Aaron Lelito

            I thank God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the 
            blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

            E.E. Cummings

I view the ripe rind of the ice-capped isle from the foreign deck, silent, bleak peaks, dusty brown rock strewn with mangy growth stretch to water’s edge, where whispering shallows shelter bright sapphire mussels, perhaps to be snatched by sharp-eyed gulls that screech over olive green granite ledge. Cowered by cut-glass glacier whose calves melt to mounds of emerald mosses, seen by those who care to seek. Snowy bog cotton, pink young lasses, daises dressed in Sunday best, blazes of buttercups, blueberries, minty pixie cups, budding birch, baby blue hare bell, round red heath, and blankets of orange lichen that will crack ancient slate-grey boulders, at glacial speed.

Crystal waterfalls trace shadowy clefts that ribbon to rivers, feed sweet angelica and spicy arctic thyme, lavender labrador leaves brew weathered dreams in rainbows of bright homes. Villages of fisherman mine gold from the sea through salt spray in shimmering light of endless day as did sage Inuit whalers in tanned skin qajaq, taming white-capped waves that harbor ivory-tusked walrus, humpback, minke, narwhal cruising in cold arctic waters as I leave the land’s deep, diverse, and peaceful shades of green.
 

First Place Winner of the Novus Literary Arts Journal High School Creative Writing Contest

I know foggily of the way my grandfather used to sit in his chair and look at me. He was ninety-one, and I was eight. Combined, our ages could have nearly turned a century– I never knew him well. I know his stories and his sayings. Sayings so clever that, anytime in doubt, my father would attach his name to a clever, anonymous aphorism.

“That’s what Homer used to say.”

Or,

“Dad used to say that.”

I heard, through many, of his vivacity in business. Of how he made his fortune in Nashville from a deal written on the back of a napkin. He was a bookbinder and he, “could make paper do anything he wanted.”

He was stationed in an electric wheelchair for the latter end of his life. In his own bed, he died peacefully. I’ve heard his stories and, as a Southern gentleman, of his involvement in flame-lit circles. And of his severance from those circles.

My only memories of him are, most potently, checkers. I hate the game checkers, now, because it doesn’t involve enough strategy. I would play my grandfather as he sat in his wheelchair. I played the black pieces and always lost viciously. I remember how he would peer, hunched, through his stacks of my murdered tokens at the game board. I remember how, after he’d beaten me, he offered to handicap himself by playing with his non-dominant hand.

He still beat me. I was stunned.

I always wanted to go fishing with him, but never did. I don’t like fishing, now, although it’s been a while since I’ve tried it.

My final memories of him are microscopically hollow. He was in hospice, and couldn’t speak. He was listening to something that I didn’t understand, and my dad only explained it to me as “one of his favorites. He’s listening to it so he doesn’t miss any of it.”

Now I know that my father could have meant anything– miss it, or miss it?

He asked if I wanted to talk to Grandaddy.

I said no.

Grandaddy died, peacefully, on August 16.

It was a wonderful funeral, now that I think about it. He had, it seemed, hundreds of friends that popped out of rich southern homes to pay their due. I remember my dad’s eulogy, but only some of it. He spoke. Something along the lines of:

“And Homer returned from his first year of college, expecting to continue living with his parents. Everything was swell. He made it back and enjoyed the company of his family, who had been gently nagging him to move out into the world. Only then did he realize, when he wandered into his room, that his mother had sold his bed…”

And the funeral hall quivered with hollow, smiling, wet laughter, still missing this wonderful man that I knew nothing about.

***

As a teenager, I became remarkably interested in business. I was interested in blazing my own trail, mobilizing people, managing a company, and trying to provide the best service possible. My grandfather was not on my mind. I asked my father about contracts and signatures. How did so much responsibility condense into a scribble on paper? How could you be thrown in jail for scribbling on the wrong thing? Why did you scribble your name?

I asked my father how contracts were signed. He explained,

“Well, not everything has to be written down. People make contracts all the time without signing anything. Any time you take something out of a store, you promise, like a contract, to trade money for it on the way out.”

It blurrily made sense to me. My father noticed.

“Writing is usually just the best way to make sure everything is good in the deal. If you write down everything that you’ll do, and the other person writes down everything that he’ll do, then it makes it really easy. Signing the bottom is just the way that the government knows you promised to do something.”

