I can't save you

After knowing each other for half our lives, we were still unsure of what to call each other. 

Mama said one of her uncles had a son in his second marriage, and divorced the boy’s birth mother, whom Mama had grown to love and trust with all her heart. 

But we never understood, really, so we didn’t call each other “cousin’’ as we were told.

Just “friend”.

We were only one year apart, so I visited their home every other summer for ten years. Mama had to work in the summer, and I didn’t mind the two-day trip. 

He lived in the countryside with his mother and older brother, on his father’s farm, a couple miles from the town.

It was my friend, his brother and I for the first two visits, when the thought of things coming to an end seemed a far distant nightmare. 

“Look who’s arrived, look who’s arrived,” his brother used to jeer as the dainty car entered their stone driveway. 

Much to our demise, living in the far north left him with nothing much more to do during my stays than execute his pranks on us. 

Dunking us in the cows’ troughs, locking us outside, throwing sunflower seeds at us from his bedroom window. 

Child’s play. Evil stuff, really. 

But I knew he was nice deep down. One evening, we saw him by the stream holding hands with a girl from the town, who he swore up and down was not his girlfriend.

“We saw you kiss!” my friend said as we burst into his room after she’d left. In a collective screaming fit, he chased us through the cottage corridors, out into the night, through the barn and around the flowerbeds. 

My friend and I had a tactic where we’d run in opposite directions to confuse him. He always caught both of us. 

Eventually, he left to study some degree at some school in some faraway place. 

Upon my third visit I wasn’t greeted by the usual raspy mocking from the second story window. Just silence as I stared up at the stone building. 

Then fast paced footsteps appeared out of nowhere as my friend ran out of his home to hug me, with a smile so bright and eyes so innocent.

I could never contain my excitement. 

“How was the trip?” he asked as the wind ran through his hair, brushing his sweaty brow.

“Good,” I smiled back. 

I looked around at the fields, which were greener than last year. Pigs fatter, flowers more colourful. 

Even the crops behind the house seemed to reach for the clouds.

“Where’s your brother?” 

“He went to study in the South. I never saw him leave, though.”

 “Mama got a new husband,” he said, squinting from the sun behind me. 

I sighed in relief at the memory of her saying, “you boys will be working out there for me next time you visit.” 

Just like summers before we played outside, but without the occasional torment.

Instead, we sat and bathed in the cows’ troughs until our fingers wrinkled like prunes. We sat and ate sunflower seeds until we couldn't taste them anymore. 

One of these days we ate and bathed in troughs and I asked him a question. 

“Is it weird without him?”

“It does feel different. Sometimes it gets quiet, but I like quiet,” he said, staring at his toes poking out of the trough. “Mama misses him though.”

“Come,” the silence broke as he emerged from the trough, “let’s go real swimming.”

We grabbed our clothes, hopped the fence and ran towards the cornfields, just a few hundred metres from the lake.

The crops brushed my bare shins and arms as we made our way through them. My feet never seemed to get caught on a thorn nor needle each time we took this route.

My friend would play this cruel game where he would disappear into the cover of the crops and scream my name. I would look around the sea of green and yellow like a lost puppy and call back to him to no avail. Then he’d jump back out after a moment and frighten me. 

I always had a sinking feeling that he'd never come back.

The summer before last, the three of us had visited the lake a handful of times.

His mother trusted us to go under his brother’s supervision, but he often left us to play alone, joining his older friends and the girl we saw him kiss on the other side of the riverbank. 

It was a slice of forever. A canyon of dreams nestled deep in the heart of the country, surrounded by rolling hills and tall, ancient trees on either side. A not-so-hidden treasure where only “the bravest of the brave swam”, my friend used to say. 

That summer it was just him and I. The trees shuddered when they saw us wander in alone. Our makeshift rope still hung between the branches, dangling what seemed like miles over the water, inviting us to leap in. 

“You’ve got this! Just close your eyes and imagine a bed of feathers!”

I hesitated but he always swung me in, right before he dived headfirst into the calm waves. 

