Ten minutes down the road a boxy, yellow car never intended for going further than the corner store and back, struggles with the country approach. It’s the kind of car you can hear start up from across town, it’s noise so unique, so distinctive to its owner that they either paid a small fortune getting it to sound like it or they need to pay a small fortune to get it to stop.<br/>Its driver is scarcely visible over the wheel. Passing traffic would only see the rolling onslaught of Nana-geddon on wheels jittering towards them, a bright puff of artificial red weave, the full moon-flashes of her glasses and a tiny, frail set of dark hands on the wheel, each laden up with a small mining company’s worth of gemstones. Engine smoke curling in her hair and passing overhead sodium bulbs glistening in her dentures, Mammy Rose-Arley was the fiercest girl in her Bingo Hall, but you wouldn’t have known it until you gave her wheels.<br/><br/>Her son, towering next to her in the passenger’s seat, often joked she was like the mole man from The Simpsons when she was driving and often pointed out cars that were likely turning off so they didn’t have to share the same road, he didn’t know how right he was. Today, listening to her ‘quietly’ fuming away even under the dulcet tones of BB King on the stereo, he found himself mildly fearing for his life. Even the dog picked up on it and squirmed irritably in his lap with a huffy, tired-old-man sigh that all dogs seem capable of, metal tags on his collar clicking against the buttons on Atticus’ coat.<br/><br/>“So what… is this like a little get together with your old chums or what?” Mammy Rose finally broke the silence that had built between them since they’d passed the last sign outta town. It sounded like conversation made for the sake of conversation.<br/><br/>Atticus sighed, scritching the soft flesh at the base of Dylan’s floppy ears hoping for a gesture of comfort, but only further wound the critter up. The mutt knocked his fingers away with a scolding nudge of his scruffy, bearded snout. “I can only presume, Ma,”<br/><br/>“Nahnonono! I mean is there gon’ be a barbeque and beers or are they going full on Summer Camp for grown ups? Not that I think that would be any fun whatsoever. It’s the height of bug-season, the foods never cooked through<span style="font-style: italic">and the beds they give you…</span>” her shudder of distaste morphed into an all-out scowl as she navigated a particularly sharp bend, mechanics groaning their distress as she battled it out of second gear. The roads started to grow a little wild the further you strayed from civilisation and their crappy jalopy lurched from one angle to the next like it planned to walk the next hundred miles instead of rolling.<br/>Something internal started rattling angrily as they swung out of the turn. Another loose bolt perhaps, hopefully nothing bigger. It should have been comical, another ‘<span style="font-style: italic">feature</span>’ of their crappy, yellow matchbox car, it complimented the doorframes that sloshed with trapped rainwater and a horn that left you with the startling impression you’d run over something fluffy and cute, but neither passed a comment on it. Today it was one of their many elephants in the room, the car, but it was only a little one, a cat sized elephant, so they could afford to play ignorant until they could afford to pay into it. Every turn of the wheels was an unspoken passing miracle, both knew it and neither mother nor son wanted to jinx it.<br/><br/>“I don’t know, Ma.” Atticus pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his knuckles into his brow, a nervous gesture that had followed him from childhood. Mammy Rose could remember him doing the same thing on their initial drive up oh so many years ago, but the memories were fresh enough that it irked her all over again and she suddenly didn’t like the way the rings on his fingers pressed little pale indents into her boys beautiful skin.<br/>Anxiety is a proximity disease at times.<br/><br/>“Well what did your invite tell you?” she snapped, probably sounding less charitable than intended.<br/><br/>“I don’t know. You were the one that read it…” then as she started rummaging through the glove box, “What the hell are you doing woman?!”<br/><br/>“I’m getting it! The letter!” she snapped back, smacking the little door shut and shaking the poor jalopy down to the frame, “And don’t call your mother ‘woman’, please!”<br/><br/>Atticus buried his face further behind his hand, “Oh God help us—<span style="font-style: italic">please watch the road Mammy!</span>”<br/><br/>“Don’t be taking<span style="font-style: italic">His</span>name in vain either!” he was sure she’d shot him The Look. He could feel it burning a hole in his head like the red dot of a sharp shooter, “You’re not too big that I won’t smack your ass still, boy! Come off it! How long has it been since you last noticed anyone else on the road anyway?”