It became a little clearer. “So you can just make a contract on anything? Fake stuff?”

“Well it’s not fake stuff, but pretty much. Grandaddy made his money from a deal on the back of a paper napkin.”

“Oh, that’s cool. How?”

“He was a bookbinder. I’ll tell you the story later.”

And I waited. And he told me.

***

When a person decided to order a new carpet, the carpet company would send them a sample book, including all the small, cut squares of carpet that they offered so that the customer could decide which carpet they wanted. The company had to buy the books off of someone, and those people ran a carpet-sample-book-making company.

However, this sample-book company was having problems affording their binding. The binding needed to be unique for such a strange book. It needed to be strong but flexible, and the sample-book making company didn’t know enough about the business of paper-binding to try and streamline the process. They had been getting their books bound in New York for twelve dollars each.

They contacted my grandfather, who was in the paper-binding business at the time. They met in the 40th Avenue Cafe, and the company, represented by three men, brought one of the sample-books for Homer to inspect.

“We need a better binding.” The cafe clinked around them and blue winter light shone through the large windows.

My grandfather looked at the sample-book. “Sure. I know what you mean.”

The coffee steamed and smelled dark. The company representatives looked at each other.

“I can probably do this for a quarter.”

A pause. “A quarter? A quarter of what?”

“A quarter. Twenty-five cents.”

“For the whole binding?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“I want thirty percent of the company.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m the best paper-binder in Nashville.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“You can’t afford these books. Watch.”

And he sketched out the comprehensive financials of the company on a paper napkin with a pen he kept in his breast pocket. He looked up at the men.

A beautiful young waitress swirled in, smiling, with arms full of hot food. A round of thank-you’s tittered through the four of them. She left, and the men watched her leave. They looked back to my grandfather with their politeness vanished.

“Can you really do it for a quarter?”

My grandfather paused and his young eyebrows crinkled. “I can show you.”

He threw on his overcoat and asked them to follow his car to his office. His breath fogged after he shut the door, and he could hardly feel the keys as he clambered into the workshop. The men followed him in. The light flicked on, and my grandfather began to hum. He gathered the materials like a practiced craftsman, and the businessmen, suddenly apprehensive, shut the blinds and windows. Everything was illuminated by a single, bright bulb over my grandfather’s workstation.

He worked quickly– mocking up a sample-book in a few minutes and binding it securely. The men had never seen anyone work so fluidly. His hands danced. As far as they were concerned, dark magic coursed through his veins.

“Here.” my grandfather held up the mock-book, weighed down with lead squares in place of the carpet samples. He handed the still-sticky book to the representatives, who flipped through it, checked the binding, flipped it open and let it hang freely above the carpet, and were amazed when it held. They flipped it closed and blinked slowly in the dim light.

“How much did it cost?”

My grandfather shrugged, and counted some ingredients in his head. He looked at them.

“Thirteen cents.”

The men’s heads spun like roulette wheels.

“Or thereabouts.”

***

And thus my family’s small fortune was born on the back of a paper napkin. Everything was translated from the “fake stuff” to real, cold signatures scribbled darkly on official paper, where dollar signs really meant dollars and breaker lines split the page like pillars of the earth.

My grandfather was a father of three, like my father. He raised two girls, artists, and a grounded, working son. My dad was the youngest. Homer’s two elder daughters are my aunts– one is gently-estranged, and the other is so far down the limb in the family tree that she’s spying the ground, calling my father a racist with her glass full of his liquor, holding antique grudges like the bones of a lost Tyrannosaur.

My father’s oldest sister, Laura, is wonderful in the way an older sibling is. She took my brothers and me on trips, expeditions, and adventures that circled the town, the circus, and the state. I would sit on the roof with her and watch the garbage truck shake the trash can into its vast open bed. I rode an elephant in the circus with her. She’d pick me up from class and do the chicken-dance with me in preschool. When she was done, we ate Krispy-Kreme and threw rocks into the creek that lazily circled a nearby office building.

Laura is wonderful.

And she loved Homer.

***

In Laura’s senior year of high school her class took a celebratory field trip, riding a thundering bus in lazy circles around the city.

They couldn’t leave the state because one of her classmates had a recital in town.

In the mid seventies, the drinking age in the South was eighteen years old. The seniors took full advantage of that rule, typically, but the rule for this final trip was that there would be absolutely no drinking. It was a silly rule. The kind of rule that, when suggested, only causes students to look at each other, wink, and use solo cups instead of wine glasses. It meant nothing.

