Glorious Gardens of Teetering Rust Read online

  Chapter 9 – The Stuff of Dreams...

  For many weeks following Mercy’s arrival, the trucks continued to arrive at the Tuggle salvage yard at the crack of light. Only Brandon no longer unlocked the yard’s gate so early in the morning. He no longer mounted the crane before the sun rose above its boom. For many weeks after Mercy’s arrival, the trucks shuddered in line so early in the morning, blaring their horns and churning their engines until learning their rude behavior would not coax the yard’s keeper from unloading their cargo so early in the morning.

  Brandon reserved his mornings for helping Mercy make one of his lost uncle’s campers something she could call home. Mercy floated along the salvage yard’s outskirts, carefully considering pieces of refuse strewn upon the ground. She amazed Brandon for her uncanny ability to near the stacks without suffering the deep lacerations that tormented his touch. She could remove shiny pieces without toppling the stacks upon her. The relics she carried from such excursions looked like treasure after she arranged them near her camper. Twisted chrome and aluminum glittered like silver flowers in scavenged window boxes. She crafted wind chimes from copper and tin with such mastery that a melody toned in even the slightest breeze. Mercy found pliers and hammers, and with such simple tools, learned to sculpt animals from piles of ore and slag – mirthful monkeys that dangled from her camper’s roof, parrots and owls that perched from every ledge, profiles of zebras and antelope dashing in the empty spaces leading to her door. Brandon marveled. He had never dreamed such things waited to be discovered in his salvage.

  Brandon felt more restless than ever. He struggled to remain alert at the crane’s controls in the afternoon. His sleep seldom refreshed him. He often woke in one of his uncle’s empty campers come the morning, though he had given himself to sleep upon his own bed.

  And his dream sketching escalated at a frantic pace. The lines and shapes spilled beyond the nylon umbrella canvas unfurled across the floor. His sleeping fingers traced rust directly upon the walls. The shapes smeared across the cracked lines of his splintered mirror. The patterns shifted through the night. One canvas, one etched square, one texture or shadow never appeared the same when Brandon woke the following morning. The ephemeral ochre lines flooded his vision with vertigo, and Brandon feared the loss of his sanity to such shapes as much as the loss of his blood within the salvage yard labyrinth.

  A rapping at his camper door woke Brandon earlier than usual. He shook his head and was thankful to recognize he lay upon the bed on which he belonged, though he winced to see new fingerprints of orange added further rust stain to his pillow.

  “Hello! Brandon! You in there?”

  “Just a moment, Mercy.”

  Brandon cringed at his camper’s chaos. Rust and grime covered every surface. Ochre dust smeared beneath his naked feet from the nylon unfurled on his floor. The trails of stain extended to the counter and threatened to mix with the peanut butter and ruin a fresh loaf of white bread.

  “Are you decent, Brandon?”

  “Just a second.” Brandon sat upright in bed. Where had he dropped his clothes?

  “Someone’s taken my awning, Brandon!” Mercy rattled the door. “I heard someone shuffle outside my camper last night, and now my awning is missing. I will burn in the sun if I don’t find its shade.”

  Brandon gazed at the blanket covering his legs. He did not remember crawling beneath a blanket before falling asleep in his cot. Last night had been too humid. Brandon grabbed the edges and realized he had slept wrapped within Mercy’s missing camper awning.

  There too, Brandon had sketched multitudes of narrow, twisting paths across the material. Brandon unrolled the awning and followed the traces across the largest surface yet of his sketching. Flipping the awning over, he saw he had filled both sides with the shifting patterns and shadows. Brandon’s chest was smeared with rust from sleeping wrapped within his work. He hated to think that he had ruined Mercy’s shade, knowing how painfully the sun burned her.

  Fresh dust fell into Brandon’s camper as Mercy cracked open the door. Her eyes widened at the crowded confines. She tried not to stare when Brandon sat on her awning in nothing but his underwear. She tried not to stare when she gazed upon the scars that twisted and crisscrossed all along Brandon’s wiry, long-limbed body.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to stare,” Mercy gulped.

  “I think I found your awning,” Brandon nodded to the awning covered in lines while he drew it closer to his chest to cover more of himself. “It had to be me you heard last night outside your camper. I sleepwalk, and I grab things to use for canvasses for all the rust drawing I do in my sleep.”

  Mercy couldn’t tell where the scars that wound around Brandon’s body separated from the lines sketched upon the camper’s walls. It took her a wink to see that the sheets of paper pinned to the walls, the unfurled nylon canvas on the flooring, were not extensions of Brandon’s scars. Her eyes attempted to follow the lines, and she swooned for the attempt. The textures and the patterns made the camper’s confines all the tighter, and Mercy, truth be told, had always thought the smell of peanut butter to be noxious.

  “All these lines are my obsession when I sleep,” Brandon jumped into a pair of pants, puffs of orange dust jumping into the air with each leg squeezed into the legs. “It’s getting hard for me to keep my eyes open, and no one wants to work in the salvage yard without a handle on all of their senses.”

  Mercy stuck her chin close to a canvas. “They look like maps.”

  Brandon grunted. “Of what?”

  “Of the salvage,” Mercy winked. “All the empty spaces look like paths. All the blocks remind me of the piles. It’s like how I might dream the shadows would look if you were a bird flying overhead.”

  Brandon ran an orange finger through his orange hair and squinted again at his sleep’s artwork. He swallowed the nausea that bubbled at the back of his throat. The lines continued to shimmer as if tickled by wind. The patterns waved upon the page just as the stacks outside teetered in the breeze. Brandon laughed. The lines shifted because the salvage yard never remained the same. He rearranged the pathways of the yard with each shift in the crane. His fingers paid keener attention to such shifting than did his mind and his fingers recorded the changes each night in the stillness of Brandon’s sleep.

  “You have to ignore the trucks today, Brandon.” Mercy sat beside him on the cot, and her presence made Brandon long for her hand to reach out and trace the paths of his scar tissue. “You can’t go into the crane this afternoon.”

  “But what will the trucks do with all their salvage?”

  Mercy laughed. “Let them figure it out.”

  “But why won’t I be at the crane?”

  Mercy shook her head, and her eyes sparkled. “Because you and I going to take my big piece of camper awning you’ve drawn all over, and we’re going to follow those lines to wherever they want to take us.”

  “But why?”

  Mercy gave Brandon a cross expression. “Because no matter what we might find, we already know it has to be the stuff of dreams.”