Old Man Bathersby Rides Again

• Amila Sargeant, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2009

It was a crisp Sunday morning in the seaside town of Northern Pier, and not a sound was to be heard, but the crashing of waves along the coastline, and the whispering of the breeze through Central Boulevard. All was quiet, peaceful, calm.

This beautiful peace was disturbed at around seven in the morning. Heads poked out windows, and eyes peered around curtains, as the homely citizens of Northern Pier were rudely awakened by an obnoxious rattling sound.

Where on earth could a rattling sound come from at seven in the morning, you ask? Only Old Man Levi Bathersby would risk a day’s worth of angry glares for a morning ride in a shopping trolley.

The trolley tore down the hill behind the boulevard, racing further and further toward the quiet main street in an unsettling, obscure, blur.

Heads left the windows, and snuggled grouchily back under the covers, desperately attempting to get some rest.

This wasn’t an unusual occurrence in Northern Pier, not since4 Mr Levi Bathersby had found his birth certificate in his attic one afternoon and discovered that he was 96 years old. He had been mortified to realise that he had spent the last fourty years of his life in a rocking chair on his porch, watching the waves roll by.

Old Man Bathersby had never experienced the thrills of a rollercoaster, or the peril of bungee jumping. At 96, he had a lot of catching up to do. And, unfortunately for the residents of Northern Pier, he’d chosen to do this catching up right in his home town.

And so there he was on that crisp Sunday morn, bald head glimmering in the early morning sun, wrinkly bits of skin fluttering in the breeze, his eyes as wide as tennis-balls, blood shoot and wrinkly-lidded.

Now, Old Man Bathersby had covered about three-quarters of the hill, when he suddenly realised that shopping trolleys had no breaks. No suspension. No possible way of stopping.

Now he’d left his stomach at the top of the hill, but his brain was still with him. If he ever wanted to perform a thrilling stunt like this again, if he even planned to live past seven thirty, he had to find a way to stop. And he did.

At 7:05 that Sunday morning, Mr Bathersby did what no man had ever done before. He flew- well, for a bout five seconds. He steered the trolley toward the gutter, catapulting himself into the air, the breeze blowing his head and the hairs growing out of his liver spots.

He landed with a pleasant splash in the crystal blue waters of Northern Beach, and lay back peacefully on his back, a satisfied grin sliding onto his weathered face.
‘I have travelled faster that Michael Schumacher. I am complete.’
‘Crazy old man,’ muttered a lady, under her breath as she walked her dog along the shore.