can catch a train or bus and do it in stages at weekends or during the holidays.  Today the path was busy, perhaps not the crowded way it would be in the summer but the cold clear sunshine had tempted enough to come and walk this relatively easy stretch with their ever so trendy vibrant yellow and red jackets, day packs and trekking boots.  I was never a big fan of this style of me too walking, truth be told I wasn’t a big fan of walking any further than the local off license but walking into the wilderness for days on end with nothing more than what you could carry or catch seemed to have more merit than this within sight of the road stuff.

“So what do you do Lachie?” Andrew suddenly enquired breaking the easy background stories he had been telling.  
“This.” I said “Drive my van, pickup stranded motorists”, “How long you been doing THIS then?” he grinned.  
I looked at my watch “Oh, not that long really, just over an hour” we both chuckle. “I left my job and fled the city a couple of days ago, I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do.”
”You left your job?” he asked “Are you loaded then?”
“Hah, loaded, good one” I giggled again “I had to call in more than a few favours just to afford my new home” I indicated our transport “I probably have enough food for a couple of weeks, cash for a few more, by then I need to be working at something.”
“So can you do anything?” I could feel the focused gaze of a genuine enquiry.
Could I do anything?  Now that was the question I probably should have asked myself a long way back down this road.

I was excellent at procrastination, instead of going straight to college I had continued my summer job laying paving and turf until the weather had closed in and there just wasn’t enough work to keep us going.  I had wasted the rest of the year doing odd jobs for my landlord and signing on.  When I did get to college I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do, I did one year of chemistry, started again and tried sociology and managed to squeeze in a year of computing before they relised what I was doing and slung me out.  I did some warehouse work for a bit and had a great number as a junior manager in an off licence.  I had never been particularly good at any job and it hadn’t pained me much to leave it all behind.  Did I have any marketable skills?  Probably not, the only thing I had particularly enjoyed except my staff discount on alcohol was dig that hole and build that wall of my first summer job.

“Oh, this and that” I told Andrew “I like to think I can turn my hand to anything”
“I know the feeling” he replied “I’ve been making my way doing what’s needed for most of my life”
“Oh yes?” I was interested now.
“I’ve got a boat at the moment and during the summer I do seal trips and chartered fishing” he told me “it gets a bit tight in the winter months and I do a bit of light building and care taking, there are a lot of holiday homes around here and they need taking care of.”
“It doesn’t sound terribly demanding” I said thoughtlessly “I mean it sounds like something I could do” I was never one to stop digging when I could have a bigger hole to hide in “sorry”
“No, your right, it’s not the most demanding occupation but it gives me time to pretend to be a writer and local worthy” he smiled again “I want to be able to take paying guests in the summer, that’s what broke Bessie to be honest, I have a new cooker and some building materials to get the boat house in shape.”
“Boat House?”
“Yea I have a boat house, not in actual fact big enough for the boat but great views of the islands, not really mine either strictly speaking, it very much belongs to the bank.”
“I guess I’ve been lucky, I’ve managed to avoid any major debt except my student loans, that’s the only way I can even contemplate doing this.”
We were descending again, down the twiddly bits where the road is cut through the rock and stuck to the side of the gorge.  It looked like it would be fantastic on a nice day and even with the gloomy cloud threatening to drench them there were a lot of gawpers pulled in at the sides of the narrow road peering either down at the river or up at the hills.  “silly bastards” said Andrew “they could have stopped in the car park”
“car park?” I looked over and asked.

I noticed the movement to my right on the very limit of my vision.  I instinctively pulled away from whatever it was.  If I hadn’t tried to avoid him he would probably have made it all the way across the road, even if he hadn’t I doubt I would have hit him quite so squarely or so hard.  I had a brief frozen vision of his shocked expression; short scrubby hair, almond shaped face, thick frames on pebble lenses, dark brown eyes staring in at me like I was some terrible insect in an aquarium.  The screen crazed blocking out the pedestrian, the gorge, the hills, the clouds, everything.  I slammed on the brakes and was surprised that the van didn’t fight me.  If I skidded it was in a straight line and I didn’t hit anything else.  When I think of it now Andrew and I were very lucky, if it had panned out slightly different it would have been us at the bottom of that steep drop and we would have been inside and upside down van in the river.  It wasn’t us in the river, it was some complete stranger with no idea how to cross a Scottish road on a dull day without getting himself well and truly batted.

By the time I had pulled myself together and got out Andrew had already gone, leaving his door flapping.  A few people where leaning over the edge, pointing and shouting excitedly, I ran over and looked down.  There were five or six people climbing down the rocky ravine but I couldn’t see the guy I had hit.  I looked down the road and I could see Andrew running.  Bloody coward I thought stupidly.  An insistent beeping of a car horn re started the brain.  I jogged back to the van and as I climbed in I calmly shoved my hand through the gritty white sheet that had been my windscreen making a hole big enough to see the road.  Andrew had mentioned the car park and it was less than a hundred yards down the hill.  I pulled in and again climbed out and ran to the edge to find my victim.  The slope beyond the car park was less steep than the gorge and I could see someone, Andrew, by the edge of the river, he was kneeling and several of the brightly coloured walkers seemed to be milling about.  Shit I thought.  There was a van selling hot sandwiches and I told them to call the police “I’ve hit someone, he’s in the river, get the police, an ambulance, please” I leapt over the barrier and started to scramble down towards Andrew and the now obvious body in front of him.  I don’t know quite what I thought I could do, I wasn’t any better at first aid than I was at anything else.

“Oh no, no no no, I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him”  As I ran up beside Andrew he turned and stood up, he put his hand on my chest to stop me.  The young man I had hit was on his side, he was a sickening shade of blue grey and his foot stuck out at a strange angle.  There was no blood except the barest trickle at his nose.  Andrew was ringing wet and still breathing hard.  I couldn’t fucking believe it, I had killed some poor hapless young boy, someone on a nice day out, enjoying themselves, never dreaming that death was coming in the shape of a yellow and white rusty little van and an irresponsible lay about on his jollies.  He must have a family, I looked back up the hill to the car park, a mother, a sister, oh god no, a wife.  All I could see where the curious little faces looking down from the road.  There were sirens in the distance.  I sat down in the wet grass, I just wanted to curl up and die.

                                                    -oO0Oo-