<br/><br/>It was a fair question… he hadn’t heard the rumble or felt the windy rush of anyone pass them by in a while. These were the long empty stretches of nowhere between the somewhere’s and they got awful wide at this end of the Country. It was unsettling. The whole goddamn day had felt persistently unsettled, the pressure of a coming storm rode the air in stuffy, electric waves though there wasn’t a cloud in sight. As their ride rocked on the drifting tectonic plates of asphalt Atticus felt like the sailor creeping into icy seas, they felt to be skirting over the yawning maw of something cold and dark, safe in their little vessel, but with promising threat all around ‘em.<br/><br/>Atticus didn’t know…<br/><br/>He couldn’t put words to it, things just didn’t feel ‘right’…<br/><br/>Quietly he wondered if the eerie quiet was prophetic at all. Would they have left the house at all if it<span style="font-style: italic">had</span>felt right? Sure, the invitation was<span style="font-style: italic">inviting</span>(wasn’t that the point of them in the first place?) and the prospect of catching up with the ol’ gang was pretty damn exciting one he’d loved the guys, but it wasn’t worth getting them both stranded with their scrap-heap-fit car and the gas money to ferry ‘em there.<br/><br/>“Nope… no cars,” he admitted finally with a sigh of defeat. Dylan growled softly, settling back into the faux-fur snug of his master’s lap and, more importantly, the snug of his beauty sleep.<br/><br/>“And<span style="font-style: italic">you</span>can’t exactly read it!” Mama-Rose growled. Harsh words to aim at a blind man out of context, but they’d been rowing about it that morning, Atticus had to stop her flying to the phone like Valkyrie on war path, “they<span style="font-style: italic">could</span>have sent it in brail! It’s not like they don’t know!”<br/><br/>“Mammy! I<span style="font-style: italic">could</span>still see when I was back at school!” he groaned again, the same words still all too familiar, “They didn’t have to invite us at all!”<br/><br/>Mammy Rose’s scowl deepened and she began to tap at the steering wheel with her fingers, paper rustling pointedly between the car and her harpyesque acrylics, “Yes, but if they ARE going to, they could at least--”<br/><br/>In no mood to repeat himself an umpteenth time, he cut her off with a dismissive wave of the hand that probably upset Vince more than it did her, “It’s an invitation Mammy, not an insult wrapped around a rock and thrown at the window!”<br/><br/>The old girl pursed her lips and bit back whatever retort she had and saved it to sling at him later, “You want me to read it or not?” she huffed instead.<br/><br/>Atticus laughed in disbelief, almost enjoying the ridiculous mini-fight suddenly, “No!<span style="font-style: italic">You</span>wanted to read it again! Not me!”<br/><br/>“I’m sure<span style="font-style: italic">you</span>wanted me to read it again….” All the bluster had blown clean from her tone, like a fart in a hurricane.<br/><br/>“No!” Atticus shook his head, not even bothering to fight the wide grin, “That’s your bag Ma!”<br/><br/>This ruffled her feathers and she puffed up all upright in her chair, “Then what the hell we arguing for?! I’ll just read the damn thing!”<br/><br/>Atticus shrugged, “No you won’t,”<br/><br/>“What?! I thought you wanted me to read it?!”<br/><br/>“NO! YOU wanted to read it! I already told you that!” he cracked up, “You wanted to read it… but you won’t!”<br/><br/>“What…?? Oh shut up! You’re confusing me now! Why on earth not…?” she shot him another sideways glance, trying to read her sons expression, but he just grinned at her like the snake must have Eve, like he’d done when he’d left the television on the kids channel as a tot and artfully hidden the remote, like his father before him had done when he’d slipped ahead of the queue and bought the young Miss Rose-Arlen’s ticket as an excuse to meet her for the first time.<br/><br/>“Because you won’t get the chance,” Atticus said in an ominous purr.<br/><br/>“Now you’re just being cryptic!” she scolded, “Now why, pray tell, am I not going to read this letter—I mean look, I’m doing it right now!<span style="font-style: italic">… ‘Memories from a forgotten past await--’ whatchya s’pose that means?</span>”<br/><br/>“You won’t finish it,” the cool as cucumber matter-of-fact tone of his voice was suspicious… suddenly she realized why.