The boy’s head circled in unison with the revolution of the bachello’s front wheel. Wooden, twelve feet across, six feet thick, bearing thirty tons and pulled by a creature weighing that again, the boy danced alongside the cart and giggled as he ran. He watched everything, his head just feet from the rolling, pitching wheels. The travelling and stasis of a wheel, the pins and bolts, the strengthening panels around the axle, he watched it all and laughed to himself. He saw the rotations from every perspective, from the ground, from the axle, from the edge of the wheel, he saw it all. The wood straining, the expulsion of water from the grain under pressure and how the cracks and knots wove a tapestry of faults in the wheel. He saw the trees from which the wheels were carved, the circles of trees within the copse. He saw the circling sun that greened and browned the leaves in the steady cycles of the seasons. He saw the drops of rain laying on leaves that would eventually run in rivulets down to the roots of the tree that would grow ring by ring to make this turning, staying still, wondrous mechanism. He visited all the wheels of all other carts, of toys, of spinning machines and clocks. In his mind the ground pulled the wheel round, driven by the bigger mechanics of space and time, the boy saw it all. Then the boy heard Hurris’s anguished scream, even through the harsh rain. He stopped running and just stood grinning, watching other wheels in turn as the landtrain carriages passed.
copyright martin holdcroft 2009
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