The water was always perfect. You could mistake its blue for the sky above us. And just the right blend of heat and comfort. 

We swam for hours every day that summer, forgetting yesterday, forgetting tomorrow.

Though the days felt quieter without his brother around, his mother seemed much less stressed, and that made us happier. 

She would bake for us in what looked like peace, as her husband worked the fields. Sometimes, he’d call for my friend and ask him to fetch milk from the cows, which we did together. 

He milked and I changed the buckets. My friend told me he hated when the man called his name. I assumed it was because he despised his mother’s new husband, so I asked, “Why do you hate when he calls you?” 

Pulling at the cow’s udders, he scowled for the first time since his brother left. 

He said his name was a combination of his real father and his mother’s names. 

“I hear abandonment when they say my name. Especially when he says it. Pretty lousy parting gift, no?”

I said nothing, still holding the bucket in place. It felt more than redundant but we were together and that was enough. 

We filled a glass from his mother’s kitchen and ran back to her husband. He rubbed our heads and smiled before he drank. I tried, but I wasn't sure I hated him as much as my friend did. 

After every summer I hugged each animal on the land and walked in and out of every room, knowing the next time I walked into them, I’d be a different person. Even the grass waved goodbye as I stared out the car window, saying farewell to the places I knew. 

I always cried quietly on the way home. The concierge would look at me with pity through the rear-view mirror as I wiped my eyes. I begged for the petals to fall in slow-motion but that was asking for too much.

Everything I did in the seven hundred and thirty days between our visits was but a sad attempt to bridge the gap between leaving and seeing him again. 

With every visit, his scalp became more visible as the flowers continued to bloom harder and brighter.

“Just trying something new,” he said as we read stories on his brother’s old bed.

One night we were asleep and I heard a muffled sniffling. I’d rarely seen my friend cry, so it could not have been him. He still lay a few yards away from me on the mattress. The farm was almost always quiet at night, so I decided to investigate alone. 

I tiptoed to the staircase and looked through the cracked oak of the bannister. In the living room, she sat with her hands in her face. A rosary was clenched between her bony, reddened fists. She looked like a tired angel in her tattered nightgown as she sat in the mellow dark of the living room.

I watched her cry for a while. And another while.  

A creak on the steps stopped her cries and she turned her head toward the railing. 

I was back in bed before she could see anything. 

Another summer she sent my friend and I into town. We’d usually only gone with his brother, so this was quite some responsibility, we thought.  

“Which way are we going? Isn’t town this way?” I asked, still sceptical of his navigation skills after all our adventures. 

“Cornfield route is prettier, no?” 

I shrugged my shoulders as we took the detour and hopped the fence. 

We ran through the crops with our backs to the sun and the familiar roots brushed my arms and ankles.

That day was no exception to his tricks. 

He ducked into the stems and I darted my eyes around the scene.

I called his name. Nothing. 

Again. Nothing.

This was longer than I’d remembered. 

Once more.

There he was. My heart jumped out of my skin in relief. 

We picked up two loaves of bread, some grain for the chickens, berries, rat poison and apple juice.

On the way home some boys, older than I remember my friend’s older brother to be, stopped us.

“Where are you going with my groceries?” one of the four said. I dropped one of the bags and shrunk backwards, trying to escape the shade. 

His shadow overpowered us, blotting out the sun. 

“These are ours,” my friend said, spitting in front of his feet, still standing and looking up at his hideous mug.

The boy sneered as the three behind him rubbed their hands and cracked their knuckles. The shadows overcame us like an impending storm. 

We walked back empty handed as the summer sky blackened. I couldn't feel the leaves as we trekked through the cornfield, now a disheartening blur. 

My face was a mess, near unrecognisable. His was far worse, streaked with dust and tears. A red stream poured from a cut below his eyes, almost like he was crying blood. We walked past the living room, thanking God his mother and her husband were both fast asleep in a heap on the couch. 

Not a word was said before we slugged ourselves into his brother’s room. I sat on the edge of the bed and the door shut. Back to the wall, my friend began to smile, revealing a loose set of red-stained teeth. And then he laughed. 

