Rust

a short story

Photo by Persnickety Prints on Unsplash

Rust.

In one sense it was everywhere, though in another much more accurate sense it was solely located on the old metal scraps.

In one sense those scraps were everywhere, though in another much more accurate sense they were located solely in the backyard.

That yard.

Our yard.

It surrounded our house the way yards did.

But I hadn’t listened.

Or maybe I had listened, but I hadn’t heard.

Or maybe I had heard, but didn’t want to understand.

It’s also possible that I merely allowed sound waves to enter the outer ear and travel through my ear canal, which lead to my eardrum that vibrated from the incoming sound waves and sent these vibrations to three tiny bones in the middle ear, but I didn’t comprehend what she was saying.

I did that back then, when I was young.

When we were young.

So young and youthful and ageless that we often whiled away the hours listing synonyms that were as unnecessary as they were redundant.

We made redundancy sexy.

Back then she’d often grab my hand or, if lacking accuracy, my elbow, and whisk me away on another adventure.

Most of our adventures involved whisking in one sense or another. The other ones involved ladles and soup spoons.

Jumping on our bikes and riding away like there was no tomorrow while fully understanding that there was.

There was always tomorrow.

Our bikes so shiny, so new, always gleaming in the sun unless the sun had set or was momentarily behind clouds at the moment and then they were totally fine, just not as exciting as when gleaming.

I believed our bikes, like our bond, would never rust no matter how much rain or moisture they were exposed to.

She tried to explain that at some point if exposed to enough water over time that even these bikes could rust as iron oxides would become hydrated and I shouldn’t act so brazen about our bikes and our bond and their inability to rust. She also suggested I keep my lack of knowledge and insight about oxidation to myself when out in public.

I laughed, as I often did back then. Similar to how I laugh now only at a slightly higher pitch and unencumbered with age.

I laughed and followed her wherever the wind took us despite her explaining, on multiple occasions, that it wasn’t actually the wind taking us places and more the human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other that we rode around the town.

That wind was strong.

Up and down and up and down and, once, up and up and up until we were flying until we realized that just wasn’t possible.

Dizzying.

Everything about us was dizzying.

Until the rust came.

First it appeared in the corners, then it appeared on the scratches and then it spread making us wish we had splurged and bought galvanized metal in the first place as had been recommended.

Those voices haunted me.

Those voices spoke to me.

Those voices warning me but I refused to listen which eventually led to them stopping with the warnings as it was like “talking to a brick wall”.

I knew all too well about talking to walls.

And floors and ceilings as I didn’t want to leave anyone out.

I once tried talking to a wall that had a few pocket windows and a shelf, but got so confused I sat in the corner and ate slightly stale crackers.

Oh, that rust.

It was a Monday.

I still remember the day as day remembering is one of the skills I possess.

Clouds were everywhere, though, in my experience, mostly located in the sky.

Afternoons laying on the ground, hand in hand, gazing up at the sky whispering words of affection in each other’s ears as well as the necessary adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions or else the words of affection were rendered somewhat hard to fully comprehend.

So in love, we were.

It felt timeless.

I believed our love was timeless.

And she hugged me the way one would sympathetically hug a young child who had had a hard day while also not wanting the hug to come across as too obviously sympathetic as even young children can sense when hugs are like that. And while she hugged me she argued that nothing, by definition, could truly be timeless if one viewed the passage of time from a temporal physics point of view, which she did.

I loved when she used words when she talked.

I loved when she used arms when she hugged.

I loved when her words and arms danced in front of me as if performing one of those rare contemporary ballet pieces that could render even the most rugged of old men to tears.

Rugged old men being brought to tears was a hobby that we shared.

But still there were cracks.

The cracks were there, underneath the newly paved concrete.

The paved concrete that added a smoothness that previously had been but a twinkle in our collective eyes when we lay on top of each other and spoke in dreamy voices dripping with syrup of perfectly paved surfaces that included driveways, lanes and those areas that are neither driveways nor lanes, and yet could, in a pinch, operate as either.

The signs.

The signs were everywhere mostly because we splurged and bought a few too many at the “Everything must go” sale at the sign store.

The signs both directly and indirectly instructed and educated and gave directions for us the way only signs could.

Yet, despite it all, we believed the metal pieces we had collected from day one and continued to collect on days 2–37 inclusively would stay shiny and metallic for the long run.

All they represented, all they stood for, all they indicated.

I’d always wanted to ask her for more details about the metal and what it represented and stood for and indicated but she was always “too busy”.

And then, it was too late.

While also, oddly, being too early.

Then it occurred to me that the clock had been broken for years.

Our clock.

Our clock that told us the time even when we weren’t asking.

Our clock that stood in the hallway with a little too much gravitas.

Always ticking and tocking and counting the seconds and minutes and hours that comprised our days and, from my limited understanding, possibly our months as well.

The months passing as the rust spread.

The months passing as the corrosion advanced.

The months passing where I continued to use rust and corrosion interchangeably even after she explained at length that corrosion is a type of oxidation whereas rusting is a part of corrosion and that the main difference between corrosion and rust is that corrosion occurs as a result of chemical influence and it affects a lot of materials whereas rusting is only accelerated by certain chemicals and usually affects iron substances.

I loved when she talked like that.

And also when she spoke like that.

And also when she used non-verbal language including but not limited to facial expressions, shoulder shrugs and hip rotations like that.

And I always would.