He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) by Barbara Arnold Page A

off a rice pudding.   Oxford are a bunch of nancy boys,’ Dennis yelled back as we worked the rollers and the lizzies swung higher.
    ‘Oxford’s stronger than Cambridge.’  
    ‘Cambridge is cleverer than Oxford.’  
    ‘We’re winning.   You’re sinking,’ I shrieked as we worked the rollers and the lizzies swung like sky boats. ‘Swing high! Swing low!’   I chanted inside my head. ‘Swing high! Swing low!’  
    Gradually the lizzie rose.   Dobsie and I were definitely higher than Dennis and Herbie.   Up and up we went, and I had to arch my back and grip the vertical bars really tight.
    As the ground disappeared, swinging the lizzie needed the sort of strength Popeye got from eating spinach.  
    When I drove forward, my body and arms were stretched as if they were made of elastic.   The lizzie made strange screeching noises.   Dobsie and I still kept our feet on the rollers, though.   Now the whole frame began to shudder, and the metal burnt my hands.   My arms ached and gasping sounds came from my throat, until I couldn’t keep my foot on the roller any longer.   I clung to the bars, concentrating really hard on not letting my fists come undone.   But Dobsie was taller than me and his foot still reached the roller.   He kept pushing, and my bones began twisting in their sockets.   My spine was stretched as if I was being tortured.   ‘Take your foot off,’ I yelled to him.   ‘Don’t push.’   But my words didn’t reach him.
    Suddenly, at the other end of the lizzie, Dobsie’s body jerked and his right hand lost its grip on one of the vertical bars.   It swung like a monkey’s, trying to get its hold back.   It aimed and missed, aimed and missed, near but not near enough.   Dobsie’s other hand began to slide down the sidebar until it slid free and Dobsie sort of fluttered from the lizzie like a flag in the breeze.
     
    I could never remember how I slowed the lizzie, or how I came to be standing over Dobsie’s body.   His trousers were ripped, and his legs looked like snapped twigs.
    The ambulance came and the men lifted the body out of its blood and placed it on a stretcher.   Then they covered it with a red blanket.   I remember thinking they used red because it soaked up blood without it showing.   They spoke to each other in whispers, a few words at a time, as they lifted the stretcher into the ambulance.   Before they closed the door, I heard one of them say the word, “dead” and then I saw them pull the blanket over the face.
    The playground attendant came from out of nowhere.   ‘I knew one of ‘em would end up killing himself.   I told ‘em.’   He pointed his finger at the policeman, who somehow just seemed to be there.   ‘I banned ‘em, I did.   I told ‘em they wasn’t to come here.   If they did they’d be trespassing, I told ‘em.   Silly little devils.’   He pushed his cap back on his head.
    ‘Is this true?’   The policeman licked the end of a pencil and wrote in a blue notebook.   The woman with the toddler clinging to her legs was cradling Herbie. ‘D’you have to question them now?’ She asked, but the policeman continued writing.
    Dennis was already beside the sandpit and running.   He fled through the gate and along the outside of the playground.   He had messed himself.   It stuck to his legs like treacle and he left brown footprints on the path as he ran.
    ‘Oi, come ‘ere,’ the policeman bellowed, but the brown footprints continued until they ran on to the grass, and Dennis became a distant figure.
    Whenever I thought about that afternoon, what was most vivid in my memory were Dobsie’s snapped bones sticking through his flesh, and the brown slime sliding down Dennis’ legs.
     
    In the days that followed, I couldn’t link that twisted body with the know-it-all Dobsie who sat on the stones at the camp reading comics and smoking.   That disgusting shape, oozing blood haunted me with pictures I couldn’t chase