Siobhan wants to take Liam shopping for clothes and new glasses. He is excited to go, but first he suggests a bike ride with me.
So we head downtown on our bikes, just me and him, and we glide through the Rock Creek underpass, taking the first corner one way through a concrete tunnel, then double backing the other way.
Read moreI take the first bend a little too fast, but slow up just in time to avoid a concrete step on the right side of the tunnel. Liam is behind me. He too, takes the bend well, but then we come out of the tunnel onto a wide, open field and hit a muddy patch.
It’s not too bad; thick dark mud, semi dry like Van Gogh splashes of paint. We can ride our bikes over them.
But the next area is wetter.
“Oh no!” Liam cries out.
It is just swampy grass and water pools and it is harder to pull the bikes through.
I navigate a long wet grass puddle to the right side of the field, but Liam takes a different path bearing leftwards and further into the center. As I come out to the edge of the field, Liam loses his footing and his bike goes under.
At first it is ok. I watch him as he looks for a place to avoid the watery grasses.
…I am high up now, and see him trying to get out of the field, same as I did.
He starts to climb one of the slopes, a slick grey mud incline that is shiny like brown plastic garbage bags.
“Why are you doing that one? It is too steep!” I cry out to him, and he slides down back into the mud.
He comes closer to where I am, though I am really high up and away from him now. And he tries a gentler slope but again he slides down, ducks under the water. And this time he swims. I can see his tall body under the brown water, a breaststroke shape with purpose, swimming, until he arrives at the water’s edge to try again.
The new slope starts at less of an angle. It rises to my left a hundred yards away from me, and is half as high as the ledge on which I stand. And when he gets to the top of the slope, he comes to a ladder which is positioned against a house that overlooks the muddy field. The house is painted red, has large high ceiling windows, and is another two hundred feet above the top of the slope.
Liam starts to climb the ladder, on and up until he is higher than I by some distance.
I can’t see how he will get off. The ladder is too straight.
And once at the top his weight pulls the ladder away from the house. Liam and the ladder fall towards me, down to the muddy edge of the field. I hear the crash onto a white concrete ledge, hundreds of feet below.
I look down to see him face up, his body and limbs at odd broken angles, like he cannot have survived the fall, so sudden was the drop.
And I am in terror; I fear the worst. My dream cannot end like this.
Then he turns onto all fours, and gets up from the ladder beneath him.
Photo by Eirian Evans via Geograph