Left in the hotel one night, my aunt and a couple of her friends stole away into the boys’ room. One of the boys, known for smuggling and sneaking, ran off to the liquor store down the street to buy three bottles of rum and two jugs of punch.

The drink was sticky sweet and seductive. My aunt Laura says she can still smell it.

Having barely drunk two cocktails, my aunt, her friends, and the boys jumped at the sound of the door hammering. One of the boys, drink still in hand, automatically rushed up to answer it:

“I got it!”

Frantic tinkling of glasses and bottles answered this claim.

“Wait! No–”

“Shhh!”

“Put it under the couch!”

“Don’t answer it!”

Before rational thought could reach his mind, he peeled the door open and had his cup seized by the supervisor, Mrs. Susan. She, dressed like a sleepwalker with the eyes of a devil, hair in a frenzy, screeched at the students to “Give it!” The students sputtered apologies and excuses, and through the confusion, she grasped the rum and dumped it directly onto the hotel carpet. Its dark color pooled quickly into a permanent, blotchy stain.

The students were silent.

***

“… Mr. Brown?”

“M’yes?” Homer sat up in bed groggily with the phone. His sagging smile lines were illuminated by the glow of the table-lamp.

“Um, sir, we’ve caught your daughter.” The man stuttered. “Drinking, she was, on the class trip. And we would like for her to return home immediately.”

“Hm?” My grandfather scratched his beard. “Drinking?”

“Yes, sir. We understand your frustration and are sorry for any sort of inconvenience–”

“She’s been drinking since she was fourteen.” He yawned.

“Um, well, yes, sir, but I–”

“I don’t see any problem.”

“Well, sir, you see– it- it was against the rule–” And he was cut off by a violent handoff of the receiver. Immediately came the screeching, high-pitched tone of Mrs. Susan.

“Mr. Brown–!”

Her tone was different. My grandfather stiffened in bed. He was awake.

“Come pick up your daughter immediately!” She inhaled. “Never have I ever seen such disrespect in this academy– it is an outrage!”

“Ma’am–” he felt warm.

“I am awestruck! Completely bewildered– she’ll stay in her room for the rest of the trip thinking about what she’s done. And I–”

“Excuse me…”

She did not stop. “I think- I think– you should be ashamed of yourself for raising such a daughter!” The pitch was wildly high. “I ought to throw her headfirst out of the academy–”

“Don’t you touch a hair on her head!” Thunderous. “I’ll sue the school for every damn penny you’ve got. You work for me, miss. I could have you begging on the corner of 5th Avenue by nodding–” He paused.

The other end was silent.

“Give the phone to Laura.” My grandfather said.

Mrs. Susan handed the phone to Laura. On the phone, Laura was crying.

“Oh my God, Dad, I’m so sorry.” She coughed and broke out again into sobs, “I’m so sorry. I feel awful, Daddy, I shouldn’t have–”

“What were you drinking?”

She sniffed. “What?”

“What were you drinking?”

“Um, rum and punch.”

My grandfather sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Rum and punch?” He adjusted and swung to the side of the bed. “Could’ve been anything else. I thought I taught you better. Must’ve been too sweet.”

“Yeah, it was. It was.” She sniffed again.

My grandfather laughed imperceptibly. “Of course. You wanna come home?”

“M’yeah.” It was pitiful and quiet.

“Okay. I’m on the way over. Your mother and I are leaving for Chicago in the morning. You won’t even have to repack your bags.”

He heard her suddenly beaming through the phone. “Really?”

“Of course.”

Relief passed through her. Her voice was still quiet. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” He adjusted the phone to the other side of his head. “Okay, honey. Gotta go. I’ll see you in a second.”

He hung up.

***

I’m sure the shadow of my grandfather still windily wanders the streets of Chicago, shaped to the slender forms of my aunt and grandmother as they skipped the sidewalks. I’m certain their laughter still echoes in the finest hotels in the city, and the rum stain is still sitting silently in the carpet of an unnamed hotel. I know that the same gale that blew his overcoat blows mine.

In downtown Nashville, I know that a certain paper napkin, darkened with pen, bounces like a tumbleweed along my streets. I know that the binding glue, on his desk, is still sticky.

I know the lone bulb still glows warmly.

