"He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which would otherwise heal and do well."~ John Milton
Garage smells; the scent of stale newspapers, mulch crusting on the ends of shovels, decaying leaves crucified to rakes, all congealed and created an odor of remembrance. Life in the past came hovering, whimpering, whispering old family stories and countless tales of Saturday afternoons spent in the yard weed eating and putting down mulch. The lingering past, solidified in time in water-ruined cardboard boxes beneath old picture frames and in the dust that was preserving tee-ball trophies that everyone on the team had received. An old ban saw sat growing gray hairs of rust on its blade, yearning for the mossy wood stacked in the corner.
Will stood amidst the capsule of fleeting times, letting the past soak through and tell him what life once was, searching for the pellet gun Peanut had assured him would be in here. An old badmitten net was crammed in the corner, interwoven with cobwebs making it hard to distinguish where net and web ended and began. A rickety metal shelving leaned next to it, seemingly supported by it's shadow, which was propped against the dusty, cold floor. Paint cans were stacked the width and breadth of the shelves containing annoying colors like beige and light navy; the colors created tear stream paths down the side of the cans, which made them appear sad and unsatisfied with the color they had been given. Insulation drooped from the ceiling, as did a dented ping-pong ball which swayed back and forth, almost imperceptibly. Will stood in the doorway, not wanting to enter. He would have to. He couldn't see through the oblique colors and dull lighting. Stepping onto the cold floor, he felt at ease; the chill on a summers day relaxed his muscles and propelled him forward. The door behind him lay open letting the beeps and buzzer sounds of the TV liven up the fossils.
"You choose a category now Lean."
"I'll take Rivers that begin with the letter N for 200 please."
"This river ran red with blood in the Old Testament book Exodous."
Will heard the powerful voice of Peanut's mother stir at the question, confidently answering Mr. Trebeks answer, while scolding the contestant for being such a dullard.
"You pick rivers that begin with N when romantic poets are on the board. I swear, in this world you can either be smart or hip, not both." Peanut's mom quieted to hear the answer, which she had already stated as being The Nile.
A buzzer beeped in, "What is the Jordan River," answered a voice belonging to a quiet man. The shy beep of incorrectness tentavley informed the gentleman that he was indeed an idiot.
Another buzzer beeped, "What is the Rhine River." A woman this time, who was also informed she was an idiot.
"No, I'm sorry. The correct answer is the Nile River. God turned the Nile red."
Peanut's mother burst in, "Well sheee-it, these people don't know the Bible from Hamlet. Disgraceful!"
Will chuckled. He had known that one; how do these people get on Jeopardy? That is the sign of disentegrating times; stupidity of Jeopardy contestants. Changing his approach, Will looked for any object in the garage that gleamed at all, anything that maintained even the slightest shine he examined. He glanced around the room and saw soiled jars set in rows at the base of the paint cans. Timidity gripped him; he remembered Peanut's closet graveyard, and he would have ignored the jars but a type of thick picture frame leaned against a neighboring box. Will walked over to it, feeling the dust stick to his feet, trying to escape. Colors were trapped and presssed to glazed plastic, distorting the once brilliant shades of black and orange, meshing them into a jumbled mess. The butterfly had a pin through its abdomen, holding it firmly to its styrofoam world. A sick feeling arose in Will's stomach as he rememberd the same type of butterfly, a Monarch as the label described letting its wings open in the sun giving him the strength to talk normally to Peanut; it was as if the Monarch had an innate understanding of it's territory and had radiated a lack of intimidation toward Peanut that Will had somehow used.
This made him hate Peanut, hate him all the more for ruining something innocent. Raising his head, he averted his attention to something that was keeping the naked light all to itself in a corner box . A navy jacket, subject to an ungodly amount of starch leaned in the box next to a pair of spit shined shoes, still reflecting some hints of immaculate days in what Will assumed was the Navy, and as the lapel of the jacket stated in loose red stitching, The Red Skelton, gunman in Vietnam on the U.S.S somthing or other, the name of the ship was gone . Curiosity pulled Will down into the box by the front of his shirt. He picked up the objects that had been catching the light; a medal of honor was dulled and eroded, but still vaguely recognizable; purple hearts and silver stars sat in a plastic bag, air tight with valor. The bars on the breast of the jacket seemed to tell a story that kept flowing from chapter to chapter down to the end of the fabric, a novel of one time importance and courage. Will hurridley placed the symbols of lives saved into their unfit burial place, honor and courage collecting mildew in the dusty past. Feeling exhausted by the simple look at an accomplished mans past, Will pulled his head out of the box and conveniently and perhaps appropriately, the pellet gun sat directly in his sight, a guardian.
