by Denver Harrington

Created on: October 31, 2009

Swinley Street

Osvaldo couldn't wait to get into the street. No sooner had he changed out of his uniform and idly whipped his jumper over the edge of his bed, had he jumped into fresh jeans and picked up his key ready to unlock his bicycle from the shed. Nicholas was waiting for him at the front door and it was a swelteringly hot summer's afternoon, the day promised to keep long into the evening over the longest equinox.

The sky was untarnished with azure clarity and the sun blazed regally, smelting the streets in rich golden radiance. When Osvaldo opened the shed, a hot and dry oil and rubber flood gushed out intoxicatingly. He unlocked the bike and tore the chains from the spindles of the wheel, before rolling the bicycle ticking into the sunlight. Approaching the gate, he inched the stubbornly rusted side-pull latch open, then tugged the gate, awkwardly slanting its uneven, rotted corner into the baking concrete slabs. The gate growled and farted defiantly with each weighty tug before swinging finally away from the frame, freeing Osvaldo from the terraced house garden. He wheeled his bike into the smelly ally, now invaded with dank, dry invisible patches of fowl lingering fragrances, the smell of atrophying plants wilting into decay. Canine faeces attracting various buzzing flies made him hold his breath while he threw his leg over his seat. Spitting greenfly swarming ahead had coated a viscous and sticky veneer onto the caterpillar bitten weeds growing from the chipped brick, and the air was stale.

He grabbed the bull horned handle bars of his mountain bike and peddled in low gear, thumbing the ends of his handles as he built speed, as though to trigger the invisible rockets mounted at the sides of his imaginary jet fighter. He flew into the road and curved in a U turn where he met Nicholas. They laughed and rode their bikes, weaving brazenly fast between parked vehicles, up and down the single road hill of the cul de sac. The top of the hill gave a good panorama of the town. They rested under a lamp posed and talked as they sucked away ice lollies, leaving their fingers sticky and smelling sweet with flavouring. They spent time cooling down, picking out weeds growing up between flags and pulling black oily stones from the tar of the softening road bathed in the heat of the sun. The warm asphalt and tar stung their noses with thick, tangy odours, strong enough the dip their stomach and give Osvaldo a slight head ache. They trod slowly up a driveway at the top of the hill on Swinley Street, where a semi-detached house sat. They knocked pleasantly on the door. Nadia jauntily joined them and they hurried elatedly to the end of the garden, supported above the street level on a bed of grass and sat in the shade of the tree growing there. Hours passed and they drank lemonade and stared out at the town stretched out beyond the roads, undulating in waves of heat. The twinkled and soft gliding cars caught the sun and carried the light over the distant roads. Distantly, a fire had broken out in a lumber yard, and they stood with excited concern. Large, bistre currents of smoke spread and mixed into the air, leading a long tail on the higher concords of the sky. As the lumber yard burned, it fuelled the smoke, which built on large fungal bulbs, then sailed from the edge of town, where sirens bled echoes from afar.

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