Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own the Thunderbirds or International Rescue. I am merely borrowing them. I only own my ideas.
Big thank you to Teobi for the proof reading and encouragement.
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A Trip Down Memory Lane
The sun beat down on the young man as he walked along the arid street, hands wedged deep in pockets, brow furrowed in concentration. If anyone were to ask what occupied his thoughts so completely he would have been unable to formulate an honest answer, as images and ideas flashed through his mind at warp speed. Each footstep he took kicked little clouds of dust into the air before settling quickly in the still humidity. To a casual observer he ambled aimlessly along roads, through parks and over hills, but each footstep brought him unerringly to the place he sought to find.
After hours, or it could have been mere minutes, he looked up. And there it was. He stood across the road, shaded under the branches of a friendly tree, gazing at the little house that had been the Tracy family home all those years ago. It was all so familiar, yet heartbreakingly alien as successive occupants stamped their own personalities on the cottage. Memories flooded over him, events long relegated to the mists of time, now thrust again into the spotlight.
Beyond the house was the little barn where the cat had had its kittens. Tiny mewling scraps of life, reaching blindly for the warmth of their mother. A smile flickered briefly across his handsome mouth as he remembered his brother Gordon racing around excitedly as each new kitten made its way into the world. And Alan, for all his bravado, throwing up in the garden at the mess of it all. The same barn, as legend had it, where a five-year-old Scott broke his arm after jumping off the roof.
Even then, wanting to fly.
The little picket fence was gone; Dad had pulled it down years ago. He'd had to, given the number of times Scott had landed on, gone through and somehow under it in his relentless pursuit of speed until his tricycle, bicycle, skateboard and finally motocross bike had been confiscated before he killed himself or drove his father to apoplexy. There was now an impersonal galvanized chain link in its place.
The tree in the front garden had grown tall and sturdy in the intervening years. The branches spread wide, almost protectively over the lawn, supported by a thick, strong trunk, the surface of which was marred by an ugly scar running down its length. That had been Alan's doing- Alan and the rocket he had made from directions downloaded from the Internet. Luckily it was just the tree that had born the brunt of the rocket's miscalculated launch. At least John had had the foresight to take his rockets out to the paddock away from the house, where he'd managed to take out the neighbours' shed.
There, at the top of the house, on the corner facing the field, was the patch of roof where John would lie on the shingles for hours watching the stars. Looking at the steep pitch of the roof by the dormer window, he wondered how it was that John had never fallen off. Every clear night John would squeeze through the window and creep along to the corner of the roof, where he would lie with his feet braced against the guttering, mentally mapping the stars. He would also sit out there, rain or shine, if he had a problem, or just wanted a bit of space away from the bustle that four energetic brothers wrought.
The young man wondered if there was still the shallow indentation in the ground at the far side of the house, out of sight but no longer out of mind. His Grandma had been beside herself when she'd seen the hole Gordon had dug. With Grandma busy in the laundry and kitchen, and his oldest brothers away at camp, Gordon had spent a week digging a swimming pool. He managed to dig a respectable hole before disaster put paid to his heroic endeavours. The hole had been filled in, but it had taken weeks before the stench from the fractured sewerage pipe dissipated.
He reflected on the fact that there were no reminders of his time in the house. His feats had all been inside, no doubt long gone, to be covered over or destroyed by inhabitants that didn't appreciate the finer things in life. Like the life sized mural of the five brothers painted in the family room, or the road markings down the hall floor, an attempt to divert collisions from brothers racing everywhere at top speed. He had painstakingly painted accurate stellar constellations on John's ceiling and brightly coloured tropical fish on Gordon's. They would have been repainted long ago- along with the impossibly well-endowed nude on the back of his bedroom door.
The front porch, the young man noticed, still retained the slightly uneven railing of years ago. He couldn't remember what happened, or who caused it. But it had been one, or even all of the brothers. The porch was where his Grandpa Tracy would spend the hour after dinner sucking on his pipe and talking with whichever brother had a problem that day. The rich smell of long-gone tobacco burst forth in remembrance and the man suddenly longed for those days gone by. He wanted to sit on the front steps now and talk with his Grandpa. His Grandpa had always been able to solve any problem, soothe any fear, ease any hurt, simply by being. His calming presence was sorely missed and so desperately needed- now more than ever. But maybe this hurt was too big, even for Grandpa. Even after his Mother had died, it hadn't felt like this. He was too young at the time to realise that his mother was never coming home, too young to fully comprehend what death meant. Now, with the wisdom of years, he knew. And it hurt. It hurt so much, an endless, unrelenting pain that had not yet dulled. It was so…wrong.
He pictured his brother, still wearing his distinctive blue uniform, sitting against the railing talking with his Grandpa and Mother, marking time on the eternal porch in the sky. He shouldn't be there, didn't deserve to be there. He hoped his brother was at peace.
The young man turned away, no longer able to look at the house before him. Those days were long gone, never to be recaptured.
He wandered through the small town where everything had changed. Little remained of the carefree days of his youth. The little corner shop where he and his brothers would run for milk or the occasional treat on the way home from school was now a large supermarket. The butcher and greengrocer, the hub of Grandma's gossip network, was now a video rental and telephone store.
The school, just over the rise, beckoned him. It was so much smaller now, shrunken with age. Or was it merely the perception from the eyes of a weary adult that made it seem that way?
The open field next to the school was still there, and his attention was suddenly caught by the spectacle. The hint of a smile, the first real smile for many a month curved his lips upward as he gazed at the sight, his heart lurching with a spark of…excitement?
The circus had come to town.