Rust Over Roses
It’s strange how coffee stains always seem to be weighted on one side, the sepia
mark running thin, then blotting out, thick and wet, a pool collecting specks of coffee
grounds and cigarette ash. I usually attack the pool first, soak it up with my gray rag, then
circle around to the drier bits, scrubbing frantically at the thin, caffeine crust that grips
the grey flecked Formica of the lunch counter.
I was bearing down on a decidedly stubborn stain when he came in and sat at the
end of the counter. As the door shut behind him, the window lettering snapped back into
silhouette, eclipsing the amber light of the setting sun and spilling shadows over bar
stools and around the lips of vinyl-covered table tops. The sign read MENKEY’S from
the outside, but inside, the shadow letters looked foreign, unrecognizable. It seemed
impossible that the dark planes they cast could come from the form of my own name.
I continued to scrub; my puffy, dish soap permeated hands gripping the mildewed
rag, passing back and forth over the crisp angle the N’s shadow cut over my current
cleaning crusade. Acknowledging my disinterest, he began to toy with the toothpick
dispenser. Hunched forward, soft, greasy leather coat bunching up around his ears he
slowly turned the metal knob, methodically emptying the container onto the still-coffee-
stained counter.
I abandoned my cleaning duties as he began to search the woodpile and I asked if
I could get him something to drink. He found a toothpick that satisfied his needs, sat
upright, prize hanging from a chapped bottom-lip, his teeth grinding in preparation for
the virgin chomp and subsequent burst of mint oil from its pulp. He said that he’d pass.
“Are you ready to order then?”
“No,” he responded through a splintering grind of molars.
“Would you like to see a menu?”
“No,” as he glanced at the shredded end of the toothpick.
“Well, is there anything that I can do for you, sir?
“Sure,”
Then, pointing the slobbery splinters at me, “Tell me what your brother’s been up
to.”
“My brother?” I answered blankly.
“Yeah, Patrick.”
It had been a long since I had thought about Patrick. Long before the diner had
been built, back when the space the counter occupied was just another spot in the woods,
the dead, wet leaves a prelude for coffee stains to come.
I remembered spending countless hours in those woods with my brother:
stumbling along over the ankle-biting tree roots as we criss-crossed our way through the
wind-blown shadows of the underbrush, Patrick plucking the occasional wild raspberry
from the prickly boughs that hooked into our grass-stained jeans.
There was always a mission to be completed: to build a rope swing on a fallen oak
so we could splash into the pool of a beaver dam; or to venture out onto the trestle bridge
where a raccoon or badger had been cut in half and we could see its bones. And I never
cared that the plan was always of his design. I would’ve followed in the shadow of his
heels all the way to Des Moines if that’s where he was going.
While hiking along, me stumbling over the treacherous terrain that my brother
navigated with the ease of walking down a city sidewalk, we would talk. He would
always lead the conversation – in fact, I rarely said a word, mainly due to his talking at
me more than to me. I keep focused on the roots at my feet, picking up a spattering of
words every once in a while, just keeping tabs on things so I wouldn’t miss my cue.
“I stole Timmy’s bike today…we’ll sink it with the others…Dad’s can’t know…I
see them crumbling…it’s so beautiful…right?”
That’s where I came in. It didn’t really matter what we were talking about,
although it was all usually in the same vein. I was often so focused on fending off
phantom vines and possessed roots that I digested only about 1/3 of what he said…and
understood even less. But I knew my role and I relished the rare moments when my cue
would come up, delivering my response with a possessed sense of dedication to my
brother, but rarely to what he was saying.
“Yeah,” I would said, “right,”
“Exactly!”
We spent as much time as we could in those woods, anything to avoid being at
home. Home was cracked-paint siding and a half-finished deck, the wood weathered grey.
The interior was slowly developing a similar appearance, only more soft and fuzzy,
spotted with the strange flecks of blue that always seem to stand out in a healthy coat of
dust. Mom was too distracted for anyone to expect her to clean. Kept busy by her
incessant need to defeat the uneven, unpredictable growth of hair and nails, she had little
time for dusting. Convinced that everything grew uneven and at speeds, she was never far
from a scissors or nail clippers, meticulously cropping and paring away the slightest
inconsistencies in her body’s keratin constructs. When she wasn’t trimming off the splits
on split ends or making single molecule adjustments to her nails, indiscernible blemishes
occupied her time: digging fingers into the pale pink softness of her forearm or leg,
leaving unsightly, red pinch marks in place of what seemed to be nothing at all.
There was more than enough to capture our curiosity in the house. If we weren’t
freeing the urchin-like growths of lime carcasses from the glass prisons of Dad’s beer
bottles, we were removing the windows panes, Patrick wanting to prove to me that glass
really was a liquid – there were endless possibilities. Thankfully, Mom’s eye for order
failed to reach past the tips of her fingers and ends of her hairs. She’d clip as we broke,
cut as we spilled. But if Dad happened upon us, it was a different story.
