The Trooper

The first cassette he bought with his own allowance took him several weeks to earn.

He swept, mopped, and ran errands he would normally have avoided until he had saved enough.

When he finally bought it, he gently picked at the edge of the thin plastic wrapping until it came away from the case. He looked at the cover for a while before opening it.

After that, even the smallest scratch bothered him.

Some cassettes came with thicker covers, with lyrics folded inside. Others had little more than the cover.

When there were lyrics, he would sometimes spread them across the table and read through his favourite songs until he knew them by heart.

With a pencil, he could wind the tape forward or backward by just the right amount to reach a particular song. He knew exactly how much to turn it before the one he wanted came through the speakers.

There were other boys who listened to the same music, wore the same t-shirts, knew the same songs. He didn’t know most of them. He only knew they were there.

Then one day he stopped needing the pencil.

He could pick a song from the remote, without having to wind the tape by just the right amount. There was no need to turn the disc over for the other side either.

He still read the booklets that came with them.

The discs didn’t stay perfect for long. A few picked up scratches along the way. A song might stutter for a second at the same place each time, then carry on.

After listening to a song often enough, the stutter also became part of the song.

He also began noticing things he hadn’t noticed before.

The riffs. The bridges. Small changes between one part of a song and the next. Things he had heard many times without really hearing them.

Some songs he had liked because everyone else liked them became less interesting. Others stayed with him for reasons he couldn’t have explained when he first heard them.

He could put on a song and know, almost immediately, what it was going to do.

The stutter didn’t follow the music to the little player he could carry in his pocket.

It could hold more songs than the discs he had collected. He would often spend some time deciding what to put on it, depending on what lay ahead. There was always room for another song, or at least it seemed that way.

However, the batteries came with a few mathematical equations. He had to learn how many laps his playlist could complete before the sound stopped. Then there was the journey itself. He would work it all out and decide how many spares he needed to carry.

He carried it on bus rides. He listened while walking home. Sometimes he would keep one earphone out when there were people around and put it back in when they had passed.

At night, he would wait until the house had gone quiet and sneak up to the terrace.

He would sit against the wall with his headphones on and go through the songs he knew best.

A particular song would soon belong to the walk home. Another to a bus ride he took often. Some became the ones he played when he couldn’t sleep.

The nights began getting longer, soon casting their shadows under his eyes.

Eventually the batteries became less of a problem, as long as he could find a power outlet.

The music followed him more easily now.

So did other things.

The nights on the terrace were not always quiet anymore. The phone began making small sounds of its own. A chime. A vibration against the floor. He would sometimes hear one in the middle of a song.

After a while, he stopped noticing them.

Some nights he would listen to the music. Some nights he would talk. Sometimes the music stayed on while he talked, low enough to hear the voice over it.

He began listening to songs he would not have looked for himself. Some were in languages he didn’t understand. He couldn’t make out the words, but somehow they made sense anyway.

One song became two. Then there were more.

They found their way into his favourite playlist alongside the songs that had been there for years.

Some stayed because he liked them. Others because he remembered when he had first heard them.

The nights continued to get longer.

The circles under his eyes grew darker.

Soon there was a new playlist.

Some songs merited a spot because they reminded someone of him. These were almost always automatic hits. Then there were those that reminded him of someone.

He began adding songs without always knowing where they would fit.

Sometimes he went looking for one particular song and ended up somewhere else.

The list grew.

Some songs took their meaning from where they had been heard.

One had come on an evening when he was stranded under a bridge, waiting with someone he wanted a few more minutes with.

Another came from a movie he watched with that someone.

Some came from conversations. Others from someone unapologetically singing for him.

There were songs he skipped sometimes, depending on what he was doing. Others he would look for without thinking about it.

He was beginning to find his way around.

Then the new songs stopped.

The playlist remained.

Sometimes he opened it and stared at it without playing anything.

On other days, he would put it on at the gym and see how far he could get. Some he could get through. Others he would stop halfway.

He tried them again on different days.

A few became easier.

There were still some he would pass over.

One in particular he would not touch.

He knew what would come after the opening. The percussion would enter, then the strings. He knew the whole thing well enough to follow it in his head without hearing it.

He still wouldn’t play it.

The circles under his eyes had found another reason to stay.

Some songs just became places he no longer went.

Others he began to venture into again.

He could listen to them now without having to stop halfway through.

Sometimes he recognized the old place. Sometimes they just came in fragments. Sometimes they even began telling a different story.

One afternoon, a song came on while he was doing something else.

He almost ignored it.

The first notes were a fast, tumbling gallop with two guitars locked together, climbing and falling in a shape he'd have known blind.

He stopped what he was doing.

A trotting rhythm underneath. Then a single guitar broke free of the pack, spiralling upward, urgent, like something charging that wouldn't be able to stop until it reached the top.

He waited for something.

He wasn't sure what.

The drums came thundering in behind it, driving like hooves closing distance, and the melody split into two guitars again, chasing each other in harmony before pulling apart and finding their way back.

He knew this. Or at least thought he did.

He tried to place where he had heard it.

There was something about the opening. Something he had once known well enough to expect.

For a moment he thought there would be a little stutter in the sound.

It didn't come.

The song carried on without it.

He listened for the next part.

Nothing came back.

He stayed where he was and listened until the song moved past the part he thought he remembered.