Dead Man on the Road

‘This happened somewhere in the end of May, or the beginning of June. It had been a normal work day and I was heading home. I always take the same route straight through the rural land. It was a quarter to six and fair weather as I roared past the town of B. over the tracks in the direction of A. After the railroad you've got a long straight, so I went full on the throttle till I spotted a man up ahead in the distance, gesticulating to me to slow down. Oh shit, he probably thinks that I drive too fast, I thought, but as he kept his position on the road, I slowed down. And then I saw him… the other guy lying there, in the middle of the road.

To be precise, the man was lying in the middle of a junction, although the road he had come out off is a little dead-end street with nothing but a farm at the end. Anyway, I had stopped and the gesticulating man walked up to my window, so I had no choice but to open it. The man was very panicky and asked me if I knew CPR, because he needed help badly. I got out and walked up to the figure on the ground.

And there he lay… an elder man (in his late sixties I think) wearing a faded blue overall like farmers do. He had a shuffle on his bike and a saw, still in his hand. His bicycle lay partly on top of him and the man himself lay motionless on his back with his legs in a twist, his eyes closed and a little pool of blood underneath his head. He looked like a corpse. I immediately saw it: this guy is dead.

A woman arrived by car from the other direction. She stopped too. And in the crossroad stood the pickup truck from the panicky fellow. In the meantime, a man arrived by bike, who proved to be the father of panic man, whom he had called immediately. I know next-to-nothing about CPR, but the father did and he started with it straight away. This seemed utterly pointless to me since the man lying there was very dead.

From the nearby farm, a man walked up. He was the one who had called 911. Panic man told everybody how he had seen the victim cycling on the road and wanting to make a turn. The man had looked over his shoulder and next moment he lay on the road. Main concern of panic man was that nobody thought that it was his fault. He hadn’t hit the cycling old man, but there he was lying in front of his car! He went out of his way to make this absolutely clear to everybody.

He told us that the dead man had moaned a little and moved an arm, but after that, nothing. I heard an ambulance approach in the distance. Since reanimating seemed futile, we just waited for the ambulance to arrive. The woman who had been standing by thought this a good moment to leave, because the police arrived as well, and she clearly didn’t want anything to do with that. I stayed a while longer.

The paramedics arrived and ran up to the victim, but calmed down when they had a clear view of him. ‘That one is dead,’ one of the paramedics said, just as I had thought. They zipped him open, put some sensors on his chest and then they knew enough. Nothing to be done here. A motor cop arrived, looking for witnesses. There was only one: panic man. He got a chance to tell his story again. In the meantime, they went through the victim’s pockets, but he had nothing on him. Nobody knew him, although his outfit, working gear and the fact that he came out of a dead end street made it likely that he was from around here.

I had seen enough of this and got in my car. I tried to find out later: who or why, but I found nothing. It still isn’t clear to me who this man was, but I have seen his dried up blood on the road for many days, and the picture of the dead man lying on his back has stayed for weeks as I drove by. But that is gone now too.

Strange event. A man on his bike, the wife at home, waiting with diner, just doing some work in the garden on his land and on the way back drops down dead. So that’s the way it goes.’

A friend told me this.