by C.T. Millis
Chapter 15
James kept the jar of change under his bed. He waited until a Saturday afternoon when his mom was running errands and Sophie’s dad was snoring on the lounge chair. Sophie’s dad’s face was lit only by the television and the muted brown light that dispersed from the dark garbage bags he cut open and taped over the windows of the den. To stop the glare, he told James’ mom when she looked at him curiously as he hunched over the plastic he tore with his bare hands.
Like many children, James picked up any coins he could find. Often, he would even reduce himself to slyly begging for change returned to his parents at gas stations or fast food restaurants. James saved everything that was not copper.
He would drop the pennies on the ground while he saved everything else, hoping someone would find them and it would brighten their day- bring them some luck. Other times, he would set them by fountains so other people could find them and make a wish. For every penny a person finds on the ground, there is someone who put it there. James was one of those people.
The trip would take all day, but he had nowhere else that he would rather be. His house was all but invaded by Sophie’s dad and all of his things. The boxes filled the foyer and brimmed at the edges of each hallway.
He put the jar of change in a brown paper grocery bag. The ink of the store’s logo formed blocked letters. As James walked the bag jostled in his arms and he stared at the letters. They would switch from a word he recognized into nonsense, and back. Whenever he stared at something for a long time, it would become unrecognizable and lose all meaning. It only happened for the last few months, beginning after what happened to his father.
Once, in class, he was staring at the chalk board when suddenly he was overwhelmed with it as a two-dimensional block of dark green. The chalked letters and numbers on the chalkboard were just dust. James could not even remember the word: chalkboard. He could remember forests, what forests were the green on the chalkboard base was the same that would fill his vision if he would stand among the trees around the tree house near sunset when the light that shone through the leaves cast that same dark green into his eyes.
The teacher called on him to answer the question but it sounded like she was talking in another language. When she moved on, all the students chuckled. The chalkboard was a chalkboard again after that.
When the jar of change got heavy, he switched arms. James walked out of the neighborhood and along a long winding sleepy road set in the woods. Walking up each hill with the change was hard, and his mind grew silent during those times. Descending the hills was easy, but his mind went back to everything that happened to him. Sunlight lifted his eyes skyward.
The bank was a few blocks into town. It was built a few years earlier and sat low to the earth, almost built into a hill. In the lobby of the bank, James approached a change converter. When he poured the change from the jar into the top of the machine, each coin glittered like the light was disbursed underwater. When he was done, the two coins in the rejected change slot were a German Fennic and a bent dime. A receipt printed and he brought it up to the counter.
There was a younger woman behind the counter that smiled at him. She was refreshed to see a customer who was not disgruntled and middle-aged. She had long blonde hair like Sophie, although the bank teller was in her early twenties. She had shell-pink long nails and counted out $29.17 delicately and expertly with a few flicks of her wrist.
“Are you going to spend it all on baseball cards and candy?” she teased sweetly. Her intention was to connect with James. Although she did not know him, she felt instantly drawn to be kind to him. He smiled and looked down,
“I’m going to buy some paint.”
“Oh! Are you going to paint your room or a clubhouse, a fort?” James put the money in his pocket.
“I am going to try to paint on paper, like we do in art class.”
“Have a great day,” the girl behind the counter called out to James as he left the bank.
The bank was across the street from the craft store. James remembered when he went there with his mother to get supplies in order to make a banner for his father the last time he came home. They used big red letters and set it up in the dining room. His father liked it when he saw it, but a few days the novelty wore off and they threw it away.
The painting isle was near the back of the store. The rows of paint seemed to light up and hold endless possibilities of landscapes and portraits, memories and dreams. James found an acrylic kit that had basic colors, a platelet and a few paint brushes. That and a stack of paper cost about twenty five dollars.
Emerging from the store, the sun hit James’ face and he felt like everything was new. The clouds, trees, and buildings were fuzzy with the light, and the cars and the street shone in it. The feeling he had was like the feeling he got at the beginning of summer, the morning after school was out. It felt like anything could be done.
