Cody

I haven't done this in ages!

I've forgotten just how freeing it is and how good it feels to grip a steering wheel in my hands, step on the gas pedal and watch the headlights eat the kilometres.

It's even better by day when I can open the window as wide as it will go and rest my elbow on its frame during long stretches of straight road, feeling the breeze in my hair. There is nothing like country air, the smell of mud and manure.

Some of my happiest times were spent driving this pick-up when I legally wasn't allowed to yet. I only used it around the farm, with the dogs on the back, barking when they spotted a forgotten lamb out in the field so that we could bring it home.

I asked Gramma to let me drive home tonight. I felt it was time I tried some of the things I used to love so I could become human again. Besides, she looked worn-out and tired after being on her feet for hours and making fritters late into the night last night. She agreed and seemed relieved, but she still made me promise to let her know if my leg started to protest and it got too tough for me to keep going.

Tonight, I threw a rugby ball for the first time since my last match months ago! It was made of stainless steel and not the right weight, but it was still... it felt right. I laughed with others as if I were just a person and not a mess with one foot out the door, ready to bail. I got to see glimpses of the guy who used to be my best friend.

That was good in some ways but also pretty hard because it kept reminding me of who I once was.

Though Jasper lived here in Granary Downs and I lived in the city, we still got to see each other very often. Until I turned 16, I would visit Gramma every weekend and holiday; when I couldn't, Jas would come to the city to be with me. It's only about an hour's drive away; his dad was happy to drop him off, or he came with Gramma.

In high school, when we got really good at rugby, we started talking about our dream of going pro. We were going to get rugby scholarships to go to university and play for their teams and one day become rugby legends, undefeatable on the field. Yeah, we had really big plans.

Jasper stopped sharing my dream.

I started playing district rugby and got even better at it, receiving offers from universities while he was stuck playing for Phantom's Rest's crummy high school and had no plans for going to university once he graduated. I didn't understand how he could just give up like that. 

Jasper is a good rugby player.

Between rugby practice and matches, I couldn't spend so much time with him anymore. As my dreams of being a pro rugby player began to solidify and become achievable, I no longer thought about farming with Gramma. I drifted away from Jas, Gramma and everything I used to care about.

After a while, none of it mattered to me all that much anymore.

I had new friends, a new way of life... more frequent arguments with my dad. I guess stardom was going to my head, leaving everybody behind in my shadow. I'm not entirely sure what happened between Jasper and me. Jealousy of my success and his tethers to fate, I guess... at least, that's what I always believed, but I'm not so sure anymore. We just fought a lot, and not in the brotherly way we used to, and I stopped coming to the farm.

Earlier this year, when I woke up in that hospital bed with my rugby dreams up in flames and pipes and cords connecting me to an array of machines like I was the star in some creepy sci-fi movie, Jasper was there. He was standing at the window, staring out at the city while Gramma dozed in a chair on my right, and my mother clung to my left hand, her head resting on the bed while she slept in her chair.

When I woke up in massive pain and didn't find my dad in the room, I thought he was still mad at me about the latest stupid argument we were having, and when I saw Jasper, I thought it meant he was my only true friend.

Turns out, he was my only live friend.

"Gramma," I gasp, slowing the pick-up and carefully stopping by the side of the road, holding onto my last breath for dear life, my lungs burning with the effort to stay in control.

"Are you okay, Liefie?" she asks, instantly concerned.

"My leg," I lie, opening the door and nearly rolling out into the bushes beside the shoulder of the dirt road. It's not my leg, my leg was handling the drive just fine; it's my head that's the problem. I step away from the vehicle, gulping large amounts of air into my lungs, driving the panic back, willing the intrusive memories from my mind, and fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit.

I'm not surprised when my grandmother joins me, laying a comforting hand on my back. We stand like that for a while, me with my hands on my knees, breathing loudly while Gramma strokes my back. It's not all that comfortable because my leg doesn't like this position at all, but the alternative would be to pass out and roll down the embankment.

After a few minutes I rise, giving my grandmother an awkward smile, relieved when she doesn't ask what is really going on. She reads me pretty well and simply wraps her arms around my waist to give me an affectionate hug. Somehow, Gramma always smells like freshly baked goods, a very effective, comforting fragrance.

"You made it really far for the first time; that's awesome," she grins, releasing me and heading back to the pick-up, where I help her in at the driver's side. Though my leg held out pretty well, my head is spinning, and I'm queasy in the aftermath of the panic attack.