His laughter was unnerving. I was taken aback as I looked across at him sliding down the oak as he grew more hysterical. His bruised hand covered his mouth, muffling his erratic howling. I blew wind from my nose, struggling to find the humour in his words for the first time.  

“Looks like we’re eating nothing for dinner tonight, friend.”

One summer, on the last day of August, his mother brought our favourite gelato and fresh berries out to the front patio swing. My friend and I had been sitting for hours after our swim, guarding the farm from aliens and witches and bandits with stick pistols.

She only brought it out on special occasions, like her husband’s sobriety anniversary, but they’d divorced that past spring. 

Still, I figured this must've been some kind of celebration. 

His mother rarely smiled at me, but I can tell she tried to, before her natural frown replaced her grin. 

I dug my spoon into their finest China bowl and shovelled the flavours into my mouth. 

So did he, ever-so slowly, smiling as he watched me eat. 

I’d only ever seen my friend murder bowls of gelato in fifty seconds or less. Apart from that one time it took him fifty-two. 

“You don’t like it?” I asked, picking and chewing berries from my bowl. 

He smiled so wide I could hardly tell he was dying. 

“I don’t think we’ll see each other again after this.” 

His eyes sank to the bowl in his lap, as he started to tell me something important.

I couldn't hear him. 

I was past hearing and thinking and feeling. All of my being needed to save him but being the child I was, I could do nothing. 

My eyes started to water, and I cursed his father. I cursed his brother and his mother’s new husband. 

“Why did they all leave, how could they? I’ll never leave!”

I was tripping over my ice-cold words.

“Why won’t you stay? It's not fair.”

“I have to.”

I looked deep into his pitiful eyes, examining every detail.

The blue sky daren’t say a word. 

I put my bowl on the deck and left, as the clattering of the spoon broke the silence. He clearly didn't care. 

Sooner than later, he found me behind the barn. 

I should've known. He memorised all my hiding spots. 

Only this time instead of hiding, I was a dusty mess on the ground, waiting to be found. 

My friend knelt down beside me and slowly sat with his legs crossed. I felt him and sat too, facing him reluctantly. 

“Why?” I asked.

“I have to–”

“No! You don’t.” My words scratched against my tongue. “You can’t.”

“It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

He tried to convince me that one day we’d be in heaven together, and this would all just be a big laugh.

But nothing changed. My friend was still going to die. His voice didn’t break, not even once. He just looked at me like he always did.

I couldn’t stand him taking this so lightly. He was falling like sand between my fingertips.

“But I love you.”

Everything was unravelling right in front of my eyes and all I could do was cry. 

He placed my hand on his chest and I felt him shaking. The imperfect beating. His body jolted with each tremor. It made me cringe and ache. 

I looked up, only now noticing the scar below his left eye and bruise on his bottom lip.

“I can save you. I promise.”

He carefully shook his head side to side, forgetting a better tomorrow. 

The cool countryside air was no consolation. 

All I could do was cry. 

He was still dying. 

Mama couldn't get me to the funeral in time, she convinced me. I knew no better. I came home and winter had seemingly come early, stomping on autumn and freezing over any lake or stream in town. The berries had gone out of season. The sun went away as quick as it came out. Everything tried its best to make me forget and everything damn near succeeded.

Years had crawled by, slower than a crippled tortoise or a heartfelt goodbye. Twenty, thirty, maybe fifty-odd spent building impossible bridges and tearing them down in vain, just to build them up again in a sad pursuit at what I knew was delusion. 

A free man, I came back to the countryside against my better judgement. His mother had left the country and abandoned the farm. The robins didn’t sing that summer, nor did the air smell like dreams. The wood of the barn had started to rot, and the livestock had disappeared like magic. 

Somehow, the crops still reached for the sky. 

I screamed my friend’s name and pleaded with the earth that he would jump out of the cluster, by some curse or miracle. 

Only the plants waved back in the afternoon breeze.