After
Rust
“We’re out of purple paint, Mr. Paige.”
I crouched down next to Bobby, one of my younger students. He had a paintbrush held in his hand like someone would hold a shovel, and yellow paint all over his face and shirt.
“Do you want to know something neat, Bobby?” I asked him.
“Always,” Bobby replied.
Smiling, I took a paintbrush from Bobby’s little plastic cup of brushes. I reached over onto the palette he was using and began swirling the red and blue paints together.
“If you mix red and blue paint together, you get purple paint,” I explained.
“No way,” Bobby said, mesmerized, watching the colors mix together.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Duh. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“What are you painting a picture of?” I asked as I looked down at the blobs of paint on Bobby’s piece of paper. “Is that a dog?”
“Yep, that’s my dog, Mitsy. And my mom and my dad, and me, of course.”
“And you’re all purple.”
“Yes. Purple is the best color, you know.”
“I had no idea. Thanks for letting me know.”
“You’re welcome. I can teach you stuff, too. You’re lucky I’m here.”
A bubble of laughter burst into the air. “Boy, am I ever.”
I stood and began making my rounds through the small classroom. It wasn’t much, but it was familiar to me now. The paintings on the walls that had accrued over the years, the old cabinets at the back with art supplies, the red polka-dot carpet littered with bright blue dots. They’d all become familiar to me.
A year or so after moving back to Heaven concluding college, a position had opened up in the local elementary school for a creative arts teacher, and I’d leapt at the opportunity. Since then, teaching was the only thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
The bell rang. Students began running around the room, yelling that it was home time, heading for their cubbyholes on the left side of the classroom. Parents showed up and picked up their kids, some chatting with me about their children and how they were behaving in class.
When all the children were gone, and the room filled with silence, I shut off all the lights in the classroom, and locked the door behind me. Other teachers waved good night to me as I left for the evening.
I decided to go visit my parents to see if they needed any help around the yard now that spring was fully upon us and my dad couldn’t quite do all the physical things that he used to.
It was warm outside, pleasant, without the humidity that often came along with the heat. The air was fresh and there was just a dusting of the smell of spring flowers in the calm breeze.
I barely noticed the people around me, as I leisurely made my way to my parents’ house. My mom said this was a usual occurrence for me. She claimed that I never noticed anyone around me so long as I was outside. The sunlight engulfed me, as did the clouds, the cool breeze, the drizzle of rain.
I spent the walk admiring the lovely green grass of the lawns, and the baby birds chirping in the trees.
“Rust!” my mom called to me from across the street. She and my dad were sitting out front on their porch. She stood up and waved frantically, acting as though I hadn’t seen her just two days prior. Still, it brought a small smile to my face.
I crossed the street and walked up the concrete path to the front porch.
“I’m just stopping by to see if you two need help doing anything around the yard. It’s a beautiful day. We could do some gardening,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” my dad protested, good humor written all over his face. “Come have a beer with your old man. Sit, stew, revel in the light of the world, Rust.”
I chuckled. “Or we could be productive and do some gardening.”
“Bah.” He flipped his hand in the air. “That’s for another time, another day.”
I accepted the bottle of beer my mom handed to me from the cooler next to the wooden bench. Taking a seat on one of the chairs facing them, I looked at my mom and dad and felt a swell of happiness. They were more content now than they’d ever been in their lives. My dad still owned the butcher shop, but he’d finally taken my mom’s advice and slowed down. He hired a manager for the shop, the son of one of his best friends, and he was running things wonderfully. My dad, in fact, was planning on selling the butcher shop to him within the next few years. My mother was happier because she had more time to spend with my father who lived his days like the semi-retired man he was. I suspected that having me living so close by also had something to do with the constant smiles on their faces.
“So, Son,” my dad began. “Bringing anyone to the family BBQ we’re having next weekend?”
My smile fell.
My mom rushed to say, “Not that we’re pressuring you or anything, Rust. We just want you to be happy. You’re such a smart, handsome man.”
Age had barely changed me. I still had freckles covering my face, even if they were lighter than they’d been in my youth. My fire-red hair was bright as ever, if a little longer now than I’d worn in it in my college days.
My slight frame hadn’t filled out even now that I was on the brink of turning thirty.
“No,” I replied. “There isn’t anyone I’ll be bringing.”
