Glorious Gardens of Teetering Rust Read online

  Chapter 3 – Mumblings About Color...

  Brandon woke the next morning to discover the largest example yet of his sleep sketching unfurled across his camper’s floor. He noticed the smudged red footprints that stamped a corner of the canvas, and a pain throbbed from the heel of his left foot. His eyes followed the bloody trail of his footsteps that ran from beneath his closed camper door, and Brandon did not have to tax his mind long to realize that, once again, he had walked in his sleep through the dangerous corners of his salvage yard in search of a suitable canvas for his dreaming muse. He had succeeded, without losing too much blood, in discovering the canvas in the nylon top of a large patio umbrella.

  “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  Brandon’s eyes swooned upon the fine details that flowed across the nylon. Though the canvas was so large, the etchings traced and scratched by Brandon’s fingers expressed such a minutia of detail that the young Tuggle could hardly find a spot to begin an examination of his work. Lines curled across the surface like rivers of rust. Rows upon rows of twisted blocks and leaning spires wafted vertigo through Brandon’s eyes. Shadows shifted strangely beneath the swaying, naked bulb’s illumination. Textures flowed on every canvas inch. Brandon could not separate positive space from the negative space. Nor could he convince himself that his ochre stained hands, so callused from the work, so scarred from the yard’s lacerations, could have created such a work in the short hours of his slumber.

  Brandon rubbed his scars and shivered.

  His responsibilities provided distraction from the vague unease welling in his mind. Peanut butters sandwiches awaited assembly. A long line of trucks brimming with aluminum and tin promised to arrive early in the morning. He would need to focus on his crane’s operation, not on any lines scratched upon canvasses in his sleep, if he hoped to avoid toppling towers of salvage in dangerous debris avalanches.

  Brandon diligently dispersed his bucket of peanut butter sandwiches and met the first of the salvage laden trucks from the seat of his rumbling crane. The line of trucks stretched bumper to bumper throughout the day. Their tires threw plumes of dirt and grime into the air until the sky turned the same ochre hue that covered the salvage yard. The dust limited his vision, and Brandon prayed his crane’s magnet dropped no clump of copper or slag upon whatever uncle may have shuffled through the yard’s narrow spaces.

  “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  The last truck roared empty and away from the Tuggle salvage yard well past nightfall, with the dust and the rust still hanging in the air to shroud whatever moonlight might gauge the safest path back towards Brandon’s camper. Brandon took a breath to calm his nerves after disembarking from his crane. His day’s work had reshaped many of the junk towers. His day’s efforts had erected several new spires of ore, and his camper waited for him on the far side of many unfamiliar salvage piles.

  Brandon moved slowly. He lost sense all sense of distance. He recognized none of the angles or corners. He shortened his steps. He slowed his breathing and tried to calm his pounding heart. He resisted the temptation to stretch his arms and feel in front of him, knowing that to do would would spill more of his blood.

  “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  Brandon heard shuffling from behind a salvage pile. Stopping in his steps, Brandon heard a mumbling. He thought he heard the smacking of lips, and he could have sworn he heard a gulp.

  Brandon forced himself ahead, ignoring the scratching he felt on his arms and legs. Rounding the corner, he touched the stacked wall of salvage as gently as he was able. Still, he winced as slivers and splinters tore at his fingers.

  “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  Brandon turned the corner and gaped upon an uncle’s back. The uncle’s arms and legs had turned spindly thin. Osteoporosis hunched the neck and shoulders so severely to make Brandon almost wonder if his uncle evolved to walk upon four legs. The uncle’s clothing had turned to tatters. His skin was in a deplorable state, beset by scars and oozing cuts suffered through the yard that made Brandon tremble for what hurt they promised to his epidermis.

  The uncle tensed before lifting his chin to the air and sniffing at the hanging, orange dust. Brandon inhaled a breath as his uncle’s face turned towards him. One of the uncle’s eye sockets held nothing but black. The remaining eye squinted upon Brandon, a dim moonlight beam penetrating the rust and shadow to sparkle the recognition that softened the uncle’s wrinkles at the sight of Brandon.

  “Which uncle are you?”

  The uncle’s jaw wrestled against the combination of bread and peanut butter.

  “I don’t remember.” The uncle answered, and his voice sounded the need for a tall glass of cold milk. “Do you think it’s important?”

  Brandon’s thoughts tripped. “Well, you tell me. It’s your name.”