I walk around the vehicle, climb into the passenger seat, strap myself in and pick up the candle Gramma put on the dashboard when she jumped out. It's not warm anymore, but I can imagine the happy flame bouncing around the wick, casting sparkles in Glitch's eyes, and my smile finds its way to my cold lips.

We drive in silence for a while, listening to Neil Diamond singing Gramma's favourite song. Oddly, her favourite is not Sweet Caroline or one of his other mellow songs (though she likes them too); it's Holly Holy, which starts out gentle enough. Gramma happily sings her heart out, especially when the momentum picks up and it gets loud. She particularly loves yelling out the 'yeah' part.

Well, I have heard her sing along just as enthusiastically with ACDC.

I study her profile, enjoying her antics, and when she turns her head and grins at me, I join in her choir. Soon, we're both belting out song after song. We're having a rock concert inside an old pick-up truck on a dark and dusty farm road like the years of drifting apart never happened. We often did this in the past, most of the time with Jasper here to mess up the melody.

The guy cannot sing himself out of a box!

Gramma's self-mixed playlist is a treasure trove of weird and wonderful songs that do not stick to any kind of genre, time period or theme. I think we're mixing Spanish and Korean in the song we're pretending to sing perfectly now; I'm not sure; the only words I can grasp are Otra Vez and Baby one more time.

I vaguely remember this song, and I frown, tilting my head, trying to recollect why it seems important, but it's eluding me for now. While Gramma sings it, I'm happy just making sounds when I'm not making up my own words.

"Remember when you and Jas saw Super Junior's video of this song and tried to perform their dance for me?" she suddenly laughs, and a light bulb flashes into searing brightness in my head as I finally see the cringe-worthy memory way too clearly in my mind. "You looked like you needed to use the bathroom."

"We thought we were being sexy, like them," I say, throwing my head back, laughing out loud as the memory plays off in my head like a bad movie I cannot stop watching. "Well, we were only 15; what did we know?"

"It was the sweetest thing I've ever seen," Gramma says, giving me a warm smile, and I can see that she's pleased. I haven't laughed like this in ages.

"Well, you've always been a little strange," I tell her, and she giggles, not denying it. "You made us rolled pancakes with cinnamon sugar as a reward."

Jas and I loved her pancakes, and whenever she made some, we always ate way too many. We loved them hot with the sugar melting into syrup. Now, that memory I enjoy a lot more than the scary, crotch-grabbing pelvic moves we tried to imitate with no success at all.

"Soft and delicate, just like my Mamma and Ouma used to make them when I was growing up in South Africa," she smiles, her voice tinged with nostalgia. "Every time it rained."

Oddly, sharing the memory with my grandmother makes me feel calm and content, not suffocatingly anxious. I listen to her talk while I watch the familiar landscape, wrapped in night, steadily fly by the window. I cradle the candle cup between the palms of my hands, enjoying its weight, reminding me where I am.

Glitch must be home by now. Did I really meet her tonight? Well, if I hadn't, I left my jacket somewhere... and this candle is just sad then.

"The things you and Jas used to get up to," Gramma chuckles fondly. "You guys drove me and his parents up the walls."

I remember. I've been remembering all day. Most of my best memories of the farm and Phantom's Rest involves Jasper Townsend with his fringe that he always had to style just so, standing up in a cow-lick, like friggin' Tintin's.

"Not my quiff, Lomax!" he used to growl whenever I tried to mess up his hair... which was all the time. He'd read somewhere that Tintin's haircut was called a quiff and for two years, he thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Yeah, Jasper Townsend is a weirdo.

"He has never stopped coming, you know," Gramma tells me, and I turn my head to look at her, frowning. "Even after your big fight and you stopped being friends, he still came whenever I needed help. He still radios me daily if he can't pop in to ask if I need anything. So does Paul, Steve and Jasper's family, but still... Jasper does it every single day."

The farmers all have CB radios they use to ask each other for assistance or share the latest news and gossip. I'm not surprised to hear that Jasper always checks in on her, even though I haven't seen him at Gramma's house once since I arrived. It's not Gramma he wanted nothing to do with anymore. The guy loves my grandmother. He thinks she's his grandmother too... and she is.

Fight?

It wasn't a single fight as such. We just didn't get along anymore, and it got worse and worse. His family was having a bad time recovering from a long drought. When we had tryouts for a national district rugby team, and we both got in, he backed out, saying he couldn't leave the farm. Instead, he gave up on his rugby dreams to help his parents and older brother with the farm. I told him that he had a chance at pro rugby but was content to piss away his life in this backwater.