Later, at the tree house, James let his bare feet dangle out of the door into the air while he painted a sheet of paper that lay at his side. He was creating a universe where trees ran right up to the shore of a quiet lake, and a human form lay resting at the surface of the water. Although the shapes he used were simple, he felt something developing inside of himself. Each brush stroke seemed to strengthen his hope and desire to survive the suffering around him. He started to mix colors and added an elegant sort of texture to the trees and wispy clouds above the form.
James looked up. The sky was the same as in the picture. He felt like he could make both worlds converge. He wanted them to grow together like two trees, each too weak to stand on its own. Over time, their roots could intertwine and life, memories, and moments would be stronger. He closed his eyes and felt the breeze on his face. The breeze was cool the way it would be if it was carried over the lake in his painting.
He set the painting in the corner of the tree house to dry as he flipped through the pages of an art book that featured the life and paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. With the straw from a box of apple juice in his mouth, he found the page of dark charcoal and men in sickbeds. He read the corresponding paragraph which described Van Gogh’s overwhelming desire during his youth to help those around him with the power of God. He would read scripture to the poor and once put his gold watch in the offering plate.
The paintbrush was like a beam of gentle light in his hand. The parts of his history poured out onto the paper as the paint did. A ticking red watch lay over a wrist made of clouds in the painting he was working on. He worked without looking up. The leg James was sitting on went numb without his notice. James began to sweat as he lay down line after line of paint to form the scene. Every member of the human race that contributed to his creation began to emerge as a trickle of paint on the paper. Their past intertwined with his present and gave him strength.
He closed his eyes and spread out on his back across the floor of the tree house when the painting was done. The light flickered through the trees and created embers out of his vision behind the blood that rushed through his eyelids.
James felt like a warm blanket was wrapped around his skin and he could no longer feel anything. He felt like he was blissfully floating as he drifted into sleep.
Vincent was in church, fighting hysteria. His elbows dug deeply into the rough wood of the peasant pews as he covered his face to hide his tears and his mumbles of prayers. He felt like a machine. Fist it was a machine that did child tasks, then a machine that completed schoolboy tasks. He was not sure what kind of things he ought to do he was after that. That was Vincent’s problem. He would not have noticed the system he was born in, grew up in, worked in, and lived in if it had not run out of places for him. Sometimes, while painting, he would feel like he had a use. Other times, when he prayed he felt like he had a purpose also. He did not have a real use to those around him other than an anecdote or a funny story to tell to acquaintances. He saw the most useless version of himself in others’ eyes.
Dust. He coul
d taste the dust entering his nostrils. Everything was utterly human and dense. He could feel the blood surging to and from his heart. He could feel his face contort in grief. Each sinewy muscle tensed and released itself as if in maintenance. At the end of the world the church would be dust. His clothes would be dust. His body would be dust. Vincent’s paintings would be dust. Every word he said was less than dust already. His watch would be dust. Vincent’s watch would be dust. The collection plate, a simple slab of metal, urged itself into his vision. He gave his dust to it. Take my nothing. He thought, and continued in weeping prayer.
Stupid machine, he thought.
Nothing in particular woke James up, but waking made him think about dreams. Mr. Heckerman told him the only way to remember a dream is to wake up during it. Though, dreams were often like life in that they were experienced. James was entranced by the thought that by experiencing a dream, a person could know that they will wake up during it. Maybe, he thought, life is that way. James wondered that by experiencing life, a person could know that they would eventually emerge from it like it was a deep sleep. They could know they existed after just by existing in the present.
He could hear a car drive past on the road below. He wanted to capture that sound. The sound of all the molecules of rubber slapping all the molecules of concrete seemed like an immense orchestra that blended together to the gentle hiss that reached his ears. He wanted to paint that togetherness. Surging in him, the strength of his predecessors lapped at the surface of his consciousness.
What could he do, he wondered, to merge a peaceful world and the world he lived in? What could he do to fortify one oak with another?