Gratefully, Will swiped the gun and yanked the string by the door which extinguished the light. The door shut, and Will saw some bits of dust spring through the crack at the base. He sighed and sat on the stairs, waiting Peanuts arrival.
Jars of all sizes lay in a twisted line on the kitchen counter; all the labels running together and creating one gigantic word conglomeration of peanut butter, dressing, jam and numerous preservative fruits floating in their transparent goop. JIFRANCHSMUCKERSPEACHESPEARS. Peanut steadied himself on a makeshift ladder, constructed of a kitchen table chair and three stale boxes of Cheerios that his mother used for alternative bird food. His toes and ankles wavered as he stretched himself, wrapping his arm over the edge of the shelf, grasping for the olive oil that sat pouting in the back corner of the cupboard. Cheerios fell one by one out of the supportive boxes, their middles an open mouth that screamed for help as they plummeted to the hard tile floors. The boxes shaked, shifting on the smooth wooden seat of the chair as a premeditation of disaster. A sweat bead squeeked out of a pore beneath Peanut's well-established hair line; he brought his sleeve to wipe it off and instantly decided to leap for the oil. Malleable cardboard left his soles, and he grasped the oil tightly and then realized the foolishness of his decision. Box backs were broken as he landed, shooting Cheerio innards and Cheerio bone-shards throughout the kitchen; little wheat O's that would mold underneath the fridge and stove until his parents died or moved, after which a set of new owners would inherit them.
"Don't mind me son, just came down for some ice." Peanut's father was bent over keeping his head fresh in the fridge, moving around heads of lettuce and countless ketchup packets in search of the ice, which was in the freezer, of course. Peanut froze, and then realizing his fathers drunken state, relaxed and made a humble suggestion, "Sir, I think they are in the icebox, above your head." His father pulled his head from the meat drawer and turned around with an annoyed look on his slender, red face, it was a redness of rigourous scrubbing and the dirtying of numerous wash cloths to remove the red paint which he wore more or less everyday. He traded one red face for another, it never left him.
"Oh, I think you may be right son. And don't call me sir, you know how I hate that. Just say dad, that's what I am, aren't I?" Peanut nodded, accidentally saying "yes sir" in his mind; he scolded himself. Ever since his father graduated from the clown academy, he had insisted that the term "sir" be banished from all his relatives vocabulary, especially the ankle biters and pibsqueeks. Peanut admired the term, clung to it with hopeful arms; placing it on a pedestal where it blinded him with anticipation. Sir was a term that Peanut secretly enjoyed being called but lightly scolded Will for.
Peanuts father had his glass of ice in a firm grip, in whitening knuckles that seemed to carry the chill of the glass throughout his body and stiffened him as he walked away. He ricocheted off the door jambs and shot stumbling over to the bottom of the stairs where Peanut could see Will nodding off in his palm. A simple task, place one foot on stair and repeat. Will was dazed, drifting in and out of reality, leaving Peanut's father staring up the stairs dumbly and trying to coerce his brain into flipping Will's person upright in the backs of his eyes. One foot lifted onto the edge of the stair, to the side of Will, held for a moment and then slipped back to the floor sending a slosh of whiskey onto the crown of Will's head that trickled an alcohol rivulet down Will's forehead as a drunkards sweat. The whiskey drops tightroped the thin bridge of Will's nose and dropped off the point tip onto one of his lips. Alcohol spread across Will's lower lip quickly; eroding thin ditches in his sun cracked skin that seared his nerves and kicked him awake.
Startled, Will rubbed his lips furiously with his sleeve and looked bewilderly at Peanut's father who towered above him in an enebriated pleasure that set his face into a grin that spoke not of attrition but of fools pleasure in others pain. Will rubbed until he was sure the burn was coming from cloth against skin and not whiskey prodding at his raw nerve ends.
