CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XIV: Present

“I had a friend,” Brendon began.

Mr. Livesey sipped his stout unconcernedly, blue eyes sparkling and his manner attentive, giving Brendon the impression the man waited to pounce.

“Casey Mattingly. We grew up together. One of the first paintings I crafted on my own stretched canvas was a gift to him. A car—a Le Mans—with fire roaring out the exhaust and under the tires like he was tearing up the devil.”

There’d been no future in that picture. The road blending into the black background, sky and land a void. Casey had loved it, claimed the world was just as dark and mysterious, waiting to be discovered by anyone brave enough to floor it down the drag.

A middle-aged woman, with a flour-spattered apron and a soft-spoken voice, arrived then. She set down a panini for Brendon and a simple BLT sub for Mr. Livesey, a small complementary crab dip and crackers going between them both.

Once she had disappeared and Brendon had something other than calculating blue eyes on which to focus, he went on. “We’d thought it a bad dream he had.”

“You and this Casey?”

And Robbie. Robbie especially, a pragmatic mind to calm Casey’s hysterics and Brendon’s imagination.

Brendon nodded. “He said he found himself on a long, dark road, tarmac hot from the day.”

Beastly hot, Bren. Clawing at your skin hot. Like the devil lived underneath.

“There’d been the roaring of an engine.”

A beautiful Le Mans, popping now and then, a tiny misfire fudging up the rhythm. Exhaust stuttering like that boy in Compass who always joined our pickup basketball games during recess.

“And he saw a light. A fire.”

Like eyes at first, Bren. Burning into my soul. Maybe the devil wasn’t too fond of those things I said to my sister the day I found her with that damn teacher, whats-his-name, Mr. Tallir.

“It came toward him down the road, roaring, the light turning into a streak.”

He fell into an introspective silence that Mr. Livesey didn’t break.

Another couple, a man dressed in khakis and a button-down with a base pass tapping against his buttons, the woman in navy pumps and a cream blouse, sat down at a nearby table, breaking the silence as iron chair legs screeched against pavers. Casey would have thrown them a caustic glare. Robbie would have wondered why, given he’d have been wearing khakis and a button-down as well.

“Brendon.” Mr. Livesey’s voice had gentled, become soft, soothing. “Brendon, how many original painting have you sold over the years?”

“I don’t know.”

“Too many. The sign of a success. An artist reaching toward his prime.”

Something in Mr. Livesey’s tone made Brendon lift his eyes from the picked at label of his ale. Mr. Livesey tapped knuckles lightly against the table. Absently. His BLT only half-finished, tomato leaking out of the bread like a red light of warning.

“How many that might cause grief?”

Brendon swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just…don’t know.”

Mr. Livesey’s hand, warm from the sun and the wrought iron, settled over Brendon’s. “Don’t you think you should find out?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next Chapter!

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

X: Yesteryears

The Frey family moved in the subsequent autumn. The desks disappeared, the footpath received a layer of sod and a fence rocked the world of every youngster who had ever taken that short cut through to the park. A new path formed within the forest within the first months of next spring and the kickball pickup games moved to the cul-de-sac two streets over.

But it was before that when Brendon first met Robbie.

Down at the docks, where a cheap restaurant smelled of blue crab and old bay and the brine made the air taste salty, Brendon would take a stub of a pencil and work on adding depth and light to waves with only black and white. Both parents worked now and Casey played recs soccer near all year round so there were days of solitude filled with nothing but the lapping of waves, tinging of the metal flagpoles and the scratching of his pencil.

“What are you doing?”

Brendon looked up into pale brown eyes and a paler face. The expression there he attributed to confidence, though he would later come to realize was merely competence and bravery mixing in a pleasant, but not outstanding, way.

“Drawing.”

The other boy sat down beside him and propped his chin in his hand. “I’ve seen you before. You drew that picture of the school that won the yearbook award last year. The one hanging in the display case.”

“That’s me,” mumbled Brendon, and he bent harder over his sketchbook.

“You’re an artist.”

“I want to be.”

“Nah. You are. Mom says you are what you are, you are what you do. You draw, so you’re an artist.”

Brendon paused and gave the boy a considering look. “My mom says I could be an artist one day.”

The boy smiled. “Do you draw comic book heroes?”

He didn’t. He shrugged.

“I’d love to see them if you do.”

And so Brendon went home, mind ablaze with the word artist, and set to work on using his newfound facial nuance behind masks of spandex.

~~~~~~~~~~

Next Chapter!

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

IX: Yesteryears

The house Robbie moved into had a yard the size of a baseball field. While that yard had stood empty, but for an occasional mowing by the realtors, neighborhood kids played pickup games or used the space as a shortcut to access the playground. A path, trudged out by hundreds of small sneakers with light-up heels and swishes and Velcro, grew harder packed and dirt heavy, grass trampled until blades dared not poke free their heads.

Middle schoolers claimed the bulk of the yard, right where the trees began to dot, but before the forest took over. They used a towering oak as first base, those at the plate using one hand to press against the bark, the other tossing acorns at the pitcher. Second base was an old stump, forcibly used as a table, muffin and gummy snack packages wedged between the splintering wood. Third base sat almost outside the foliage-heavy property line; a pair of old desks, one right-handed, one left. The left-handed one was third base since it sat closer in, where the other had branches that hung low, low enough to scrape the head of anyone who sat inside it.

Brendon thought the desks were only used as third base, up until one summer afternoon sent long shadows across the path. Casey had been left back somewhere at the playground, no curfew for dinner calling him home.

The girl made strange sounds. The boy stranger still. Heavy breathing, slight creaking of the rusted metal, leaves shivering, yet not masking a squelching sound.

Brendon held his breath. Held it tight in his chest, lungs closing around the air, refusing to let it rush free.

He drew what he’d seen later. A girl with her head thrown back, short orange-blonde hair hanging so her ear was visible. Boy with his face hidden, but his hand up grasping her shoulder, his dark head bobbing. Under the back of the desks there were slits where bundles of clothing piled, the boy’s jeaned knee making the right-handed desk rock and creak in unharmonious time.

For some reason, Brendon hid the drawing from his parents and showed it to Casey first, along with the tale of what he’d seen. Casey listened wide-eyed and rapt, his tongue still. Then he traced a finger over where the boy’s knee had pressed, then up to the girl’s unflattering neckline because Brendon had yet to understand shading well enough to make two-dimensions appear as three. That didn’t seem to matter to Casey.

“She’s got a mad face.”

“That’s not a mad face. That’s a…focused face.” Like when girls at school bent over projects.

Casey shook his head. “Mad.”

“I drew it,” snapped Brendon, tugging at the paper. “She’s not mad. She wasn’t mad. I watched.”

Casey grabbed the edge of the paper and jabbed a finger at her face. “She looks mad.”

“You’re a horrible drawer. How would you know?” And Brendon yanked. The paper tore at the side where Casey held it, cutting through the desk and the girl, but leaving the boy whole, though his face remained invisible, turned away, his expression unable to reveal his own secrets.

“That was your fault.” Casey crinkled the paper and threw it at Brendon, but it just fluttered in the other direction.

After Casey left, Brendon quietly threw the paper away and pulled out a stub of a pencil to practice faces. He drew the girl’s face over and over, until she showed up in his dreams, her expression morphing from mad to focused, to sorrowful to giddy, her eyes the catalyst for his learning of nuance.

What he didn’t learn that day, what took him much, much longer to learn, was why Casey had been so insistent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next Chapter!