The Runaway Lorry

The runaway lorry
Oh, oh, O’Hara

O’Hara, the Doctor’s gardener, chauffeur, factotum, and general annoyance, had volunteered to drive James’s lorry. James had accepted, because McGuire, the regular driver, had a fever.
Not that that James was delighted about O’Hara. He was a careful man, and you could never be sure of what would transpire when O’Hara got involved. What could go wrong with a delivery of a load of manure? his left brain asked. O’Hara, his right brain objected. The objection was overruled. It was a fine day, not one for being grumpy.
In any case, to get on with the story, the old lorry was labouring up the wee bit of a slope in the street where McGuire lived, when O’Hara decided to stop and see how the man was.
He stopped the lorry, pulled on the brake as hard as he could, got out and went up the path and round to McGuire’s back door. When he turned the corner of the house, there was McGuire, in pyjamas and a coat for a dressing gown, peering in through the glass of his greenhouse.
‘Has the wife locked the door on you?’ O’Hara asked.
‘No,’ McGuire informed him. ‘I’ve got this flu’ and I’m worried I’ll infect The Begonia. I haven’t dared to go into the greenhouse for a day or two. The wife’s been doing the watering but I like to have a look in now and then.’
Pointing through the glass of the greenhouse McGuire said, in the kind of awed voice the priest used when he found the poor box full of notes, ‘Not a blemish on it, the finest salmon pink I’ve ever seen, never mind grown. I just hope it lasts till the weekend for the flower show. The only thing that’ll touch it for best in show is that geranium of Skinners.’
‘I’ve just come past Skinners, and I never saw a geranium,’ O’Hara said. ‘Now that I think of it, I didn’t even see his greenhouse.’
‘You’d not see it over that fence he’s put up,’ McGuire told him.
‘Is it himself that’s put up that palisade?’ O’Hara asked. ‘Is it to keep the sun off the geranium, then?’
‘No,’ McGuire told him. ‘He’s got his show chrysanthemums behind that, he’s worried some fifth columnist might do them a damage.’
Skinner’s garden faced up McGuire’s street, making a T-junction, with the palisade standing like a billboard at the bottom of the street.
There’d been bad blood between O’Hara and Skinner for some time. When the place he worked at closed down, O’Hara had taken to drink. He drank all his own money, then what he could borrow. When that was finished and he was desperate, he found himself out in the woods one day, and found a rabbit in a snare. He skinned and cleaned the rabbit and sold it to Skinner, or got Skinner to sell it for him. It hung for a day or two in Skinner’s window then disappeared, into Skinner’s belly according to O’Hara. Skinner said it had been starting to smell.
Whatever happened, Skinner refused to pay.
A few days later, a rumour crept round that it wasn’t a rabbit at all, but a stray cat. O’Hara denied that.
Why Mrs Skinner went to see the doctor nobody knew, but while she was there, she asked the Doctor for his opinion. The Doctor’s only comment was that if O’Hara had something to do with it, it could have been a dead alien for all he knew.
Maybe it was at the mention of Skinner that started things off for, as the lorry cooled down, the brakes started to slip.
The slope was quite gentle to begin with and the lorry crept slowly at first, in fact, even Mrs O gorman, struggling up the hill with her bags of groceries, didn’t notice anything wrong, and she could tell within a week if a girl without a husband was pregnant.
The lorry was no real danger to traffic. The cars were either in the front gardens, or at work, and the children were at school, except for one class on a nature walk. You’ll maybe be thinking the nature walk was on its way to see McGuire’s begonia, or that the teacher had wheedled an invitation from Skinner for the children to see his giant geranium. In fact, the young teacher had decided to go along the back lanes where there was nothing but weeds, a stray cat and a bumble bee wandering about while its radar warmed up. Along that way, however, there was a lad the teacher hoped would be her boyfriend busy with an extension at one of the houses.
Nevertheless, if Mrs McGuire hadn’t come out and offered O’Hara a cup of tea and a scone as O’Hara was about to go back to the lorry, things might have been different.
‘You’re scones are famous from Donegal to Timbuktu, and maybe even Timbuckthree,’ O’Hara said. ‘But I’d better not be long, I’ve got manure to deliver. Mind you, I don’t suppose it’ll go bad, eh?’
The children came out of the back lane, half way down the hill, as the lorry got that far. The teacher stopped them to let the lorry pass and it was only when the children started to jump up and down, pointing and shouting, ‘Please Miss, Please Miss,’ that she noticed there was no driver.
She rushed and grabbed the lorry’s bumper to try to hold the lorry back.
The lorry hardly noticed.
‘Help, help,’ she shouted to the children.
They rushed forward in a gang, pushing each other to be first to get a grip on the bumper. Them that did get a hold, were pulled, slithering and sliding, behind the lorry.
The Postie joined them, and organised things. ‘One, two, three, HEAVE,’ he shouted.
Some of the children heard him, and heaved, especially a wee girl with her lips pursed and a serious expression.
She looked to one side.
‘You’re not heaving,’ she told the lad next to her.
‘I am an’ all,’ the lad said.
‘Here, I can heave better than you,’ a bigger lad told her.
‘Stop pushing, I was here first,’ the wee girl screamed.
‘HEAVE,’ the Postie shouted.
The big lad pushed the wee girl aside and got his hands on the bumper.
The Postie realised it would take a team effort to succeed. ‘All together now,’ he shouted. ‘One, two, three, HEAVE.’
The children heaved.
The lorry hesitated.
‘HEAVE.’ shouted the Postie, sensing success.
They all jerked again.
The lorry gave a shrug, and let go its bumper.
The Postie and the children sat down in the road, with the bumper in their laps.
‘Look at me shirt, me mother’ll murder me,’ the big lad said.
The lorry didn’t pay any heed.
Mrs McGuire was giving the men their tea when a boy came running in.
‘Mr McGuire, Mr McGuire, you’re lorry’s runnin’ down the street by itself.’
O’Hara, crisis being a way of life with him, was first up, and down the street. He caught up with the lorry as it gathered speed for the last, steeper, stretch By that time, the Postie was inside the cabin and O’Hara, running beside the open door, yelled at him to try the brake. The Postie yanked at the brake handle. There was a single click and the lorry hesitated again, but then realised it was on a steeper bit of the street and could keep going.

