He Caged Me for Fifteen Years novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Friday Bikes

On the second Friday I walked the fence line with Niall twenty paces behind me.

The fence ran around three acres of dead grass and old machinery.

Beyond it, Route 9 went past the quarry road toward town.

I knew that road. Every Friday at six, the Ashgrove Wolves ran it in formation.

Da had led that run since before I was born.

I stood at the wire with my hands on the top strand and waited.

Niall stopped where he was. He said nothing. He had said very little to me for eight days, and nothing at all about his hands, which were still stiff and yellow at the knuckles.

At six I heard them.

First a low sound in the distance, then the full roar, and then the bikes came over the rise in a long double line.

Twenty chrome machines in the evening light.

I ran to the gate post and screamed.

"Da! Da, it's me! Cian!"

The noise swallowed my voice.

The lead bike swept past without turning its head.

It was not my father's. A man I did not know rode it, in Da's place at the front.

Behind him came the rest, one pair after another.

Then I saw a bike with a green stripe along the tank.

I knew that stripe. I had painted it myself the summer I turned sixteen.

"Cian!"

He was fifty yards away, and his head turned.

I saw his face under the open helmet. Gaunt. Hollow under the eyes.

I saw him look straight at the farm, at the fence and at me with both arms over my head.

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