I have heard, in the can’t-remember-where way of all neighbourhood rumours, that the houses on the opposite side of the road are accommodation for people in International Protection. Nothing I have ever seen has proved or disproved this.They are only one-room deep, which gives the discomfitting impression of their being only the front half of a building.
Last weekend, I left the house late on a blustery morning, with one minute to cover the four-minute walk to the bus. Jogging away from the front door, I passed an opposite-side-of-the-road neighbour, a boy of about fourteen pulling the door shut behind him.
Unprompted, he hiked his backpack up onto his shoulder and broke into a run to keep pace with me. I glanced at him as he drew level, and he asked, “What’re we running from?”
I shook my head, “Running to the bus.’
His stride lengthened and he started to pull away, “Then pick it up, old man!”
The two of us up the narrow road at a dead sprint, he slightly ahead, our bodies tilted forward and arms pumping. The hammering of our feet against the broken concrete echoed back down the laneway. When we got to the junction at the end of the road, the bus was stopped, massive and yellow, at a pedestrian crossing, so I carried on even as the kid skidded to a halt, roaring, “Old man can run! Old man can run!”
This was one of the top five conversations I’ve had with a stranger so far this year.
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