Joe's Cup: A Ghost Story

Joe's Cup

I wish I'd taken the warning seriously. I should have realised something was wrong when I entered the workers' tent; how I wish I had.

I'd only been on the job for a day. We were building an extension to a busy motorway. No one realises how dangerous working out on the roads can be, no matter how many precautions we take, there are road workers killed every single year. No amount of high visibility jackets, or flashing signs to inform drivers to take care, seems to completely stop these deaths. It's just the sad reality of the job, and it's compounded by the need to work primarily in the dark so that there are fewer disruptions to vehicles during the day. But it also means that drivers sometimes don't see us before it's too late.

I'd been drafted in because the extension to the road was behind schedule, so the powers at be had brought in a few extra bodies to speed things up; I was one of them, as was my friend Scott. I was glad to have him with me as he was good fun and always made the hours go in that much quicker. Working through the night for weeks at a time isn't the most enjoyable way to earn a living, but when you have good people around you, it can at least be bearable.

We were being worked pretty hard, pulling 12 to 15-hour shifts to get things back on track. When we were that tired, something bad was bound to happen. I'd been on many large-scale road builds before, and while there was an occasional injury, only on two jobs had I heard of a fellow road worker being struck by oncoming traffic and killed, left to bleed out into the night. But I'd never actually seen it happen, I'd never known anyone directly who had died on the roads. And I was lucky for that.

I knew there was something strange going on as soon as I was assigned to that stretch of road. It cut through a mountainous area and had a nasty bend to it; a blind corner which hid what was coming.

I'd started at dusk, meeting the guys I was going to be working with over the following few weeks. They seemed like a nice crowd, and as is common amongst road workers, there was a lot of gallows humour, with very little being taken too seriously.

A work tent had been set up alongside the road so that we could have somewhere to enjoy some hot coffee, and take a break. Or even shelter from the elements if the sky opened up. It was big enough for a table, a radio and a few chairs. And not much more. I remember how the night breeze would catch the outer sheet, and rustle in the darkness, allowing a cold draft to make its way inside.

There were five of us in the team, including myself and my friend Scott, but during our first break at around midnight, I noticed that there were six cups of coffee sitting at the small foldout table, one more than was needed. We were playing a few rounds of cards with the radio on, and I felt I was already becoming part of the team when I just casually mentioned the sixth cup.

"Who's the sixth man on the team?" I asked, not realising the seriousness of the question at the time.

The men looked at each other hesitantly. It was as if I'd asked a personal question and they were offended that I'd brought it up. They moved nervously in their chairs. Finally our gaffer, a man called Brody who was in charge, simply said: "That's Joe's cup."

"Who's Joe?" Scott asked, sitting beside me.

At first, they seemed reluctant to tell us. Scott and I just wondered when this Joe was going to join us, as neither of us had seen him working on that section of road that night.

Through hushed voices, the group told us who he was. As it turns out Joe was a previous worker on that team. And he'd been struck by a car at night while working a year previously, and unfortunately had died of his injuries.

I thought perhaps the cup was then there to somehow honour their dead friend, which seemed like a touching sentiment. But it soon became clear from the look on the other men's faces, that it wasn't affection which kept the cup sitting at the table whenever they were working together. No, it was fear which kept it there.