LIFT FROM GABS

(from F&F#43 autumn 2002)

Retold by James Robinson. Heard in Botswana but not necessarily a story from Botswana. Many things travel....

It happened very late one night that this particular driver was leaving Gaborone for Lobatse. He was surprised to notice the figure of somebody, particularly a woman, waiting at the roadside for a lift. It was that kind of spot which was usually isolated and dead, especially at that time of night.
The man stopped his car to pick up this woman. She looked young and was dressed quite colourfully. He asked her a few questions about herself only to get short one-word answers.
After a while when they had clocked up some kilometres, the driver asked "You must have felt cold, standing there, for how long were you waiting ?"
"It's hard for me to say" she replied.
They were approaching Lobatse. "My father is the over-protective kind," she said, "therefore would you please drop me off just before we reach these plots."
"Sure, but let me at least give you my jacket to wear at this time." He removed his jacket.
"If you insist," she said.
"Do you have a cell (phone) number or anything ?" he asked before they separated. She said she hadn't but she wrote down the plot number of her parent's house and another number in case she was not at home but nearby.
It was exactly three days later that the motorist passed through Lobatse to check on his one-time passenger. It was early in the morning. He first knocked at the door of the occupiers and asked if he could see their daughter.
"You were a friend of hers then," the father asked.
"Not really, I gave her a lift the other night and she borrowed my jacket."
"I think there's been a confusion," the father said,"Our daughter's left us, she's passed on.
"You said what ?" the driver exclaimed in disbelief, "When?"
"Oh, this past year and a bit."
"But she gave me this plot number?"
"Perhaps it was a mistake somehow," the occupier said.
Unsatisfied with this result the motorist went to check out the alternative number the girl had given him. It turned out to be nothing less than a cemetery.
The number she gave him was actually the plot section for a tombstone, her grave!
But the most shocking thing for this man to discover was that his jacket was folded and lay on a rock just behind the grave. From that day onwards his mental health deteriorated till he was admitted into a psychiatric ward. Perhaps he's still alive, then again, perhaps not ?
As the girl said, and now I will say : "It's hard for me to say."

[As James says 'things travel'. This story, in an English setting, was one of the first I ever told. I read it in a newspaper in the early '70s (as an actual news item!) and wrote a song about it. The story was better than the song though, so I forgot the song and started telling it, and still do occasionally. Strange that it should travel to Botswana though... and in a very unaltered state. Pete.]

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