Glorious Gardens of Teetering Rust Read online

  Chapter 8 – Granted Mercy...

  The sound of an uncle knocking on the crane’s glass cabin stole his breath. The sight of what followed the one-eyed and scarred uncle stopped Brandon’s mind, for a moment allowing the crane’s magnet to sway unchecked towards a teetering pile of salvage. Brandon shook off his confusion and regained the crane’s momentum before ore began to rain upon the trucks waiting for their loads to be gathered. Brandon thought the ground trembled all the same.

  Brandon swiveled in his crane’s chair and marveled at the sight over his uncle’s shoulder.

  “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  The girl’s face frowned. Her brow furrowed. Color rushed to her cheeks. Her red hair flamed.

  “Who are you dusty people who know my name?”

  Brandon couldn’t decide how to respond, and was thankful when his uncle broke the silence.

  “Which uncle am I again?”

  Brandon looked into the same, empty socket he had met several days before and was sad he could still not answer the older man’s want. “I still don’t know, uncle.”

  The uncle’s lips twitched. “Then what am I going to tell her? Doesn’t seem polite for me to ask her for her name if I can’t give her mine.”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. “But you already know. That’s what I want to know. How everybody knows my name.”

  Brandon tried not to stare. “Heaven grant me mercy.”

  Mercy growled. “There it is. That’s my name. Mercy.”

  Brandon swooned.

  “It’s only a saying,” Brandon stammered.

  “Not to me,” Mercy cried. “To me, it’s my name.”

  Mumbling in thought, the uncle reached into his pocket and removed a crumpled peanut butter sandwich that he offered to Mercy. Mercy’s stomach rumbled. She did not want to appear rude by not accepting hospitality, but the sandwich looked covered with ochre rust.

  “It’s rude, uncle, to offer a guest a dirty sandwich,” Brandon hurried to the cooler he kept beside him in the crane. “I have several from this morning’s batch that are not covered in grime.”

  Brandon watched enraptured as Mercy tore into the clean sandwich. Her hair remained so bright. Her skin remained, if sunburned, unblemished by the yard’s scars. He told himself not to allow his dreams to escalate. He told himself not to stare. His was a sharp world that did not have room for girls named Mercy, not where so many corners and edges waited to bite.

  “What are you doing here?” Brandon tried to wait for Mercy’s tongue to wrestle through the peanut butter.

  “I rode in with my family’s old things,” Mercy’s shoulders slumped, and she could hardly hold back her sobs.

  “Your family’s things?” Brandon did not understand.

  “Well, it all belonged to somebody.” Mercy choked another sob. She stiffened. She felt foolish. Yet what other choice had she? “Haven’t you ever thought all those truckloads of stuff had to come from somewhere?”

  “I never considered it much,” Brandon sighed. “I guess I’ve always seen it as a lot of junk.”

  “But it was my family’s junk,” Mercy cried.

  An instinct that Brandon had not been aware he possessed urged him to reach out to her. But he did, fearful that to do so would only cut her, as if his arms were as hard and sharp as the salvage that surrounded them.

  “You can keep anything you want,” Brandon told Mercy. “I don’t want anything that belongs to anyone else. I can make sure one of the trucks takes it all back for you.”

  Mercy’s smile ran crooked. She had not known an offer of help could be both cruel and kind.

  “But it was never really, any of it, mine,” Mercy’s sobs slowly stopped. “I don’t even have a place to put it. I’m just another chunk of junk like the rest of the stuff that truck brought to your yard.”

  Brandon’s heart pained for Mercy. He felt ashamed for feeling so thrilled at the expense of the girl’s sorrow. Only, none of the trucks had ever before brought anything as beautiful as Mercy to all his piles of iron.

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