‘Meet by the Green Wood,’ we’d say and share a smile.
A smile cos there was nothing green or wooded about that spot under the bridge on Greenwood.
The concrete was pitted, iron bars showing like bones through broken skin. We’d joke about bodies in the pillars, old gangsters and drug dealers who’d been holding up the road since the bridge was built in the sixties.
‘Putting something back into the community,’ Manny would say.
Con always laughed too hard at that, spluttering into his can of beer, making a show of wiping the spray from his face, his stone washed jeans.
But Con would always meet up with someone else on his way to the Green Wood, say he was passing Gerry’s anyway, running errands in Hop’s neighbourhood. Never would be there alone.
The place was always filled with voices, even when no one was speaking.
***
Written for What Pegman Saw, the prompt that uses Google Street View as a starting point. See here to join in.
Note
I confess, I clicked straight on the prompt image and wrote this story before reading Josh’s guidance about the horrifying events of 1921. I shall try to write another, more fitting, post.
Word Shamble 