A Hat For Tad

By Jason Marion

Perhaps it is a sad, rainy day. Still, a promise is a practice. A job is a job. Especialy my job. I love it so. I spend every day of my life on the streets. I see the sun as it rises over the river. I get to see the sun set from a different place, every day.

Only, not on thursday's. Thursday's I go shopping. It's pay day, y'know. And Sunday's. Sunday's I go painting.

Only, I work in the mornings at Catherine St. Michaels, making sure the walk is as clean as a whistle for god's folks. I once heard that they were better than most. Or, maybe it was they thought they were better than most. Seems a long time ago. Maybe when I was a boy.

Still, such a beautiful place, that church. You can tell that anyone, who made it, loved to build beautiful things.

See, I try to capture that. Teach my hands to paint these things that I love. The buildings, the streets, the river. So, I practice on sundays. Only I had to work this morning.

At Catherine St. Michaels. You mentioned that.

Yes, I did. Well, what I was getting to was that I wanted to paint this little pond. I paint every Sunday, hoping that one day I will be able to paint anything I wish to leave behind. Like a memory. I got the idea from a garage sale I saw someone leave behind. The tag on it said fifty cents. At the time it seemed a reasonable price for something that was fairly bland.

It was an impressionistic painting of of a typical Parisian street, around the nineteen hundres, with the eifel tower in the background. Nothing really spectacular about it, and I left two twenty five cent coins on the table.

You payed?

Yea. Like I said. It seemed a reasonable price.

But, you said...

Yes, I know. I love my job. It gives what I need. That, and I run into coins on the street all of the time. Those coins are a part of my Thursday shopping. What ever I find, I leave at garage sales for those small, useless things I want. Don't need them, really. Like the painting. As I said...

... nothing spectacular?

Okay, okay. I don't get to talk much. It's my story. You asked, not me.

The painting, I put it in the bathroom, just behind the sink and the medicine cabinet. It's one with a mirror, and the painting is always in that reflection. I have seen it every day of my life for the past five years.

Might be a subcontiouse reason there to why you love your job.

Hey... Maybe!! I never thought abouth that! That street scene, you mean? But, I know that painting made me want to practice painting. The way I figure, someone far away made that one afternoon. On a street corner in the middle of the day. Like a photographer at a crime scene, only it takes so much longer.

I don't know who painted it. The edges are all roughed up, and the signature is long gone. Worn away from being given away, moved, stored. Hard to tell what kind of life that painting had.

Like old coins. Imagine how much they travel. The most highly traded items in the world, and I find a silver dime on the street. It's fifty years older than the day I was born. I have a whole coin collection, with the wheat-cent's, buffalo nickel's, canadian penny's, quarters, and coins from all over the world. Never been to New York, but I got a subway token. I can ride the A train, it I get there.

The foreign coins are all composite metals, or pure common metals. Find a ninteen-twenty-two dime, and you knew it was a pure piece of silver. A pure, finely minted piece of pure Earth's preciouse metal. It was a chaw of tobacco, and a sack of coffe, then. Like that painting. It was'nt meant for greatness, or esteem. It didn't know what it was. Probably sold it for two or three dollars, at most.

Still, that painting. I see it every day. Every day I see a simple street scene of a city so far away from me. I don't know the painter, but I see what he saw. Maybe he died a no-body. Un-loved, or forgotten. His eyes live on. I see what he saw.

There's this horrible glob in the middle of the street that always looked to me like a dribble spill. You know, when you get too much paint on your brush, and some drips off when you make a brush stroke.

I took me some beer one night, and found myself staring at that glob for a long time. I think I went in there to pee, but forgot.

Up close, the glob had three or four colors swirled into it. Now, when you look at it close up; the colors look like very precise stripes of different colors. Blue, red, white. When you moved back just a little bit, the stripes would disapear. You could only see a pink hue. Like a subtle type of shading through mixing colors.

There is a point, I hope.

Your not very patient, are you.

No. The things I hear disturbe me. With no way to protect myself; I am completly at the will of others. I can not say who speaks to me. I can only answer. I hear, and I speak.

Can't ask for much more, considering...

Yes. Considering...

Well, there I was, swaying back and forth in the bathroom staring at this little globule of paint that had basic colors finely striped into shaded hues of pink...

Get on with it!

They were people.

What?

Well, when I kept moving back and forth to look at the stripes turning pink that I noticed what looked like an umbrella. Once I saw the umbrella, I saw the two ladies. Like magic, they re-appeared before my eye's...

OUT TAKE:

[Once I say the umbrella, I say the two ladies.]