  “Indeed,” nodded the uncle before his mouth took a new and savage bite at the sandwich held in his rust-stained hand. His words became a mumble. “I don’t think it much matters anymore.”

  The uncle continued to attack the peanut butter sandwich. If he took nothing else from the surprise encounter, Brandon realized that his efforts satisfied the taste of old and rusting men. Brandon could not guess how long the uncle would continue to gum at his food, and so Brandon tossed the spare sandwich he always kept in his pocket in case of emergency at his uncle’s feet, hoping the peanut butter proved sticky enough to provide Brandon the time for his many questions.

  “How many uncles do I have left?”

  The uncle shrugged.

  Brandon grunted. “None of you care to keep track?”

  “Why should we?” The peanut butter choked much of the uncle’s attempted chuckle.

  “Because you’re brothers,” Brandon replied. “When are any of you going to come back out of all this junk?”

  Again, the uncle only chomped upon his peanut butter.

  “What are you all looking for?”

  The uncle spit a large glob of slick peanut butter on the ground to free the tongue.

  “Have you found it?” The uncle’s remaining eye glistened.

  “Found what?”

  “The color.” Reverence floated through the air’s stifling dust.

  Brandon doubted he possessed time for riddles. He wished he had been wiser and placed more sandwiches in his pocket.

  “Have you, son?” his uncle continued. “Have you seen the color? Have you found the old world?”

  Brandon continued carefully. “Not yet, uncle. Remind me why we search for it.”

  “For our eyes and our hearts,” sighed the uncle. “For our youth. For our age. The old world has to be hidden somewhere amid all this rubble and trash. So much debris is only a wall. There has to be enough of us left. We have to find the color soon.”

  Brandon tried to gauge how much of the peanut butter sandwich remained in his uncle’s hand.

  “Did my father leave the yard in search of color? Did he leave hoping to find some ‘old world?’”

  The uncle sighed at the question. “He never believed it was in the middle of all this salvage.”

  “Then what took him from the salvage yard?”

  One of the uncle’s rusty fingers rubbed softly beneath the dark, empty eye socket. “He left searching for her. He claimed she was all the color he needed. How could we argue? We knew only these stacks of salvage.”

  Brandon’s heart skipped. “In search of my mother?”

  The uncle paused in his chewing. “He thought he could bring her back here. He thought you would be enough to convince her that this old salvage yard contained enough space for her without scarring her lovely skin.” Here, the uncle’s appetite waned, and his sandwich dropped listlessly to the ground. “But we brothers knew better. Her skin was too fair for this land of sharp edges. It broke our hearts to see her suffer that first cut. Hers was never a blood to suffer being spilt on these acres. Your father wished to believe otherwise, and so he went to search for her. We promised to do our best by you, tried to see that y
ou received no scar your skin didn’t need to know.”

  “So he left to bring her back to me?” Brandon’s eyes watered.

  “He wanted her back as much for himself as he did for you.”

  “They could still be alive?” Brandon’s heart sank as quickly as it had soared. “But the lands beyond our yard are limitless. Where would one even start looking?”

  The uncle shifted on his feet. “That’s why we started searching deeper into the salvage. We thought we might find the color to bring them both back. We all dream about the color. We know there has to be something sparkling amid all these piles. The outside world had to give us some kind of treasure amid all this trash. Something to soothe our scars. Somewhere in that junk, there has to be something green or gold that will bring them all back.”

  The uncle’s remaining eye turned once more to the narrow spaces twisting between the salvage before Brandon could draw the breath for another question. His steps casting further rust into the air, the uncle shuffled once again between the piles. Brandon hurried forward, scraping his arm on a sheet of ragged tin, but he already the uncle disappeared deeper into the yard.

  Brandon retreated back through the rubble as carefully as he was able. He tried to remain hopeful, thinking of names with which to label his uncles as he enticed them from the salvage piles, imagining an afternoon when his father and mother would greet him following a work shift. But he failed to maintain any cheer for long. He wondered how his heart would survive when he had to swallow that he was utterly alone. He feared he might soon share in his uncles’ delusion and wander deeper into the salvage yard in search of a mystical splash of color, a fool’s errand from which he would never return.

  The yard’s salvage, however, cared little for its keeper’s ruminations. Though he walked slowly, his distraction felt the bite of many edges and points. Thus Brandon felt relieved, and exhausted, when he successfully navigated a final bend and recognized his camper. His limbs were sore. His skin throbbed. His shoulders slumped. And Brandon looked forward to a night of fitful sleep.

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