"Sorry about that William. For some reason I can't seem to the stairs climb. So if you could step aside little man, I would appreciate it much, a lot." All through his half-hearted apology and slurred explanation Peanut's father had been pointing his glass his random directions very pointedly, which sent streams of whiskey flying from the glass to hit carpet and wooden floors and a nervous Will who was attempting to avoid each whiskey missle.
"That's alright sir. I was just waiting for Peanut and I could use a bath anyway." Will watched his pitiful attempt at levity float over Peanut's fathers head. "Bathe? In whiskey? That doesn't make a bit of sense to me Will. I think you have something loose in the head. And why is everyone calling me sir?! You just call me Red OK Will? There is no formality in this house, I'm death to sick of it!" With his rant completed, Red looked up the stairs, blinked, and sighed; then without a backward glance sauntered upwards, carefully avoiding the hand-rail as if it were a snake charmed to lay still, in the prideful attempt to tackle the staircase without aid. Consequently, his whiskey glass contained only melted fragments of ice at the end of his journey and the stairs carpeting smelled of drunkards in cardboard boxes.
Peanut stood between the door jambs of the kitchen watching Will rub his forehead and check his breath into his hand. Cheerios lay dead in erratic spots across the kitchens linoleum floor as little islands floating in the white foam of the sea. The now decapitated boxes remained on the kitchen chair and the rows of condiments sat stolidly on the counter, blurring underneath the electric lights of the kitchen making it hard to differentiate them from the preservative jar wall-paper border that sprinted around the kitchen. Peanut glanced back at the mess and tossed the bag of sugar in his hand, feeling it hit his palm gently, like a pitcher with the bag on the mound, trying to make a decision between the screw ball and the slider.
"Will, let's go. Light is waning and I told Nite we would meet him by the lamp post outside of my house as soon as the sun set." Peanut flicked a switch by the kitchen door and the lights choked for moment, uttering a few electric hiccups before they let darkness settle in the cracks of the cupboards and slither behind the refridgerator and crouch underneath the stove.
Will complained openly while following Peanut out the front door, the pellet gun slung over his shoulder crookedly and upside down, "Why are we meeting by the lamp post? I feel like this is the civil war again. Meetings by lamp posts and bringing in third parties to fight off our own men." Peanut swiveled, a few handfuls of sugar escaping the bag only to find that freedom was to live amidst 1 inch grass blades. "These are not our own men. We are fighting a just battle Will and there is no shame in it. The field and the lanterns are worth fighting for, do you not agree?" Peanuts tone was sharp, and Will felt like Peanut's words had poked holes through him, deflating his will to complain. So he merely nodded his head. His mind drifted back to the lanterns that were stuck in the holes of jars in Peanut's closet graveyard. Will shuddered.
Peanut continued to lecture, pedantically stamping justifications wherever they would fit on the loose leaf sheets of Will's conscience. "I don't want those illiterate, rag-tag group of Minutemen trouncing on my field of dandelions and shoving all the lanterns into shabby mayonaise jars. Someone has to stick up for nature Will; someone has to make a difference and The Minutemen think they are the guardians of that field, and so do Sherwoods Merry Men, and The Headless Horsemen and the whole lot of them. But who watches the watchmen Will? I do, we do; we are watching the watchmen. The Minutemen will come to find that the lanterns and Soldier Beetle Field do not belong to them." Will leaned against the lamp post, outwardly agreeing with Peanut, using slight nods at the end of each rhetorical question but inwardly letting the words carve up his scruples. His morals had been twisted and contorted, turned on their head. His censoring system had been modified allowing vileness to slip through incognito. Right was down, left was up but Will nodded to appease Peanut and thought about the weather, and how he was hungry for a milkshake.
Two nights were closing in. The moon hung high in one; a sliver sliced through the dark tarp of the sky revealing the suns hiding spot as light slipped through the crescent shape, illuminating pieces of the neighborhood. Lamp posts blinked on in rows that shot off into the distance in all directions. Darkness crowded around the eletric light circles beneath lamp posts like eager fans at a sporting event. Peanut stood in the center of such a light, his knap sack sagging on one of his shoulders, while the bag of sugar sat in his hand, making its imprint as if it had always been there. Will had sat down with his back leaning against the dark side of the pole, but he faced the moon whose natural light was slain and laid to rest by the artificial glows.