Re-appeared? I thought you had never seen them before?

What?

You said re-appeared. That implies that you saw the ladies, in the painting, before. Yet, you just said that you had only seen a glob.

Oh, no... the ladies of Paris just appeared. After framing this painting in the back of my mind, every time I shave or brush my teeth; those gals were there. Walking down the street with their umbrellas. To provide a little shade on a shopping day in Paris.

I never saw them. All this time, I never saw them.

What does that have to do with anything?

Well, you were just a little glob.

How complimentary.

No. I don't mean it like that. I mean; I was practicing my painting. To be honest, I started to day dream, as I often do. While I wasn't really paying attention, I dabbed my brush in some black, and white paint, and made a small on dot on this tree here. See?

I suppose you think that is funny?

Oh, I forgot. Sorry. What I did was put a small dot of black on the trunk of this tree. Uh... one of the many trees I was painting on the other side of the pond. I didn't know why I did it. It brought my attention back, that's for sure.

I looked across the pond to see that there was a black dot on the trunk of tree, over there. I came over to see what it was. Maybe I could blob in the right way and someone might find it in a garage sale, and not see it until later. It made me think: what is that? See, I needed to know what it was so I could include in my picture.

Your painting?

Yea, okay. My signal, maybe?

A moment in time preserved for no particular reason, at all?

Now wait just a minute. That painting was not an easy accomplishment. That painter had to do what I am doing. He had to have been doing it a lot longer than me to make such a scene. He must have done it madly. With a passion for picturing things as they are. Or, were. Or...

Lose yourself, there?

It's not as easy as a picture. It's something you have to want to do, to do it instead of any thing else. To become so preciese about what most would think of as mundane.

Maybe he was gifted? That painting may be very easy for him to paint. Since you allude to the fact that he has made so many, as the value cleary suggest's; he could be a fearing man that can not profit from his own gift?

No. You got to be wrong. If his was a gift, he would be a famous painter. The one who made a statement. The one who helped shape painting. No. This man worked hard to remember the places he had been. It's like...

... you said?

Nope. Like you said. As the value clearly suggest's, this was not an Artiste'. This was a painter. As disposable as the polariod. An artist who's legacy in the practice is hung in my bathroom, for no particular reason. And, for no particular reason, I enjoy it. I relate to it.

You find new things in it.

Yea... that was my favorite part. He still fooled me. That's the best part. The ladies didn't hide themselves. I never saw them. I did'nt get it.

Now, you are hoping that your own practice will give you more insight?

I found you, did'nt I? Mr. glob. Didn't I?

I have no free will. What was I to do, run for cover?

You ask an awful lot of questions. Don't talk much, do you?

Ha! You do enough talking for every one.

There's nobody here. They left a long time ago. They simply disapeared. One day, I was riding the bus home, and it just stopped. It was just me and the bus driver. She got out and never came back. After a while, I got off the bus and walked home.

And you are telling me this why?

I don't know. I don't get to talk much.

Ah, yes. Can't tell your own voice from any one elses. Can't distinguise your self in a crowd.

In a crowd!?! I didn't pick on you eye-sight thing on porpouse. You don't have to pick on me.

What are you talking about. There are thousands of people here. I can hear them. They laugh, and play. They cry, and scream. They are all here.

Your cruel. Do you feel avenged now? Got your payback!?!

What I have is a fool before me who is likely to put me on his head and parade me around his life for as long as you don't lose me. That is the way things are headed, I'm afraid. Take from me. I have to do this all the time.

To be honest, however; I have never been described as a blob before. I have never been discovered, thusly, either.

Can I ask you a question?

Yes.

Where have you been?

What? I don't understand the question.

Your here now. I've painted you. Here. Forever. Your no silver coin, but your rough around the edges. Tells me you've been a few places.

How do you know that I haven't been stowed away in an old millionare's hat box, in the back of his closet. A closet that is so big that it took him fourty years to fill, forever pushing father behind, the clothes he wore the season before. How can you not say that I was once privy to the Lord Essing's Hospitality room, being stowed with the finest garment's this world has ever dare see. The likes of which can not be found now.

They can not be made. Fox coats, and mink furs. Rabbit linings on China silk jackets. I heard once that a woman threw red paint on some one wearing a mink fur. Can you imagine?

Okay. I guess you are made of preciouse metal.

Don't patronize me. I am seal-skin. Soft, and horribly processed; but I had a great shine. Once, I went to the theatre.

I knew you'd been somewhere.

Yes, yes. Hospitality room, again. Not much to speak of, there, either.

Heh, hee.

(To be continued…)