What if it Were Art?

The old man huffed down the side of the crum­bling coun­try road. It was a tar­ry lane fringed by pow­er lines that draped lazi­ly from the cross­bars of decay­ing wood­en poles, a high volt­age gar­land descend­ing into the invis­i­bil­i­ty of dis­tance. The grass that cra­dled the route had shed the green of sum­mer and was set­tling into the drab olive of autumn. The sky was dark cot­ton. A blaz­ing amber sun­set fad­ed wisps in the deep azure of nightfall. 

He felt noth­ing save the heft of his boots and thought noth­ing but for the idea that the cracks in the road were beau­ti­ful­ly ran­dom and com­plex.  They were of vary­ing lengths, though none out­landish­ly beyond aver­age in reach or brevi­ty.  The cracks uni­ver­sal­ly start­ed thick­er at a cen­tral branch then dart­ed from both sides into the black­top and fur­ther into the grass uni­form­ly end­ing in a sharp point after a jagged mea­sure.  The way they spread their black fin­gers over the stoney grey tar made him think of light­ning in the neg­a­tive. He passed the rows of corn, hard and dry, crack­ling in the breeze on the eve of har­vest time.

The rhythm of his foot­steps was calm­ing.  Their steady crunch the tem­po of his med­i­ta­tion, each thump dis­pers­ing chaos and replac­ing it with its new sim­ple pat­tern. Step, crunch, breath, crunch, thump, crunch, step, thump, crunch . . . the vibra­tion from his boot-heel a repeat­ing reminder of his phys­i­cal attach­ment to this world.

“You are here. I am here.”, step.

“I am here. You are here.”, step.

He repeat­ed as he walked. Over the years the words had become the mantra he used to stop all the voic­es in his head. He had found that it was not enough to be alone.  Memories showed up, specters of the unset­tled. The argu­ments per­sist­ed, and so he focused on his feet until he was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with no one, only notic­ing the things that exist­ed here, in his phys­i­cal presence.

“There’s the old Philips place. Paint needs scraped and touched up.  Don’t see the dog any­where. Chain’s loose. Wonder if the old girl final­ly died.  New Buick in front of the Wagoner’s place.  Maybe it’s not the Wagoner’s place any­more.  Been a while since our last visit.”

The old man looked to the hori­zon, scratched his beard, then looked back to the corn field over his left shoul­der.  He turned back to face the way he had come and began count­ing the tele­phone poles, final­ly rest­ing his gaze on the decay­ing farm­house he’d passed.

“Did I pass it, or am I in the wrong place?”

Jack’s moth­er lived in the next farm­house about a quar­ter mile south of the old Philips place. He was cer­tain that the cat­fish pond was in a small clear­ing just past the Philips’ corn, on the oth­er side of the barn adja­cent to the pas­ture. In his mem­o­ry — beyond where the ghosts of cat­tle past no longer grazed inside the dirt loop that made the horse run for the 4H show ponies of yesterday’s grandeur — was a dusty track that forked to the left.

He turned again to face the hori­zon and con­tin­ued plod­ding his med­i­ta­tion in the direc­tion he remem­bered but was no longer sure of.

“I am here.” Step, thump, crunch.

“You are here.” Step, thump, crunch.

“I am grav­el. Listen to the way I crack­le and scrape beneath your boot.  I’m sor­ry if I’m noisy.  I just want­ed you to notice. You can hear me. You are here.”

I am grass. Listen to my whis­per. Feel the way your boot slips across my sur­face.  Don’t wor­ry, I won’t let you fall.  I just want­ed you to notice.  You can feel me.  You are here.”

The last row of dry feed corn slipped by, and Jack saw the path that led back to the clear­ing. It was nar­row with deep grav­el ruts bend­ing in a slow curve.  A small brown shan­ty that’s rust­ed tin roof sloped in an unex­pect­ed angle above what remained of a pic­nic table stood at the bank of a very small, very still pond.  Willows draped most­ly leaf­less branch­es every twen­ty paces in a semi­cir­cle bor­der­ing the far side of the water.  A for­mer­ly elec­tri­fied fence boxed the lit­tle fish­ing hole and its encamp­ment; pro­tec­tion from the live­stock that had long since passed from the field of the living.

Jack made his way down the curve of the path, momen­tar­i­ly won­der­ing if there were any­one in res­i­dence with­in the slow­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing shack.  Disregarding the con­cern, he con­tin­ued toward the water then took slow care­ful steps. The pier shud­dered on its with­er­ing antique legs with each step he took toward where it end­ed poised above the water.

