hey So last night was the Shuhari Karate Club's annual kiddies' Christmas party. The usual arb nonsense for all our juniors (7-15) and peewees (3-6), with all our big boys (15-death) there en masse to be tied up, chased around, made to work, do an obstacle course etc etc and then clean up after the 25-odd little ones had stuffed their faces with sweets and chips and cake and Coke and stuff. Events, however, were somewhat marred by the highly anticipated arrival of one Special K - Keenan, my longtime friend who is one of our brown belts and who has just two weeks ago turned 21. That sounds odd, I know. But we were all waiting with bated breath to find out about The Accident; that detracted from the festive atmosphere. The story is particularly grim - the faint-hearted should read no further. The Accident occurred shortly after the Saturday grading, just 3 days ago. Technically, it was early Sunday morning - 3:15am. The place - the great and mighty N1 highway, which runs from the edge of the CBD right up through the country, through Johannesburg and Pretoria and on up to the Zimbabwean border, some 2000 kilometers away. In his case, The Accident was on the part of the N1 right as it goes past the airforce base, about halfway between the city center and Edgemead, the suburb where we all live. The limit on the N1 once it becomes open road is 120km/hour. It becomes open road about 2km before where The Accident occurred. Keenan and 2 of his college friends were homeward-bound when Keenan, who was driving, realised "too late, this dude, standing in the middle lane of the highway. Standing. Not running across the road. Standing. Staring at us. I was going one ten, not even one twenty. I didn't have enough time to stop. I hit him at about 80. He didn't even try to move or run. Maybe he was stoned. Maybe he was pissed. Maybe he had a death wish. He came right through my windscreen, then over the top of the car." I didn't get the details at the Christmas party; others monopolised his time there. I drove him home afterwards, and we chatted in the car outside his parents' place. "So much blood. So much fucking blood. All over the window, dripping through the cracked glass, all over the dash, all over me, the two guys in the car, everywhere. Blood. And meat. We came to a stop about 60 metres away. The other guys say I was screaming when they finally got me out of the car." The car is trashed. That's what happens when you hit a solid object at 80. Keenan's hand is completely fucked. That's what happens when you try to hold off a shattered-but-intact windscreen flying at you with a body behind it at 80. "We took a minute or two or longer to pull ourselves together. Then we had to walk back through the dark to see if he was okay." None of the highways here are lit. Offramps, sometimes, if they are going to suburbia are lit. If it's an offramp connecting one highway to another, it's not. "We walked back, probably about the distance from the end of my road to here." He points out the window to indicate the end of the road. "We could make out a shape in the road. It was him." They don't know whether the guy was alive or dead at this point. They didn't get a chance to find out. "Another car, a white Nissan Sentra, came around the bend, also in the middle lane. The driver obviously saw him at the last minute and swerved into the fast lane (the far right lane), but they hit him too. Took his legs off. They didn't stop." The three of them apparently stood there, stunned, for some time. "I don't know how long. The next thing we saw blue lights. Maybe the driver of the Sentra called the cops, but I don't think so. There were no sirens, just the lights on top of the cop van, and they were just half-on, not flashing. We tried to wave them down, but they didn't see us. They..." This bit wasn't easy for him to say. The short of it - the cops didn't see the body either, and proceeded to drive over it. "His torso exploded, and he got caught under the van's propshaft and wheels and got dragged about 20 metres up the road. By the light from the van, you could see that his jacket had hooked up under the shaft and his arms and neck were wedged up under it." He stops. "I have never seen so much blood and guts. It's not like you see in the movies, man. There were pieces of him over all three lanes and both shoulders of the highway." Probably over on the other side of the highway too. At that stage, the cops had piled out the van. It seems the driver, somewhat of a rookie, was not having the best time of dealing with what had just happened and had to be taken away, hysterical, from the scene. Eventually, one of the cops noticed the three blood-drenched guys standing on the side of the road and put two and two together. They closed the highway and called for ambulances. The guys were taken back to the car and Keenan called his sister and got her to bring his folks down. And also some clean, dry clothes. It seems they had quite a narrow escape, thanks to the good folks at Opel, who made Keenan's car. Although trashed - probably written off - the safety cage was intact. ALthough the engine and radiator and everything else had pretty much fallen out of the car, none of it had ended up inside the cab. The cops reckon Special K himself is lucky to not have been killed. At that stage, they realise that the blood all over Keenan is still fresh, while that on his mates is drying somewhat. Someone notices that his left hand is completely annihilated - cut to ribbons. They cart him off to hospital. "The antivirals are making me feel like shit," he tells me, miserably. The antivirals, in this case, are anti-AIDS drugs. Until they find out whether or not the victim was HIV positive - a tricky endeavour, since he's dead and cannot consent to an HIV test; in terms of South African law they are not allowed to test without his or his family's consent - they are assuming that he was, and since there was obviously blood-blood contact between him and Keenan as they split open either side of the windscreen, they are treating it like they would for a rape victim, or a doctor's needle-stick injury. Special K is on triple combination therapy, just like someone with full-blown AIDS, in an attempt to minimise his chances of contracting anything. I tell him at this stage that the needle-stick conversion rate is 3 in 10 thousand, which is about right; and that they can minimise that risk by 90% if you treat within 6 hours. This is all true. I didn't point out that those are the stats for a single prick; not when you have yards of flesh ripped open, which must be the equivalent of a good few dozen pricks. So in addition to the trauma of hitting someone, then seeing the body dismembered in front of him, they are trying to get through to him that he will need an HIV test every month for the next six months. One of my office-mates had the same thing happen to him - a test-tube full of blood from an HIV-positive baby cracked and he got a few drops of it in his eye while he was getting data together - and I know for a fact from him that the waiting every month after the test for the result is sheer hell. Special K is horribly subdued. He's normally very vibrant, full of life. Even when the chips are down and he's having a rough time, he has a ready smile and a quick joke. I've known him for about 7 years now and I've not seen him like this. It's understandable, of course. He came to see me on Sunday night. "I needed someone to talk to. Someone clever, and more mature. You were at the gym." I feel quite bad about that. I didn't know any of this until literally an hour before the kiddies Christmas party, when another of our guys phoned to find out what time things were happening and said "It's terrible about Keenan, huh?" It took a while for him to tell me what had happened coherently. Still, I feel bad for the kid that I wasn't there. "What if he had a family?" he asks me. "He looked like a homeless guy, but even they have families sometime." How do you respond to that? I said nothing. He offers me a smile. "I'm still doing my class tomorrow night; and coming to hell night on Thursday," he tells me as he gets out of the car. I tell him if he needs anything he must just shout. "I don't like being by myself, and I can't sleep properly at the moment," he says. "I'm also a little scared of the dark, suddenly." He goes inside. I feel for the kid. It's going to be rough. Another of my officemates - and we've known each other since the 2nd day of our freshman year, so that's 11 years now - had a similar situation just on a year ago; in his case, however, he was the white Sentra and hit someone who had just been hit. And for the last twelve months, he's got a letter every month from the Police saying that the case is still open and that he still may be charged with culpable homicide and/or negligence. He also had a rough time. I hate to say this, but I'm surprised they both passed the breathalyser. But that's a good thing. -D-