DRIVE!
"Gotta car, gonna drive, wanna come?” Jim said grinning maniacally. He looked to me as though he'd taken something fairly heavy in the dangerous drugs department.
"Come on, come on! gonna drive, brm brm.." He laughed manically.
I was torn, I didn't want to go, I didn't want to let him drive me anywhere, anytime! Let alone in the condition that he was in now. But could I honestly let him go on his own? - well no I couldn't.
"What the hell are you on?" I asked him seriously.
"Come on man, gotta drive man, you know wadda mean?" he said as seriously, ignoring my question.
"Have you got a car?" I asked speculatively. Now this question isn't as ridiculous as at first might appear, to the best of my knowledge he has never owned a car, and I've never seen him driving - period.
"Course I gotta car.." he said hurting, "You think I'd ask ya to come if I hadn't? Whattaya think I am? Gotta get some drivin' now!" he spoke fast, slurring the words together.
"OK - but I'll drive" I said firmly, "Where is it?"
He stared at me intently for a couple of minutes, then shrugged, turned and walked quickly towards a clapped out wreck. He opened the door without unlocking it, no one in their right mind would ever have contemplated stealing it or so I surmised. Wrong!
"Ok so it's hot, man, lissen we gotta go, Lake district, now - drive!"
What the hell, I thought, I'm not doing anything. I got in, twisted the wires hanging from the dash and was totally staggered when it actually started.
"Drive!" yelled Jim frantically.
I drove, what on earth was I doing? I glanced across at him he was fidgeting wildly. He turned the radio on, and began tuning into station after station, he was already driving me nuts and we'd only been going five minutes.
I figured that I could drive around for a while until the drug wore off and then we could go home. I checked the fuel gauge - full, I couldn't make my mind up whether that was good or bad.
He'd found a heavy rock station and turned the music up until my ears hurt, but it seemed to calm him a little so I ignored the pain and tried to concentrate on driving.
On the way to the motorway I noticed an off-licence and an idea sprang into my mind.
"Hey Jim want some beer?", he nodded, "Got any money?"
He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a wad of tenners, maybe things were looking up. Ok, I thought, I'll have some of that. I did a reckless U-turn and shot back to the shop.
He gave me around one hundred smackers, I bought four six packs and pocketed the rest of the money. When I got back to the car he was sitting in the drivers seat, things weren't going according to plan.
"Wan some Wiz?" he asked slyly, pushing a wrap my way. Why not, things couldn't get much worse, live fast - die smashed. I undid the wrap of amphetamine sulphate and ate the contents. As I hadn't eaten any food since a meagre breakfast it wasn't long before I began to feel the effects.
We sat in the car outside of the shop for a while, drinking a couple of beers, Jim kept frenziedly looking through his pockets for something, sifting through his meagre belongings. It didn't worry me, he was always like this on speed.
After a little time I felt the warm, electric, amphetamine current rising until it was humming nicely at the back of my brain. Suddenly, I was into the adventure.
"Drive!" I said, enthusiastically.
Jim duly went into the driving position and went through the motions of driving. We didn't move, of course, he had forgotten to twist the wires together. I didn't mind, he seemed happy enough, didn't seem to notice that we weren't moving. The radio carried on screaming out some good music, I rocked the car to give him a feeling of movement, and realised that he was on an incredible, head mulching cocktail of drugs.
After a while the paranoia set in. I manically looked up and down the road, an old man walked past us and menacingly glanced our way, a boy ran up the road and stood by the back of the car doing something I couldn’t see, I pushed down the fear that he might be a midget policeman calling for assistance.
But I knew that if we sat there much longer someone was bound to call the police, and I couldn't be doing with that. I talked Jim into letting me drive. He ran down the gears and put the brakes on, then with a great deal of difficulty we exchanged places.
"Where are we?" he asked, looking around as though he'd this minute woken up. We were a couple of miles from where we'd started.
"We've come miles, have a beer and don't worry," I reassured him.
We hit the motorway doing forty, he handed me a beer, and yelled:-
"Drive!".
I cranked the old relic to sixty, the car started to rattle and vibrate, and the noise! It sounded as though we were standing in a closed hanger with a Jumbo Jet revving it's engines in there. We could barely hear the radio above the din. I put my foot flat down, and when the road sloped downwards we hit seventy. The Noise was fantastic you felt as though you could reach out and touch it, and the whole car shook threatening to disintegrate around us.
The passenger door's window suddenly opened, the glass dropped like a guillotine, and turbulent air rushed in.
"Wha' the..." flailed Jim, looking like a whale who has inexplicitly swum ashore. He grappled with the winder but to no effect.
I slowed to fifty, and dropped into the near lane. Luckily it was a warm summer's day, I check my window, it was OK. At the next exit I pulled off and stopped.
We both tried to get the passenger window to close but it was stuck too tightly.
"What do you want to do?" I asked him.
"Drive!" he commanded. I interpreted this as an instruction to carry on. It struck me that I hadn't the remotest idea where we were going. To be honest I hadn't been bothered, I'd run onto the motorway without thinking of looking at the signs, I figured we must be going north, vaguely in the direction of the Lake district. Ah well.
I started the car, and as we reached the slip road, Jim yelled "Stop!".
He'd seen a hitchhiker standing on the slip road, thumb outstretched. I pulled over.
"Wanna lift?" Jim growled, in what he thought was English.
"Where are you going?" asked the hiker, hesitantly.
"Where we goin?" Jim asked me, taking a swig from his beer. The hiker suddenly found his thumb the most interesting thing in the world, he stared at it, he twiddled it, was it still attached to his hand? yes it was, could he feel it? he seemed to have some doubts.
"Where does this motorway go?" I shouted.
The hiker paused, I could see he wanted to be elsewhere, and elsewhere now! He was considering what he should say. He was in a quandary, he was obviously going our way but he most definitely didn't want to come with us. Luckily, for him, Jim took the decision for him.
"Drive!" he said and we took off, leaving a highly relieved hiker smiling in the afternoon sun.
After an hour driving relentlessly, I noticed that Jim was no longer so manic. Good! This meant the drugs were wearing off. Unfortunately I also noticed he had drunk ten cans of beer, if he had been walking he would have staggered. As it was he slumped.
Two things began to worry me: 1. I had to get back home before the drugs wore off on me, and 2. as the Sun went down it was becoming bloody cold with the window jammed open.
"Shuda bloody door!" said Jim drunkenly.
I turned round at the next exit and Jim didn't notice. He revived slightly when his bladder demanded attention, and we stopped on the hard shoulder whilst he relieved himself.
As he climbed back into the car he had a blinding inspiration. He decided that as the window wouldn't close he would put something in it to stop the draught. He duly arranged his body so that his bum filled the offending opening.
So there we where motoring along with Jim's bum hanging out of
the window.
We didn't get far.
A police car saw us from its vantage point on the edge of the motorway and came after us. I made a half-hearted attempt to make a run for it, but I knew the car wasn't up to it.
I pulled onto the hard shoulder.
We were transferred to the warmth of the police car, and I was sure that Jim hadn't taken in what had happened. He smiled at the warmth and me, took a long draught of his beer, shot his arm forward dramatically, and shouted in ecstasy:-
"Drive!"