"This artificial light is annihilating the moons little beams isn't it Peanut, er, sir?" Will looked over his shoulder at Peanut to see whether his question had landed. Peanuts back remained toward him but he spoke, "Anihilated? Don't be so dramatic. Light is light." The stoicism silenced Will, and sent him back to sulking on his side of the world, the side with real light. Will thought there was a difference.
The second Nite approached slowly. His cape clung to him, hugged him with a certain security that put him at ease. He had chose his black cape for this occassion, a choice specimen from his vast Batman collection. Of course, being a purist, Nite was exceedingly more fond of Superman but Superman was always saving people in the daytime, heroic feats for the world to see, while Batman lurked around corners and embraced the night. Although Nite preferred daytime jobs, where his brilliance could be recognized, his payment would be enough this time, with the added bonus of humiliating The Minutemen, who never recognized his potential. Every army had denied him entry, which had forced him into solitude and a life as a talented pariah who was focused on his own monetary gain and nothing bigger or deeper. An easier life as far as Nite was concerned.
Smoke bombs lined his belt, one attached to each unoccupied hole, five in all. Nite shot from post to post, lingering on the dark side as car lights hit the cement and sides of houses for only brief instances and then shot off in all directions, heading somewhere that was most likely nowhere at this hour. He could see the tall shadow of Peanut stretching the street, the head resting on a nearby fire hydren, the black body lying in the road like the inside of a chalk outline of a huge murder victim. Nite adjusted his mask and pulled his cape around him, recounting the smoke bombs and feeling inside a pocket beneath his cape for the three boxes of snappers. His hand clenched the soft cardboard and Nite smiled beneath his mask.
The half empty bag of sugar leaned against Peanut's worn sneakers; Peanut's shadow leaned against the empty street, and Peanut himself rested against the lamp post, sending his comb back and forth through his auburn strands of hair. Where was Nite? Peanut squinted through the darkness, sizing up hedges and cars hunkered down in driveways.
"It's unlike him to be tardy Will. We may have to seek him out if he does not show up soon. I fear the worst."
With Peanut's words waiting heavily in the air around him, Will held his breath, and attempted to shut his nostrils, maintaining his sanity by ignoring the very paticles of Peanut's discontentment. Peanut was nervously picking stray pieces of hair out of his comb, holding them up to the light in a scrutinizing examination, as if someone had been tampering with his comb. Will finally exhaled and felt a rush of nervousness shoot through his pores and open mouth. The air seemed dense around him, like the deep darkness had been barred from stretching against the limits of the small neighborhood, which made the night bunch up in thick layers around the houses and straggling neighbors wandering around the empty sidewalks. Will felt exposed, and worst of all, out of control.
"Sir, er, Peanut, what if The Minutemen got to him, offered a more, uh, tempting reward. What if they use him to uslurp us?" Will looked to Peanut, hoping for an answer. "Why are you talking right now? You talking never helps situations, and don't worry, no one will be uslurping anyone."
Peanut remained facing the side of the street, warm with the glow of electric lights, leaving Will to ponder his lack of intelligence and place amongst his peers beneath the natural glow.
"Let us proceed, time is ours if we want it." Nite had appeared beside Peanut, letting the light of the moon dimly illuminate one side of him while the majority of his body lay beneath the shadows stuck in between lamp posts. Peanut remained casual, continuing to stroke his hair, unlike Will who had made a loud hiccup, screech at Nite's appearance.
"It would be wise for us to start out soon Hannibal, for The Minutemen will be approaching soon with the entirety of their army." At the mention of his battle title, Peanut snapped from his lacksadaisacal ease and brought himself to a stiff attention.
Will pushed his back against the cold metal bar, and stood to his feet, stretching his hand out in a somewhat lazy offer of a greeting. "Hey, I'm Will. I met you once a few months ago, when I was in Sherwoods Merry Men, back in my hey day." Will watched Nite turn toward him, "Yes, I recall you. I believe you were Maid Marion, right?"
"Oh no, I was Little John. It was a grand time, simply grand, you know, rob from the poor, it was quite a thrill. Once we climbed a tree, crazy I know..." Nite was no longer looking at Will, but his eyes seemed to beg at Peanut through the thin slits of his mask. Peanut, numb to Will's usual blathering, picked up the bag of sugar and shouldered his knapsack. "Will, shut-up will you. We don't have time for your nonsense. And Robin Hood robbed from the rich not the poor, you ignoramous."
