Cowboy Edition EBook

by Maree, Kay

  “No, that’s not what I said, Callie. I’ve got no plans to break up with you – I’m planning to come back and see you as often as I can until I can move back for good.” He was trying to convince them both as he spoke. “It’ll only be for a little while, a few months at the most…at least that’s what they’re telling me and I’m choosing to believe them.”

  “Really? You really believe them?” She shook her head slowly. “How are you supposed to be able to come and visit regularly from so far away?” She looked him square in the eye while she gave him time to think.

  “I’ll make it happen,” he answered.

  “Be realistic, Adam,” Callie spoke calmly, even thought Adam was sure she wasn’t. “You’ll be over a thousand kilometres away, more like fifteen hundred, you’ll have no car, no money, and your mum will be working so she won’t be able to drive you, even if you can get away from school…and what if you get offered a job out there instead of down here, what happens then?”

  “I’ll make it back, I promise.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And we can always write and call in the meantime, or video chat.” He was grasping at straws and he could hear it in his own voice.

  “I don’t believe this is happening to me…why do all the people I love leave me?” Callie started to cry. Adam knew she was remembering how her own mother had promised she’d be coming home from hospital, but never had after there were complications following a routine surgery. They’d spoken about how this had affected her and Adam hated that she comparing his moving to her mother’s death. As Callie’s tears flowed, she stood and almost ran to her horse.

  “Callie!” Adam called out, trying to get her to stop.

  “No, Adam,” she called back as she put her foot in the stirrup. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore now…I can’t.” As she pulled herself up into the saddle, she began to sob.

  “Callie, please get back down and stay here with me for a while…we’ll find a way to make this work.” He tried to catch hold of her rein as she turned Xena away from him. When his grasp failed, she urged her horse into a hasty getaway, breaking into a gallop almost immediately and racing away from him. He didn’t want to let himself believe he could lose her so easily. How could he give up on his dreams of a life with her before he’d had a change to start living it?

  As the real possibility of what Callie had predicted struck him, his knees gave way and he sank down onto the ground and stayed there until the sun began its afternoon journey toward the western horizon.

  When he walked through the back door, neither of his parents needed to ask him how he was – it was obvious. In light of the fact that they were the cause of just how badly he felt, he didn’t want to spend time with them and went directly to the bathroom for a long hot shower. Deciding that he felt no more inclined to pass the evening in polite conversation than he had earlier, instead of sitting down to the freshly served dinner, he simply picked up his plate and cutlery from the table and walked back out of the kitchen. As he passed through the doorway, he heard the screech of a chair’s feet being pushed across the floor and his father’s voice quietly saying, “Let him be…he needs time.”

  Adam needed a lot more than time, he needed to rewind the clock so that the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened and his life hadn’t been derailed. But he guessed that the best he could hope for was quiet night in his room before getting up in the morning and making sense out his own personal train wreck.

  The next day had dawned brightly, as did each day of that last week he’d spent at Macquarie Downs, but Adam hadn’t been able to find any joy in any part of the life he’d loved so much. To him, with Callie virtually ignoring him, he had no reason to look for the good in the world. Every time he texted her and pleaded his case, promising to be back before she had time to miss him or video chat every week, the most he received in reply was an ‘okay’ or a thumbs up emoji.

  He hadn’t even been able to sell the plan to Shane and Darren. When he’d called them to come over that Sunday and told them what was happening, they’d called him an idiot for going along with it. They couldn’t understand why he hadn’t put up more of a fight to stay with his dad, at least until the end of the year. If he was honest, he didn’t either, but for some reason he felt a sense of loyalty to his mother and didn’t want her heading off across the country alone, even if it meant putting the plans he’d had for his future on hold. Besides, it didn’t seem that his father had been prepared to put up a fight to keep him there. Rather, it felt like he was pretty much pushing him away.

  By the end of that week, not much had changed. His friends still thought he was an idiot, Callie wasn’t talking to him, his parents still thought there were doing what was best, and Adam was still sure he’d be back to prove them all wrong within a couple months. There had been moments during the week when he was sure Damien was being deliberately difficult, which was totally out of character for him, but Adam put it down to him picking up on his own struggles. Taking his horse with him hadn’t been an option he’d been offered, but he’d convinced himself that it would only be for a short time so floating him such a long distance wouldn’t be a wise decision anyway. Besides, he’d need him there when he came to visit.

  Surprisingly, Adam had received a mixed bag of reactions from his teachers and the school staff. Some were intrigued by the challenge of delivering their classes and assessments remotely, a little like the old School of the Air, just with video link-ups. While others made no secret about how inconvenient this arrangement was and how much extra work they would have to do to accommodate him and his mother’s grand plan. Despite their misgivings, or with their support, Adam departed school on the Friday afternoon with a folder of work for each subject, a list of his teachers’ email addresses, and promises of whatever support he needed to get through his last term of Year 12 with the same results he’d have achieved if he’d stayed. He prayed that they were right.