“I am the pier. I was paint­ed the sharp brown of red clay thir­ty years ago to pro­tect me from the weath­er. So many boots have met me that my skin has worn thin, and the rain has made my grain wide and deep and the struts that hold me (and you) up are eat­en thin to break­ing.  Feel how I shake beneath you.  Feel how I wob­ble. It makes you catch your breath.  Your heart skips when I shud­der. Don’t wor­ry.  I won’t let you fall.  I just want­ed you to notice. You can see me. I am here.  You are here.”

He stood at the end of the dock and looked into the fiery gap between the land and the rain-heavy blan­ket of sky that made up the night.  The cool breeze of October’s breath caressed his cheeks and tus­sled his bangs across his fore­head.  A tiny red bea­con blinked atop a satel­lite tow­er miles in the dis­tance and a rhyth­mic hum from a free­way cas­cad­ed gen­tly back to his ears.  Crickets pul­sat­ed their scis­sor-legged psalms. Night stole in between the peaks of the forests beyond the fields and the gleam of the dying sun reflect­ed from the edge’s misty canopy.

Jack stared, unmov­ing, up at the met­al wind­mill where the struc­ture stood motion­less, dis­re­gard­ing the wind. 

“You feel like that wind­mill, don’t you Jack?  You feel like you’re stand­ing still, like you were made for a pur­pose, but now aban­doned are trapped, stuck, motion­less, unable to ful­fill it.”

“Yes, Grace, I do.”

“You feel like you’re in prison.  Like noth­ing you do or say makes any dif­fer­ence.  You feel like there’s some­thing you are sup­posed to do, some task, some goal, but just like that wind­mill you are no longer equipped to accom­plish it and just like that wind­mill you are alone and the world moves on in the dis­tance not even notic­ing how you strug­gle to bring them the gift that was the pur­pose for which you were made, don’t you Jack?”

“Yes, Grace, that’s right.”

“I under­stand, Jack.  I have felt that way for eons.”

There was a long pause, a warm silence in the gleam­ing sun­set.  Jack start­ed at the sud­den scream of rust­ed met­al, his feet unsteady on the shud­der­ing pier. The sail of the wind­mill spun one-hun­dred-eighty degrees and stopped fac­ing the oppo­site direc­tion, its fan blades still motion­less.  The shaft of the old met­al struc­ture shud­dered and a peb­ble of some­thing fell from an aban­doned nest plop­ping per­fect con­cen­tric cir­cles on the glassy sur­face of the pond below. A cat­fish, long as Jack’s fore­arm and thick as his thigh, sur­faced and scooped up the fall­en prize.

“But Jack, what if you’ve got it back­wards?  Look again, Jack, and this time pay attention.”

He took deep slow breaths and lis­tened, focus­ing his con­cen­tra­tion on all the details of the sound­scape. There was a throb­bing hum from the dis­tant free­way.  On top of that he heard the crescen­do and ebb of crick­ets.  Then there was the rus­tle of the leaves.  Behind the silence of dis­tance a siren announced someone’s emer­gency miles away.  Faintly whis­pered from the back­ground was the scrunch­ing, vibrat­ing crack­le of a truck on a grav­el road a coun­ty away.  He stared into the sun­set and not­ed how per­fect­ly the yel­low fad­ed into orange, the orange into red, then red into azure, azure into mid­night, and mid­night into a quilt of tomorrow’s rain freck­led with stars; pin­pricks of light sent cen­turies before Jack was born.  He saw the rip­ples in the pond and felt their syn­chrony with the breeze over his face and the dance of the leaves as they clung to, then swirled from the branch­es that clutched them so dearly.

Jack became per­fect­ly still, no longer even breath­ing.  The sound­scape of the evening sun­set became a sym­pho­ny, no longer ran­dom, but just like Mozart, each sound select­ed and posi­tioned to evoke a feel­ing.  The pond, the fields, the for­est, and the wind­mill became a movie set, per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing the ide­al end to a pic­turesque evening spent qui­et­ly in the coun­try, and he real­ized that in its sum all of these intri­cate details pro­duced an expe­ri­ence that could not have been more per­fect if it had been script­ed for a film.  The tem­per­a­ture was per­fect, as was the breeze, the scene, the stillness.

“What if I made this just for you, Jack.  What if I made you a per­fect moment, like a pho­to­graph, but entire­ly immersive? 

“What if all that strug­gle, all that con­flict, all that striv­ing was actu­al­ly just a dis­trac­tion, a detrac­tion even?  What if all that dis­cord was the prison you find your­self in . . . the bar­ri­er to your purpose?

“What if I made all the moments, Jack . . . 

  and your only pur­pose was to enjoy what I made for you?

“Jack?

. . .

“What if it were art, Jack?”

. . .

“But why would you do such a thing, Grace?”

“Because I love you Jack, and I want­ed you to notice.”