But I also know that he will never be behind my checker pieces again. I know that he’ll never tell me his own stories.

I’ll never fish with him. I’ll never know what he was listening to before he died.

The world may never explain to me the cause of the sticky-sweet laughter that bubbled in the funeral hall. He’ll never teach me to bind a book.

I wonder if he heard me run away from him in his final hours.

I can never ask him.

All that I know is that, to this quiet and brilliant man,

I know I never said goodbye.

“Why can’t leaves stay alive all year long?” Collin’s favorite place to ask questions was at the dinner table.

         “Well,” I could see the wheels turning in my mother’s head, “for one, when it gets real cold out, the leaves can’t survive the extreme temperatures, so they die,” Collin began to fiddle with his compass for a moment, rather than asking another question. Then he quickly reached for another scoop of green beans, which resulted in his right sleeve drowning in the bowl of gravy that sat in front of him.

I hate compasses.

         Collin Hill was ten years old, and he always carried a compass. It was small, small enough for him to wear around his skinny, pale neck. He claimed that “if Christopher Coloumbus had a compass, then so must I,” – a childish dream, which drove him to his adventures.

         Collin was six when he was given his treasured compass. I remember seeing him put it around his neck for the first time and thinking that he would take it off within a day or two. Collin read geography books and studied atlases for fun. He would write down everything he observed in red or blue covered college ruled notebooks. At night, he would memorize different constellations, and then he would proceed to sleep under an army green tarp, which he had secured between his two favorite trees. They were Maple trees. All the while, his trusty compass stayed securely around his neck. The casing was metal, which made me believe that it would be cold against his chest, but he most often wore it outside of his shirt.

         Collin knew many people, but he didn’t hang out with very many. He thought that they thought that his hobbies were strange, but I think it’s just because he would dip his French fries in mayonnaise. Collin had a habit of drawing faces. He used his compass, which was a perfect circle, and traced an outline for the faces he drew. He never drew his faces in his college ruled notebooks though, he had a sketchbook for those. And he never drew the same face twice.

         As Collin’s older sister, I was able to observe, and suffer through, his many intriguing conspiracies. For as long as I could remember, Collin was the smartest in the house, but not because he had all the answers, but because he asked all the questions. We had lived in an old, red brick house off Poppy Meadow Rd. There were never any Poppies or meadows, in fact we had six acres of dense “wooded freedom”, as Collin called it, behind our house. And behind those six acres, there were thirty-five more acres of towering trees, patchy grassy areas, and little streams, which led to a large creek.

         On one particular Saturday, Collin had double knotted his worn out Merrel hiking boots. They were grey, with black laces, and they had the beginning of a tear on his right pinky toe, exposing his white Fruit of the Loom socks. He threw an extra water bottle into his backpack and then asked me to go with him on his afternoon adventure.

         “I can’t, I’ve got homework to do,” I responded, “and besides, Amy is coming over later,”

         “Whatever,” Collin paused and began to fidget with his compass, turning it over his scrawny fingers. He was contemplating his next words, “I’m going to the creek,”

         “I’ll have to go next time,” I shook my head. Collin sighed and then picked up his backpack off the floor and slung it over his shoulder. His compass, which was four years old at that point, was beginning to show signs of age. There was a dent over the E and a crusty substance had become quite comfortable around the edge of it.

         “Bye, Mom!” I heard Collin yell as the screen door slammed shut behind him.

         “Collin, there’s a storm coming. You better be back before dinner this time!” My mom responded to him. I’m not sure if he heard her. I watched him through the back window as headed toward the tree line. He would always stop before he entered the woods and take a second to kiss his compass. I never understood why he did this, but I never brought it up to him because I didn’t want him to know that I noticed it. But on that day, he didn’t do that. In fact, he didn’t pause at all. He simply walked straight into the woods.

         The storm came rolling into our town within the hour. The sky turned dark gray and the wind became harsh. Collin had been stuck out in storms before, but that storm was different. The leaves were ripped off his favorite Maple trees, and his army green tarp blew away. Collin never made it home that day. The police told us that he was swept away in a flash flood. Authorities argued about where he had been beside the creek, or if he even made it to the creek, before the flood came, but they never knew for sure. Officials blamed the storm, my mother blamed herself, but I blame that stupid compass.

         I live in the city now. No trees. No stars. No sense of direction.