“What about that nice man you were seeing a few weeks ago? From the next town over? I thought you two had so much in common because you were both teachers and love children,” my mom replied.
“It just wasn’t there, Mom.”
My dad nodded as if he knew just what I was talking about. “That spark.”
I looked up at him. “I’m not looking for a spark, Dad. I’m waiting for a lightning strike.”
My parents shared a look.
I looked down at the rim of the beer bottle in my hands. “I know. I’m living with a ghost— a ghost that was never mine to begin with.”
My mom spoke softly when she said, “Maybe it’s time to go through the field, Rust.”
Since the day I’d moved back to Heaven after college, not once had I visited the field behind my parents’ house that used to bring me such solace. I’d stood at its edge and looked at it like it was a dark, endlessly deep sea that would swallow me whole if I took even one step out into it. It would rage against me, pulling me down into a dark place I couldn’t recover from.
For years, I’d stayed away.
“I can’t,” I said quietly.
That field I’d loved so much represented everything that had broken my heart. It was where I’d first realized that I liked boys, where I’d written countless, pointless letters, where I’d had my first kiss, where I’d fallen in love, where my heart was first broken…
“We think it’s time,” my dad said, interrupting my thoughts. “It’s a field, Rust. It’s not him. And you can’t avoid it forever. You live on the other side of it, and walk four blocks out of your way each time you visit us just to avoid it.”
A year after beginning my teaching job at the elementary school, I’d purchased the house that Ancel and his dad had lived in. My parents thought it was one last way I could keep my invisible strings on him, and maybe it was, but it helped the aching in my heart subside. If only a little.
I sipped my beer in silence as I listened to the wind rustling the leaves on the trees.
I knew my parents were right. It was time to let him go.
The long walk through my parents’ backyard seemed to last for years, an endless road with no horizon. They’d told me that they’d be home all evening in case I needed them. I knew I just might. I wasn’t strong without them, no matter how hard I tried to be.
My hand shook as I reached for the rusted old latch on the back gate. Through the wood slats I could see the yellow, tawny stalks of wheat waving to me from in between the thin pillars of grass. They called to me like an old friend, like the sweet voice of a loved one saying your name after years of solitude. The top of the l
atch was harder to unlock now; years of rain and disuse had allowed it to grow old.
My hands shook. I wished I were stronger. But the second the gate swung open, I could finally breathe. I walked out into the field that I’d experienced some of the most vital parts of my life in. The grass was shorter now than I remembered, or more likely I was taller. But the sun shone even brighter than I remembered, and the fresh smell of the air and the trees was even sweeter. I closed my eyes and held my arms out at my sides, slowly spinning, feeling like a young boy again. Nothing else mattered. I had the breeze and the sunlight and the soft grass brushing my ankles. There wasn’t anything else in that moment.
I opened my eyes.
In the distance was the tree I’d found myself below so often as a child. It was where I wrote my first love letter, my first angry note to my parents… where I’d found No. My heart constricted at the thought of my beloved childhood friend, but still I couldn’t stop my legs from pulling me toward that tree. I wondered if any of my old letters would still be stuffed into that hole near the trunk. A part of me hoped they were, but another was afraid I’d weep with the loss of the innocence of my youth.
I swallowed hard. The tree was not quite as I had remembered it. It had felt massively larger, impenetrable even, when I was young. Now it still stood as an immoveable piece of nature, but without any of the luster and wonder that used to surround it. The branches hung low, feathered in an array of green and yellow pines that pulled down heavily. The bark was old and rotting in places, but the ground around the trunk was still covered in fallen pinecones and needles.
Uncaring of my pressed trousers, I sat down on the dirt around the base of the tree, and leaned back against the solid trunk. I stared up through the branches and looked at the slits of sunlight that found their way through the maze of branches.
I reached into the hole in the base of the tree to my right and felt around for any letters I might’ve left there over the years.
My hand stilled.
The tips of my fingers brushed the smooth, soft finish of paper. I knew that feeling better than I knew the feeling of my own skin. Tentatively, I withdrew my hand, taking out the large bundle of paper with me.
The stack of papers was huge. And not mine. I panicked, for a moment, wondering if I was imposing on someone else’s letters. Had some other person come here throughout the years and hidden their secrets here as well? There were so many folded pieces of paper bundled together with an elastic band, that I knew from the first touch they weren’t mine.
Just as I was about to put the letters back where I’d found them, something caught my eye.