I remember when he caught us trying to burn old socks in the claw-foot tub of the
upstairs bathroom. We were both kneeling in front of the tub, Patrick holding out a damp,
brown ball of thread-bare gym socks over my waiting candle. Sitting in-between us was
the dark amber bottle of brandy that we had been soaking the socks in. We both heard
him walk up and looked up at the door to see him shaking his head in disgust. It was just
then that the cognac-soaked socks ignited, engulfing Patrick’s hand in a blue orb of 80
proof flames. Dad walked into the room as Patrick quickly dropped the socks into the full
tub. He picked up the bottle, mumbled something about fruit cake and having to go to the
store then bludgeoned Patrick with the thick, glass bottom. “You’re the nine-iron of life
in the back of my head,” he told Patrick. It was the sweetest thing I ever heard him say.
At the time, I couldn’t make any sense of the fact that Patrick was the one who
got all the beatings. It wasn’t that I was exactly dying to get punched in the eye with the
bottom of a fifth of Christmas brandy, but I did feel guilty and strangely left out for my
lack of punishment. Dad often yelled at Patrick as he hit him, yelling that he was crazy
and he would beat him straight. Looking back now, I don’t blame him for it.
If we weren’t breaking bottles or burning socks or taking part in some other
genius act of childish destruction, Patrick would spend hours just staring at stuff. I’d
dance around him with inquisitive impatience, spattering out rapid fire questions to
suffice my want for constant action: “Whatcha’ doing? Whatcha’ lookin’ at? Why aren’t
we doing anything? When are we leaving? Where are we going to go? Whatcha’ doing?
Whatcha’ lookin’ at?”
His meditative stare would remain unbroken throughout my verbal onslaught, and
I would eventually wear myself out. It was then that he’d talk to me, whispering to me
about the beautiful decay that he was observing in the wall, sign, car, boat, parking meter
or whatever he was staring at.
He did it every day. As long as the skies weren’t choked with the mulberry
stained clouds of a July thunderstorm or the entire atmosphere wasn’t a gray blanket of
falling, fallen, blowing and drifting snow, he’d be sure to spend at least an hour staring at
some wall.
I remember how he’d stand: legs spread wide, hands thrust into the back pockets
of his ubiquitous dirty jeans, hips swaying every so slightly. With his neck cocked back,
his green eyes would peer out from under hooded lids, their lazy glance seeming to float
off into oblivion. He was the epitome of relaxation when he stood like that – projecting
his consciousness forward into the faded, chipped macrocosm of man’s losing battle
against nature’s whim.
Fortunately for me, Patrick wasn’t only interested in feeding me endless
descriptions of dilapidation. We got to take part in the process ourselves. We’d steal new
things: road signs, bicycles, lawn furniture, garden gnomes – whatever we could get our
hands on – and push them haphazardly down the road towards antiquity. This usually
entailed a long, calculated process of beating, burning, burying, bending and other
exciting forms of mutilation. On any given summer day, we’d have a handful of projects
in the works. There’d be a rocking horse prematurely decomposing in a shallow grave
under the burr oak next to the railroad tracks. A school crossing sign smoldering under a
blanket of coals. The neighbor’s brand new 10-speed, sanded down and submerged,
growing a coat of rust as the river’s current bit at its chain.
We had a secret hideout where we kept all the finished projects. A combination
thief’s market and art gallery, we displayed our weathered wares by hanging them off the
steel girders under the trestle bridge. After a hard day at work, there was nothing we liked
more than to mix up gallon jugs of powdered lemonade and sit in the earthy, dirty cool
and stare at our achievements – which weren’t much. Everything just looked as it was.
Abused. And hanging from a train bridge, which did very little to make the abused look
special.
To Patrick’s credit, he did have a moment of genius. It may have been the only
success of his life. I can’t imagine how he came up with it, but he somehow discovered
that by mixing buttermilk and a fresh slab of moss in the blender and putting it in an old
Windex bottle, he could grow moss on anything he sprayed. It was the key to our only
aging success, and in order to take full advantage of it, we were forced to steal hundreds
of garden gnomes from around town. They looked exquisite after and good beating and a
misting of Menkey moss. And then there was the time we dumped a bucketful of the stuff
over dad’s Cutlass Cruiser. I even got beaten for that.
On days when the thick, velvety heat of late July laid heavy, threatening
suffocation, we’d gravitate towards the river, often hiding out on the cement ledge that
ran under the dock. Patrick said he could hear the bank crumbling under the currents
constant flow. “Listen,” he’d say, and I’d tilt my head, screw up my eyes and shortly start
to bounce in a fit of excitement. But all I ever heard was the boat wakes lapping against
the concrete bank.
Patrick liked to draw portraits of me down there, said there was something about
the light reflecting off the water. And hate it as much as I did, I had to endure. To leave
was to have to breathe air thick enough to cause a damp death by asphyxiation.
I remember being down there with him on one sultry afternoon. He had sat with
his back up against the wall, black leather journal laid open against across his knees,
green eyes peering and squinting as he drew.
“Stop your fidgeting,” he commanded of me.
“Can’t help it,” as I squirmed in the heat, rubbing dirty hands on dirty jeans, then
sitting on them in attempt to remain sedentary; still bouncing, but not flailing.
“Try to. The stiller you are to quicker I am.”