At the bottom of the slope, in his greenhouse, hidden behind his palisade, Skinner, knowing nothing of the lorry, was admiring his geranium. The geranium filled half his little greenhouse and he expanded his chest in pride as he breathed in the sharp scent of the thing. He was only there at that time of the day because he’d delivered something to the Doctor’s and couldn’t resist taking a look in at his chrysanthemums and his giant geranium.

As he ran beside the lorry’s open door, O’Hara shouted to the Postie to start the engine. The Postie looked at the ignition, but the keys were missing.
‘Keys! Give us the keys!’ the Postie shouted to O’Hara.
O’Hara, stumbling beside the lorry, scrabbled in his pocket and flung the keys into the cabin. They landed between the Postie’s knees, and fell on the floor. The Postie bent down, trying to find the keys, and O’Hara jumped on the lorry’s step to help.
The keys were under the seat. O’Hara grabbed at them and managed to hand them to the Postie, who stuck them in the ignition.
O’Hara saw the palisade and decided to climb into the cab and shut the lorry door. The Postie resisted, and the cabin became a wrestling match, with arms and legs flailing about.
The palisade was really only a screen and the lorry grabbed it and pushed it back with ease.
Skinner saw the palisade pushing over his chrysanthemums like a bulldozer blade and dived out of the greenhouse, in time to see it demolished.
Skinner scrambled round and started to shout at whoever was driving.
That’s when O’Hara got the engine started and rammed the lorry into gear. The lorry jerked forward.
O’Hara had checked the back flap of the lorry but, not realising it was hinged at the top, thought it looked shut. It wasn’t.
As Skinner came to the back of the lorry, the sudden jerk sent some of the load out through the flap. It fell on Skinner and, when the Postie jumped down and went to see what the shouting was about, it was draped over Skinner like bedraggled decorations on a Christmas tree.
O’Hara drove off. He said later, if he’d known he’d manured Skinner, he’d have stopped to plant somethin’.
The big boy said to the teacher, ‘Oh, look Miss, Mr Skinner’s covered in sh…’
She fainted at that, and was lucky the chap who had decided to be her boyfriend was there to catch her in his strong arms.
McGuire’s begonia had no real opposition for ‘Best in Show’.
Skinner demanded damages from O’Hara. O’Hara had no money, so Skinner made his demands to the Doctor. Skinner, of course, while demanding immediate payment from his customers, needed to be struck by lightening before he parted with hard cash himself, was ‘surprised’ to learn he owed the Doctor exactly the amount of the damages.
The doctor deducted some money from O’Hara, but O’Hara borrowed it back.