I was mean because I was disappointed and sad... and an asshole who knew nothing and understood even less. We said some pretty cruel things to each other, the kind of things that slaughter friendship.

He also gave me obnoxious speeches telling me something about flying too close to the sun and burning my wings and turning my back on what really mattered... stuff like that... I thought he was just jealous because I was getting university offers and wasn't even in my final year of high school yet.

It all makes sense now that my dreams have died.

"It's going to rain," Gramma tells me, leaning over the steering wheel and looking up at the pregnant sky before turning on the indicator, though we're on a lonely farm road in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps she's letting stray foxes know that we'll be turning off. She deftly steers the pick-up onto the two-track dirt road leading to the gate and her home.

My home... for now...

Bouncing along over the rough terrain and listening to the long grass scraping the underside of the pick-up, I wonder why I forgot how much I loved it here. 

Yes, I love rugby. I love ploughing through the enemy, trying to block me and scoring tries. There's a rush and a sense of accomplishment in doing that, in playing the game that I cannot begin to explain. The camaraderie...

I have rugby in my blood.

Still, this place with the rows of bluegums lining the drive up to the gate, shedding their bark to dance in the wind, is in my blood, too. I used to love walking out here and sitting amongst these tall trees, listening to the wind coming down the row, passing over me and disappearing, just to come again. It was like whispers being passed from tree to tree, and I thought that if I sat quietly for long enough, I might grasp what they were saying.

I loved climbing the hill with Gramma's Border Collies to bring the sheep home from grazing. I loved the smell of fresh-cut hay and the sweet fragrance of molasses mixed with maize, hay, and grain feed left to ferment in silage pits. I loved the lowing of the cows as they came in to be milked and the cat waking me with his butt on my face.

Before getting bitten by the rugby bug, I so desperately wanted to spend the rest of my life here on the farm with Gramma after graduating from high school. What was it that drew me away? The possibility of fame or the joy of playing the game. Maybe both, maybe neither.

It doesn't matter anymore. My rugby days are over. I might be able to play again in a few years, but I'll still be missing this window of opportunity, and it matters. Though my knee will recover, it might never be the same again.

Besides, how could I ever play again and not see the faces of my friends as we pass the ball among us? How could I not remember celebrating our wins by spraying each other with soda, laughing and wrestling like idiots? How could I ever play again without hearing their voices, without missing them, to a point where my heart burns with a fire powerful enough to incinerate it?

Cole, Lawrence, Fernando, Sam, Tyrone, Jacob...

I hurry to turn the involuntary sob, interrupting the list of names into a cough. Clutching the candle in a grip tight enough to threaten the glass, I turn my head to look out the passenger side window. To me, they are not just names; they're brothers that I loved and lost.

Willing my mind away from dangerous territories, I force my hand to relax its hold on the candle. I focus on the smoothness of its glass against my skin, trying to picture Glitch's pretty face and it is easier than I thought it would be. I'm soon gazing into her vulnerable eyes, seeing her innocent smile and listening to her goodnaturedly tease the twins and Jasper.

I wish I were still limping around the square with her hand in mine or sitting on that roof, kissing her. That unexpected kiss... I groan, remembering it, and when Gramma gives me a startled look, I grin, showing her that I'm fine.

I need to kiss Glitch again really soon... if she'll let me.

I'm relieved when we arrive at the gate, and I get to jump out into night air so fresh, it's cold, to open the gate. My brain is turning into mush. I cannot be dreaming about kissing a sweet girl I have no right to start anything with. There are so many things I shouldn't have done today, and yet, I cannot wait to do them all again tomorrow.

The wind is picking up, and I can tell there's a storm brewing. I hope the festival site in town doesn't suffer any damage, though the storm seems to be moving from the town's direction towards us. It might not hit there at all. I wouldn't want the stage to have to be rebuilt in the morning.

I'm not enjoying my fresh air break so much now that I'm starting to feel really cold. I'm glad I gave Glitch my jacket because the weather has turned from balmy to cold pretty fast. She would be feeling it too. I hurry to close the gate after Gramma pulls the pick-up through and latch it properly before returning to my warm seat.

"How about you and I make ourselves some pancakes with cinnamon sugar when we get home?" Gramma smiles when I close the cab door, shivering involuntarily. I find my candle again and hold onto it as if it could actually warm me.

"Gramma, it's late, and you're exhausted," I grin, but I already know what she will say.

"Pfft!" she scoffs, proving me right. "Bun, it's never too late for pannekoek."

~~~