Dating : Joey’s Craft

By Wayne Lemmons

Raindrops littered the outer surface of his window, drawing shadows on the eggshell-colored wall behind him. Joey watched the watery streams left behind them, turning to the shadow reflection occasionally for comparison. He smiled at the two paintings that nature was in the midst of giving him.

His pencil, a charcoal colored tip glancing against the formerly blank page in his sketchbook, seemed to move without his control. Whatever he was drawing with had a way of taking over when he was in the middle of a really good sketch. Joey smiled at that as well.

Music was coming from the lower rooms of his home. Katherine, also known as Mom, was playing the old-school rock that she just couldn’t let go of. He’d always enjoyed poking at her about the tunes, claiming that the CD’s should have crumbled with age by now, but he secretly liked the stuff. At eleven he was still young enough to have an open mind to music and art that weren’t considered the most stylish, while being old enough to have a little fun at the expense of whoever was introducing it. The fun was never mean because he wasn’t a mean boy.

More streaks appeared on his bedroom wall, ghosts of rain that would soon evaporate into the sky once again or collect in puddles for even later disposal. He tried to add one to the picture that hadn’t yet appeared and saw the drawing stutter. He erased it with a gum remover. Harmony was restored and he let the actions of his pencil tip come on their own again. It was easy to ruin an excellent drawing by forcing it.

Joey was humming along with some tune that he didn’t remember his mom playing before, figuring that it must have been something from either the Stones or that weird Bowie guy. He barely glanced at the image on the paper in front of him.

He could see the clouds through steady sheets of rain. They were gray and sad, covering the brilliant blue that he knew would be revealed again once the sky went dry. He wasn’t made unhappy by that gray-going-on-dark sky. Again, it was just something that nature was giving. His father had taught him about such things, usually smiling slightly as if he was either joking or mildly happy about the facts he was reciting.

That thought, the one about his father’s slightly upturned lips, did finally break through his optimism. His Dad had been gone for two years, gone from sight and gone from the world. Joey held onto the idea that the man who’d taken time to explain how the world worked in little pieces was sitting on some easy chair stationed in a warm corner of Heaven. It was usually enough to take Joey’s sadness down a notch, but on rainy days it was sometimes not enough.

Another drop streamed downward, this time a tear rather than a raindrop. Joey wiped it away absently with his free hand, ruffling a fall of dark hair that stubbornly fell from behind his ear and near to his cheek. Long hair had been his idea and his mother hadn’t given him much grief about the growth of his unruly mane.

His father had been a fan of long hair tied loosely in the back, had always worn his own that way, and Joey felt the need to copy it. He hadn’t let scissors touch the mop since the day before the man he’d idolized was laid to rest.

The paper beneath his young hand was filling with something more, changing from the singular portrait of rain shadows on a creamy wall. Joey didn’t look at it too closely. The drawings were always better when he didn’t mess about in their creation with conscious thought.

He let his memory wander a bit further, though carefully. He didn’t want to spend much time on sadness. Another tear fell, but he hardly noticed its passage.

There were other rainy days to think of. One day, in particular, began to play out along the bright surface of his thoughts. His Mom and Dad sitting on the large easy chair that had ever been his Dad’s favorite. Her legs slung over one arm of the colossal thing as she leaned back against an arm of the man himself.

Joey had been stationed on the floor in front of the couch. He preferred that seat instead of the cushions because of the easy access it gave him to the table top. His sketchbook was open to a new page and there had been colored pencils laying around it.

“Drawing us again?” his Mom had asked.

A nod from Joey was all she got. He was busy choosing which colors to begin with.

“Don’t disturb the boy when he’s crafting,” Dad interrupted with that usual grin.

It looked different. The smile. Joey knew in the present that he might be able to find the sketch he’d made of them, but it wouldn’t help the boy in the past. At eight, Joey hadn’t been nearly as good with making the pictures as he was now. He would have to rely on the memory to explain the difference, though he was fairly positive that he already knew.

“You’re so funny,” Mom had said, leaning her head against the thinning hair that still lay on Dad’s shoulders, “Crafting.”

There was a cough, then another. Sporadic fits of the same had both preceded and followed that day. His father had already been close to finishing things out, but still had enough life left in him to smile. Joey continued his look back, saw Dad’s face again, knew why that mild grin was different from the usual.

“Well, that’s what he’s doing. He’s making something from nothing. A blank page becomes a sketch. A sketch is colored in and becomes a picture. It’s art, sure, but in the end of it you can call it his craft. Right, Joey?”

Joey was still in the real world, but that old version of him nodded and the new did the same. The boy of eleven felt his lips curve at the corners, tilting upward in a nearly perfect impression of his father’s grin. Another tear to follow the others. He heard it hit the paper, the sound finding a place in his ears even over the sound of whatever song was playing.

He looked down, still feeling the memory of his father on that day trying to let itself out. The picture had changed, become something awe-inspiring. His thin lips parted and a breath was drawn in. It took a long moment for him to exhale as he stared at what he’d made without knowing it.

His father’s face was there, intertwined with the drops and streams of rain, shaped by the way they lay on the wall. It was nearly perfect how the streaming lines became his likeness. It was the man’s healthy face, not the one that had fallen further and further into disrepair as the cancer ate him piece by piece. That long-ago grin was different because the once strong man’s face had been thinning and weakening as the disease attacked him.

This, however, was different and beautiful and Joey couldn’t believe that he’d drawn the thing. Something made him look up, some touch that wasn’t really there, and Joey’s gaze fell upon the dark shadows on the light wall. Nothing seemed to compare to the image on white paper.

“No,” a whispering voice told him from the back of his mind, “Not there.”

The boy felt that touch again, that phantom caress, and could only obey it. His head turned and he was facing the window instead.

The rain continued to fall. Scatterings of water tapped and fell along the invisible barrier, filling in a shape, many shapes, and making the same image he’d drawn. His father was there, whether it was something from his saddened mind or another gift from nature, and he was smiling in just that way. Tears came, but not a kind rooted in sadness. Joey let them fall as he copied his father’s smile.

“Keep crafting,” that whisper told him again, “Create and remember that I’ll always be here to help you and to see what you’ve made.”

Joey gave a nod, tried to speak through grinning, trembling lips. Nothing came, but his father was still there and still smiling for a bit longer. Moments later, the rain finished its assault on the world, the last remnants of that smiling face falling away, and Joey watched as the clouds changed their course. The sky, a brilliant and blue thing, soon was peeking through and the day was clearing.

He looked at the sketch again, seeing that it hadn’t changed, that at least part of what he’d seen had really happened. There were spots along its lines where tears had gotten away from him, but Joey chose not to try fixing the lines they’d smeared.

He only smiled in that way he’d inherited, turned the page, and began to craft once more.