“Why do you look at me? I don’t like it.”
“What do you mean? I have to look at you to draw you”
“Your eyes aren’t nice.”
His eyes flicked up at me, rolling in contempt. “It’s because I’m focusing, which
I’d have an easier time of doing if you’d shut up and sit still.”
I began to bounce faster, feeling the rough, porous concrete crush its pocked
pattern into backs of my sat-upon hands. “Remember when you were looking at that sign
at that store and you said you could see the old one underneath it…remember? Why were
your eyes nice then? Why do your eyes have to be not nice when you draw me? I don’t
like you drawing me…are you almost finished?”
“Do you really have to know?”
I pulled my hands out from under me and began to inspect the temporary
topography on my palms for stuck bits of gravel, holding them close to my face so
Patrick couldn’t see me. “Oh, um, I’m sorry Patrick…I didn’t mean for you to get mad.
Don’t get mad, then you’re eyes’ll keep not being nice and…”
“No, no. It’s fine. It’s just when I’m drawing you, I’m not drawing you right now,
sitting here under the dock. Not it at all.”
“Why does is make your eyes look not nice?”
“Relax. I’ll get to it. I mean, haven’t you ever realized that the drawings I do of
you don’t look like you?”
I began to inspect my hand even closer, knuckles practically jammed in my eye
sockets, certain there were renegade grains of grit to distract me from Patrick’s
questioning. “Um…well, they’re still really good, but, um, they look old and I’m only 9.”
“And don’t think I don’t know it. I mean for them to look old. You see, these
drawings, why they look old, it’s because this is how you’re going to look some day, a lot
of years from now. I can see it. And its not that I actually see you as being old and nasty
and wrinkly, it’s just that I understand how it happens…where the lines will fall and how
your cheeks will sag. It just makes sense to me.”
“My cheeks are saggy?”
“No, not now…but they will be. And I know exactly how they will be.”
I had stopped my gravel hunt, listening to Patrick’s words with rapt attention, but
still not understanding, “Why does that make your eyes not nice?”
“Because your eyes aren’t ever gonna’ be nice when you’re old. I can see them,
they’re sad.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said, then pointing at the portrait, “You’ll have to tell me when
this day comes.”
***
He gave me that book of his the night before he left. Dad had decided that he
needed discipline and was shipping him off to boot camp. Patrick seemed to have his own
plans, because he disappeared the night before the Greyhound was supposed to take him
away. The search party found our hideout at the trestle bridge. Even thing was stripped
down and sent to junk yard, where it fit right in.
All that was left of Patrick in my life was the journal. He had left in on my bed
with a note, telling me not to worry – that he’d see me again.
Everything changed after he disappeared. I started hanging out with other kids
from school. They liked to break shit and be raucous just as much as I did, so we got
along fine. I took them out to the trestle once to drink the warm cans of Schlitz we had
stolen from a friend’s Grandfather. We wrestled and threw rocks in the creek, chugging
the warm beers, not caring when they foamed up spilled down our chests and I didn’t
think of Patrick once.
That’s how it went. He faded out of my thoughts just as the cracked paint faded
on his beloved walls. We never heard from him and sometime towards the end of high
school it was decided that he was dead. I can’t remember who made the decision; it was
one of no consequence. No one thought about him. No one missed him. No one cared.
Looking down at the counter, I started in on another stain, answering the man’s
question with the flat evenness of a Sunday Specials recitation.
“He’s dead.”
The man leaned back off the counter, sinking into his jacket, shoulders rippling
with his laughter at my response.
“That’s right,” he said with a half grin and a slowly shaking head “He’s dead. I
forget about that sometimes.”
And he got up and left and I went on scrubbing.
At home that night, my daughter asked for a picture of me from when I was a kid.
Said she needed it for something or other at school. I went down to the basement to see if
I could dig up an old yearbook to give her, thought she’d get a kick of seeing my whole
high school class seeing they were the parents of hers. Finding a box marked photographs,
I began to dig, thumbing through stacks of dusted wedding photos and blurred baby
snapshots. There was an old black notebook at the bottom of the box, the corners
rounded and spine broken. I thumbed through the dusty leafs, skimming over pages of
scribbled notes in a foreign hand. I was about to put it back and continue my search when,
with a final flip, I found myself staring blankly up from the page. For an instant, I thought
it was a mirror, but my reflection didn’t move as I raised the book up to my nose and
realized it was a drawing, signed Patrick Menkey and dated nearly from nearly half a
century before.
Something dropped down near my liver and my head began to burn. I slumped
down to the floor and, with the gust of my movement, the dust be-speckled air flipped the
page of the journal and I screamed. I heard his voice again as looked “Tell me what your
brother is up to these days.”
I opened and shut my eyes, as if the impossible image I was seeing was stuck in
my eyelashes and could simply be blinked away. But he was still there. “He’s dead. I
forget about that sometimes.” There was even a toothpick jutting out off his lower lip.
Having finally built up the courage to face the inevitable, I tore my eyes away from his
face and tracked down to the bottom of the page, where the title of the drawing was
scrawled in the script I was slowly beginning to recognize. It was a self-portrait.