Mao Sr. aka Dad and I were camping by the river, a grassy area out in the open. Our tents were already pitched, plain white Boy Scout V shaped tents, one for us and another for a friend of his.
Read moreGeri, a cousin, was there too; she showed up unexpectedly, and I thought to bring up some of the past grievances that kept our two families apart. She came by bike and she stood propped against it using the angle of the bike to lean back. And she was wearing a white chemise with plain dark trousers, and talking random stuff.
I too was sitting on my bike, only I was backwards on the seat.
Then I asked over to Dad.
“Might as well,” he replied.
And I told her. “When you came over to Coring Road all those years ago, one of you, I can’t remember who, said, ‘Is there a TV in this joint?’ as you walked in.”
I paused and thought about telling her about the cucumber sandwiches, how lousy the cousins thought them, and also the card game. Instead, I looked past Geri towards Dad again, but he was unpacking large bales of tobacco by the river. I wanted to tell her that Dad was playing cards with her, she was all of twelve or thirteen, and she was F’ing and blinding as she kept losing with each hand.
Then I thought not.
Geri needed to get some cigarettes from in town and we started walking, or rather she walked while pushing me on my bike, with me still backwards on the seat, and I thought we would veer off and I would fall but she held the back wheel and the handlebars and kept pushing firmly.
I was conscious of her white shirt close up, her breasts ample beneath. I wanted her to stop but then suddenly Geri stood back and pulled out a cigarette, ready to light it.
Dad was still behind her, him and his friend shaking the leaves from their clear plastic wrap. The leaves fell, wrinkled and brown, large and loose, from the wrapping into the water. And I thought I would be cool, because I too smoked the occasional cigarette, that I’d do the same.
I looked in my bicycle pouch and there was only one cigarette left, it was one of the long ones, the 100’s, and it was slightly bent and cracked. I took it out and held it to my lips then I leant towards Geri to light hers first, but hers was even more cracked than mine, and the paper barely held in the tobacco, I could see the brown of it poking through the slits.
And I could not see how to light it without the thing falling apart.
Cucumber image by Kai Reschke from Pixabay
Bikes by Barry MacHale via Flickr