The Boy and the Blue Tricycle

Gary Floyd

The boy in the gray shorts sits on the brick stairs above the blue tricycle. It’s the only thing of value he owns. His legs are as spindly as that of a newborn foal. The boy spends his days alone, taking things apart and putting them together again.

There is no one to teach the boy how to ride a two wheeler so he rides his tricycle longer than he should. The boy dreams that his tricycle will take him places. He flips the trike on its side and, like a bus driver, spins the rear wheel until the rubber tire turns his palms gray.

His mother forbids him from:

swimming – afraid he’ll drown.

riding in the street – afraid he’ll be hit a car.

leaving the yard - afraid he’ll be snatched by a stranger.

One day, the boy is befriended by a slightly older neighbor who he envisions will open doors for him. They get along until the neighbor, inexplicably, uses a stick to carve up his tricycle’s white cushioned seat. Older kids laugh. The boy feels violated. He wishes he’d fought. His single mother won’t replace his tricycle. After seeing brown foam unravel from a split in the seat, like a wound, the boy cries: but stops.

Years pass, the boy feels isolated. He tinkers with cars out back; while his former “friend” hangs out with kids his age. His friend goes to parties that the boy is too young to go to and dates girls who the boy can only dream of. His neighbor suddenly dies in a car crash. Everyone is sad. They remember his neighbor as a great athlete, a valedictorian, a model son/neighbor; not as the local bully.

The now adolescent boy feels out of place and guilty that he missed his neighbor’s wake. The boy hears how the brakes in his neighbor’s – relatively new and recently serviced – car inexplicably failed. How his neighbor’s car careened into traffic and collided head-on with a city bus. The boy looks at his hands, still gray from working out back, and marvels at their capability.