James Roderick Burns
Boy on a Bicycle
A boy rides a bicycle before the first world war. He is eighteen, almost nineteen - a man, really - and wears his new uniform with pride. He is cycling along an embankment on the outskirts of a small town. The sun is halfway towards noon, the wind tousling his light brown hair; his pinkish lips are mouthing a music-hall ditty under his sparse moustache. He is going to see a girl he used to know.
He has no idea he will be dead in a week, his legs thrown out the wrong way under a snarl of barbed wire. Now he marvels at the warmth of his muscles as the chain drives the wheels around. Now his tongue tastes of mint and apples.
Page(s) 164
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