Ricky and Ronnie Hall, two neighbourhood brats roamed about in furry raccoon hats with ratty coon tails trailing their backs. Ma always said it was heads or tails whether they came out the right way. I was scared silly of them especially when they raced around the neighbourhood on bikes all jacked up with plastic pennants flying from the handle bars. But not scared enough when one came close enough so I could snatch a racoon tail and run bold as brass into our back yard where I hunkered down inside the chain link fence. They would race about the fence like monkeys and scream, ‘Scaredy cat!’
They were pale-faced and freckled and made me think of those doughy tea buns with raisins plopped like black bugs on the surface. Insolent as can be they rode about on their souped- up bikes like they owned the world and everything in it.
‘Oh, hells bells, look what those bratinellas are up to now,’ Ma would say as she glared out the front window. ‘Their ma was always hanging about with sailors and I reckon she drank herself into the next world the night she got knocked up with those two. Now she lets them run wild like two mad dogs while she sits in her front room smoking like a chimney from dawn to dusk. Ain’t no father about that I can see.’
Ricky and Ronnie had the knack of riding backwards right within an inch or two of me when I was taking my cat out for a ride in my dolly buggy. ‘One day yo’re gonna git it.’ They loved to warn me within an inch of my life. But I got even the day when my cat dressed in a white frilly nighty leaped out of the buggy and scared the living daylights out of the two. ‘What tha heck,’ they screamed and took off riding like the devil was on their tail.
Years passed and Ma wrote to say that Ricky flew the coup and got himself into a trade school. ‘His ma is as proud as punch saying he’s a plumber. Now Ronnie, he’s a different kettle of fish. He’s turned into a ne‘er-do- well and got the green grocer’s daughter in the family way.’
It’s all so long ago now but I can’t stop wondering how they got to riding their bicycles backwards. Some say it can’t be done but I gotta say, ‘I seen it with my own eyes.’
About the author
Faith is a committed writer in response to daily prompts and has attended online events/courses to develop writing skills. Shorts Magazine, Half and One, The Academy of Heart and Mine, CafeLit and Dreamer Creative Writing have published her submissions.
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