by Stephanie Reddoch

In July’s sticky heat, my neighbor Billy rolls a clothes dryer barrel to the fire hydrant where we hang out. His yard is full of free stuff to play with like hub caps, TV antennas, oil drums and jacked-up cars. For months, ever since moving to the neighborhood with Ma, I’ve been trying but failing to pass any of Billy’s initiations into his gang. Then when I came home with a purple goose egg from one of Billy’s dares, Ma told me to stay away from Billy, that he was taking me for a ride.

Billy kicks the barrel and tells us that we need to test it out, make sure it rolls like he imagines. Need someone brave, he says. I’m expecting him to pick someone else, someone older, but instead, Billy lifts his chin towards me. Tells me it would be like a ride at the San Antonio Rodeo. I shift from foot to foot until Billy offers me a sweet deal—do this and I can become an official member of his posse.

The other boys hold the barrel while I fish into the opening. I curl my body, knees and arms bent, hands and feet bracing myself against the metal. Light enters and lengthens casting images of scattered feathers. Inhaling bicycle grease and summer’s salty sweat, the gang pushes my cage running behind me, sneakers slapping the pavement, until they can’t keep up. Over and under I go, vibrating and rumbling like a cement mixer, until dust stings my eyes. I roll right up onto someone’s property of dirt and poky weeds and crash into something solid that makes my jaw rattle. A large oak answers my call to Jesus, stops my tumble, but as I crawl out, the ground spins, my stomach heaves. Whoops erupt and next thing I know the boys are hoisting me up, patting me on the back, ignoring Mrs. Willard’s shouts to get off her lawn before she calls the police.

Then Billy suggests we take it for a bigger, better thrill down Chicken Hill, the steepest road in our town. That’s when I crouch down to tie my shoe hunched over like a pill bug. Stay there tying/retying my laces. When no one steps up, Billy flaps his bent elbows and clucks at us. He then points to Sam. “Yer next.” Sam’s already a member of Billy’s gang, but lately he hasn’t been following Billy’s orders that much. When Sam is told to throw green tomatoes, he doesn’t fire them with any force to hurt me. Pretends to miss. Tells Billy he should let me join. Today, I’m surprised that Billy’s picking on Sam too. I catch Sam’s eye wanting to tell him not to, that I’ll do it, but Sam nods first like he knows something I don’t know. Billy sticks his bony chest out in victory.

The sun’s disappearing by the time the four of us roll our ride up to the crest of that hill, Billy walking ahead pointing to our launch pad. He’s spouting to Sam that it’ll be like a new outer space ride. But Houston, we have a problem when Sam doesn’t fit into the hole, didn’t notice him sprouting this summer. He’s too meaty now, bursting out like an overboiled Jimmy Dean sausage. Billy huffs. But before he can say anything I say, “What about you? It’s your barrel.” Just when I think Billy’s about to let loose an excuse, Sam adds, “You’re not chicken, are ya?” That’s when I see that little mole under Billy’s eye shiver.

Next minute, Billy folds himself into the cockpit, his fingers of one hand the only thing visible as they clutch the metal opening. Sam winks at me and with one giant push from the lot of us, Billy barrels down the street, the clattering of metal-on-cement roars a hot rod rumble with sparks spitting out the sides, gathering more and more speed to our cheers, past the stop sign peppered with buckshot, past a squatting one-eyed dog, past the honking horns and squealing tires and through the intersection, travelling so fast that the gang is yesterday’s news until he hits a curb that blasts his spiraling rocket up, up, up where it joins a flock of startled grackles, all of them climbing higher and higher until we can’t tell which dark speck is bird and which is Billy, all of them getting smaller and smaller until they vanish into the bruised sky.

Stephanie Reddoch is a retired educator. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, The Emerson Review, Jimson Weed, and elsewhere. She lives in rural Eastern Ontario with her husband and menagerie of rescued animals. You can find Stephanie on X at @brut11