The Boys Bicycle In The Shed
The shed was the kind every house in coastal North Carolina has — an eight-by-ten gable shed that had been added to the property in, I would have guessed, about 1958, with T1-11 siding replaced sometime in the nineties and a shingle roof that needed doing. The door swung slow on its hinges. The inside smelled of old lawnmower gasoline and the particular dust of a place that has been closed up for years and only opened a few times. There was a push mower on the left, an old one. A garden hose in a coil. Three paint cans on a shelf. Two rusted trowels. And, leaned against the back wall behind a stack of empty terra cotta pots, a child's bicycle.
It was a Schwinn. Boys' frame. Red, though the red had gone to brown where the rust had eaten through. The tires were flat. The chain was locked up solid with oxidation. The seat was a wide vinyl thing that had split and curled. I put my hand on the handlebar and the grip came loose in my palm. I judged it, from the frame style, to be late-sixties or early-seventies. I could not read the serial number without a flashlight, and I did not want one, because I did not want to spend any more time in that shed than I had to. Not because of any feeling in the shed. Because of what the shed was telling me about the yard.
The bicycle did not belong to a Lindeman. The Lindemans did not have children. I had, on the drive to Raleigh, gone over in