<br/><br/>“You’ve been corner counting!” her eyes lit up behind her specs. Something he’d discovered in his early teens as a form of amusement during long car journeys… probably an anxious habit, a way of keeping track of their whereabouts where his eyes couldn’t Mama figured was more likely, but he’d never admit it. Atticus had a bad habit of holding onto problems under the false pretence that he could handle them… didn’t we all, but that kind of pride… it just wasn’t practical for him any longer…<br/>Her face dropped as the predatory shadow of a parental failing briefly passed over her conscience. Sometimes she was glad he couldn’t catch her off guard expressions…<br/><br/>“I’ve been corner counting!” He affirmed cheerily enough, he’d been scaring Ma (and bus drivers that hadn’t already learned better) with this one for years, people double-took something wicked when a blind man gave ‘em directions, “To be honest, I’m actually a bit concerned you ain’t seeing nothing already… Can’t be more’n two or three turns away now!”<br/><br/>“You’ve counted wrong?” She suggested with a slim shrug and this time<span style="font-style: italic">he</span>shot her the sharp-shooter look, “Alright, alright,” fingers up from the steering wheel in a universal truckers retreat, “I’m just saying last time we came up there were all smoke and what coming up from campfires or chimneys or something. I don’t see shit, son! You think we’ve been punked?”<br/><br/>He was going to ask her who used the phrase ‘punked’ any more, but didn’t get a chance to reply. The jalopy swung like a drunken ballerina and Mammy Rose squealed, “I see a car park!”<br/><br/>“Congratulations Mammy!” Atticus pulled a face, but she was far too busy getting excited to pay him any mind.<br/><br/>“Oh Good Lord! There are peeps there!” she jumped on her seat like a seven year old in desperate need of a pee. Leather squealed against fabric, Atticus cracked up and Vince growled quietly to himself irritably, “Oh… it looks like… OH! OH! THERE’S EPHYRA! Little Ephy! Look at her lovely blonde hair and, goodness, that figure! And Anja! You remember Anja—she’s--”<br/><br/>“Does she look grouchy?” He laughed.<br/>“She was a very serious child,” Mama agreed reluctantly failing to see the humour in it, she’d fallen in love with all those kids back in the day, they did right by her boy and that ranked ‘em third in her books, just behind Atticus and Jesus, but she’d never hung out with ‘em. Share the giggle she could not. “Don’t you be teasing her any!”<br/><br/>No, but he’d tease Mammy instead, “Not even a little bit of name-calling or chewing gum in her hair?”<br/><br/>“Atti, son, I’ll be happy if you want to bring either of those lovely ladies back to meet me, but if they come with chewing gum in their hair I’m taking a blow torch to yours! Dreadful things! You look like a seagull got in there to nest and died instead!”<br/><br/>“Mammy!”<br/><br/>“And just make sure to bring Jon for me, Lord have mercy, that ass does not!”<br/><br/>“Jon’s there?” Atti leaned forwards in his chair as if to get a better view.<br/><br/>“Mmmm every bit o’ him!” their car swung in to park and she shot the handsome young devil a wave and a wink out of the window.<br/><br/>“Mammy! You knew him as a boy!” he didn’t know whether to be horrified or amused.<br/><br/>“Is there any shame in wanting to know him as man, then?” She laughed and pulled up the hand break and turned the engine-caput-key, “You can see to yourself while I go catch up?” and then, when she caught his expression, added very quickly and not without a little hint of a whine, “You get to see them all evening or weekend or whatever! All I’m asking is a quick hello!”<br/><br/>Atticus rolled his eyes and opened his door, letting Vince stumble to the turf below and stretch his little legs, “I ain’t stopping you!” he rolled his eyes, “I’ve gotta get my shit out the boot anyway. Knock yourself out,”<br/><br/>“Can I knock Jon out as well? Drag him back to the cave and--” Mammy howled with laughter watching the boy (well, a man she supposed. A thirty-something year old man… how did<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>happen!) fluster and tell her off in a hushed tones. It wasn’t even all that funny, just it was such a happy scenario you couldn’t help but to laugh!<br/>On that note she skipped off to go and get a look at them all, howling her joy the whole walk. Commenting on how big they’d gotten and wanting a look at them all.<br/><br/>Atticus slipped out and sank behind the car hauling open the boot and slinging his pack out and over one shoulder, smiling to himself warmly all the while, listening out for his mother’s chattering and, more importantly, any familiarity in any of the replies. Place still smelled the same, something minty in the trees here chased through the air and lit up a fuzzy, nostalgic bit of his brain like Christmas.<br/><br/>There was more to it than that. Something still,<span style="font-style: italic">still</span>felt off, but with the pre-occupation of good cheer it fell to the backburner, “Sorry we’re late folks!” he shouted up ahead in their general direction, “Mammy made me drive the first hour or so!”