  Packing up his belongings had been a surreal experience. With every item he put in boxes, he’d wanted to take an item back out, and he was sure it took three times longer than it should have as he shifted between wanting to just pack everything and wanting to only pack the bare minimum because he’d be back soon. In the end, he left very little behind as he couldn’t decide what he should really take.

  Then, before he was ready for it, Saturday arrived and they were loading his boxes into the hired trailer along with his mother’s things. Shane and Darren had come over to help and Adam was thankful that they’d decided to keep their opinions to themselves. Mr Saunders had come over to help his dad load his mother’s things onto the trailer, which was just as well because it was like a complicated game of Tetris trying to get everything to fit and secured for the long trip.

  A few times during the morning, Adam had noticed Callie on her veranda, but each time he’d tried to wave to her to get her attention, she’d gone back inside like she hadn’t seen him at all. It wasn’t until everything was loaded and they were about to leave, that she came across from her house. He noticed straight away that her eyes were rid-rimmed and puffy, and felt bad that she had been crying on account of him leaving. She went to his mother first, speaking for a few minutes before hugging her goodbye. As Adam watched her cry in his mother’s arms, he realised that she’d been Callie’s mother figure since her own mum had passed away ten year ago and was most likely the only mother she could remember. That meant today would be even crueller on Callie.

  When they’d said all they needed to say and cried a few tears, Callie released herself from his mother’s arms. She stood for a moment, looking at Adam and collecting herself before walking over to him. As she got close, he opened his arms and she went into them willingly, letting him hold her close as she held him tighter.

  After what seemed like a very long time, but was probably more likely only a minute or two, Callie relaxed her hold and stretched up onto her toes. She kissed Adam on the cheek and
whispered into his ear, “Please change your mind…it’s not too late.”

  Adam turned his head slightly, kissed her gently on the cheek, and answered, “I’ll be back before you have time to miss me, I promise.”

  Callie buried her face in his chest for a moment, crying fresh tears which soaked the front of Adam’s shirt as he let a few tears escape his own eyes. Although he couldn’t put an exact date on it, he knew he’d be back for Callie.

  When he heard his mother beep the horn on her car, he put a small distance between himself and Callie. He looked her in the eye and said, “I promise.”

  After pressing his lips to her forehead, he stepped over and hugged his dad goodbye then got into the car.

  As they pulled off, Adam looked over his shoulder just in time to watch Callie cover her face with her hands and run towards her house. He knew she was hurting, and he knew he was the reason why, but he also knew he’d keep his promise to her. When it came to Callie, there would never be a choice about that.

  Somehow, and he didn’t know exactly how or why, he’d let time and his promises slip through his fingers.

  At first, he’d been so busy getting settled and trying to establish a new study routine, he hadn’t noticed that so much time was passing so quickly. When he became aware, he had really good excuses to fall back on – so much work for school and assessments to prepare for, he had to spend so much of his days travelling to town and back that he had no spare time to call this week, it really was too far to come for a quick visit so he’d have to wait a little while longer. After a few months of the excuses he’d said he wouldn’t use, and after his best friends stopped texting him first, Adam made a choice which was meant to be a short-term means to an end, but would ultimately change everything. He accepted a job offer from the property manager friend of his mum, thinking he’d earn some quick cash so he could make the trip to spend Christmas with his dad. But once he started, Jason soon had him working full-time and giving him more and more responsibility. Christmas came and went, and New Year’s, and by the time he made time to pick up his phone to call his friends he couldn’t come up with a good excuse for why it had taken him so long to make the effort. He was so embarrassed by this, that each time he picked up his phone he put it back down without making a call. Apart from his embarrassment, he didn’t want to hear the anger or disappointment he was sure he’d hear in their voices – especially Callie’s.

  The longer he left it, the harder it got and the harder it got, the easier it was to put it off. It quickly became a vicious cycle of wanting to call, but not wanting to be rejected, of wanting to keep his word, but knowing he’d already failed to do so.

  With virtually no day-to-day living costs, Adam soon amassed quite a large amount in savings, which he used to purchase his first vehicle – a 4WD ute. This gave him the freedom to go into Mt Isa on his days off and he made a habit of having a counter lunch at one of the pubs with the other guys from the property who were in town at the same time. After lunch, while the others had a few more drinks, Adam usually spent some time checking out the various parks and attractions “The Isa” had on offer, trying to familiarise himself with the area. More often than not, these trips to town involved him picking up things his mum had ordered from the grocery store, or things Jason needed from any number of hardware and produce suppliers. This proved a good way to meet other young people, and by the time the annual rodeo came around in August, he’d made a couple friends that he was able to meet up with over the course of the week.

  He had a ball! He couldn’t remember ever having so much fun. His new core group of twelve friends consisted of guys and girls, some in couples and some single, and they were all intent on having as much fun as they could while they were young. In short, he was soon living by the principle of work hard and party harder, and his life couldn’t have been more different to what it had been a year ago.

  Looking back on those times with the benefit of maturity, he could see how he’d been gradually lured into a lifestyle which revolved around drinking, smoking, and sleeping with whoever was willing and available. He had no commitment to anyone and he was popular with everyone – it was a heady combination which inflated his ego and self-confidence to the point where he grew quite cocky and would argue with his mother each time she raised the issue with him. This usually led him to another drunken night with his friends, a hungover morning in the bed of a different girl, and a healthy dose of denial that he had a problem at all. How could this life be a problem if all his friends were living the same life and making the same choices, and they were all happy and enjoying being young? Well, it seemed that they were all happy until one weekend when everything changed for all of them.

  Weekends at Steve and Shelley’s had become a real hit with the whole group. Ever since they’d moved into the house on the edge of town, they all seemed to end up there, no matter where they started out. It was a large four-bedroom house, with a family room and an extra bathroom. And while the front rooms were furnished very conservatively, the back of the house and the outside were best described as ‘party central.’ The back bedrooms each had several mattresses on the floor, there were a variety of old lounges around the fire pit in the backyard, and the outdoor entertainment area was completed by a large barbecue, a full-sized fridge and a bar which was always fully stocked.

  There must have been nights when the neighbours wondered what they were all up to, but none of them ever complained – at least, the cops never showed up to quieten them down… until that one night.

  Adam had been enjoying losing himself in his weekend routine for over two years. This consisted of coming into town as soon as he could get away on a Friday afternoon and returning just after dark on a Sunday. He never bothered to keep track of how much he drank in a weekend and neither did his friends. Everyone arrived with a carton of beer or a bottle of Jack or Bundy rum for the group, and when they ran out, they stopped. It was a system that worked for them all, and they rarely ran out of booze before they fell asleep in the early hours of Sunday morning. But one weekend they did. Ben had invited a new guy from his work to come along and although he was drinking just as much as everyone else, he hadn’t contributed to the stash. As a result, the beer was almost gone by the time they lit the barbecue on Saturday night. Without thinking, and before anyone thought to stop him, Dan had taken off for the bottle shop in his Commodore. None of them had paid any attention to what time it had been when he left, so no one was really aware of how long he’d been gone when two cops wandered into the backyard.

  “Oi! What are you doing back here?” Steve shouted when he spotted them and started to walk toward them.

  “Settle, hon,” Shelley spoke quietly as he passed her, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  One of the officers put a hand up as they stepped into the entertainment area. “We tried the doorbell and knocking, but guessed you wouldn’t be able to hear us from out here.”

  “Oh, okay. Fair enough,” Steve replied.

  “What can we help you with?” Shelley asked. “Has someone complained about the music? We can turn it down.”

  The cops looked at each other briefly, then turned their attention back to the group. By this time, Adam and a couple others were standing beside Steve and Shelley, all of them expecting trouble.

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” the first cop said, shaking his head slightly. “Guys, was Dan Griffiths here over the weekend?”

  “Yeah, sure… he’s here every weekend,” Steve answered. “What of it?”

  “How long ago did he leave?” the second cop asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Shelley said as everyone in the group made eye contact with each other. “It must have been a while ago now.”

  “And had he been drinking while he was here?” the cop continued his line of questioning.

  “For sure,” Steve cut in.

  “And where was he going when he left?”

  “Most likely the Happy Valley
bottle shop, I’d say,” Adam put in. “He was doing a beer run and it’s the closest one… He should be back any minute now, if you want to wait for him.”

  “That’s why we’re here, guys… why don’t you all take a seat so we can have a chat?” The first cop indicated toward the table and chairs nearby.

  “What’s going on?” Adam asked, sensing something was off with the cops’ body language. “What’s happened to Dan?”

  “He didn’t make it to the bottle shop, guys.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Shelley, her voice pitching upwards.

  “It looks like he’s run off the road, just before the railway crossing at Twenty-third Avenue.” He paused for a moment. “It was a really messy accident scene, guys… there was no walking away from it.”

  Adam and Shelley looked at each other, then at Steve, who asked the question they were all wanting to ask. “So, is he going to be okay? Which hospital is he in?”

  “That’s the thing, guys, he didn’t make it out of the accident.” The group fought to take in what they were hearing. “His car slammed into a pole and virtually pulled itself apart from the force of the impact.”

  “Oh God.” Shelley sank into a chair, her hands over her mouth.

  “There were people on the scene withing moments, but he was already gone. When the ambo’s arrived they confirmed that his injuries weren’t consistent with survival.”

  “Jeezus,” Steve let out under his breath.

  “Have you guys let his parents know?” Adam asked. “They’ll be shattered.”

  “Yeah, we’ve got another crew over there now,” the first cop assured him. “That’s how we knew to come over here and talk to you guys.”

  “I’ve gotta give you lot some advice, though,” the second cop drew their attention to himself.

  “What’s that?” Adam had a feeling he knew what was coming.