Autumn Rusts

At first there is just a hint, like the resplendent red leaf among the many green, or the flaking blemish above the truck's wheel well, both only the beginning of a much more widespread coverage. In one case, many welcome the inevitable change-the rusted leaf, a symbol of those inexplicable moments of perfection. In the other case, many ignore the change, one which is also inevitable, but less so, and preventable, to a certain degree, by us-the rusted metal, a symbol of our ability to neglect and of our often too-busy lives.

When I was still young enough, and free enough, to be genuinely interested in such things for the mere pleasure of being part of them, I used to watch my grandfather paint the underside of the car with oil to prevent the rust that might surface in the wake of winter wetness. He let me lie beside him and sometimes he would tell me to pour more oil in the pan or give me a brush of my own to use. I was never aware of him teaching me. Once, he stood under the big maple in our yard and pointed up at the leaves: 'See how they turn like a cup toward the sky like that, ' he said. 'They're waiting for the rain.'

One fall when I was older, he asked me to replace the broken lawnmower handle with one he had salvaged from the garbage dump while he raked the leaves onto the garden to burn. A few days later, out by the shed, he found the blue and white Players tin of nuts and bolts I had taken from the basement to help with the job. The tin itself had started to turn colour and many of the nuts and bolts inside were badly rusted. I told him I was in a hurry and that I had forgotten to bring it in. 'That's the trouble,' he said and gave me a piece of steel wool to scrub the nuts and bolts silver again. The tin sits on my desk now, holding pens and pencils that I rarely use for writing.

A year ago, my grandfather became very ill. The few and until then controlled cancer cells had spread throughout his body in the manner I imagine the seemingly innocuous flake of rust above the wheel well might spread over the body of the truck were the rust left untreated. As autumn waned last November, so too did my grandfather. For the first time in his eighty years he was forced to watch the changing of seasons through a window, aching in his quiescence just to be outside again, just to put his hands on some kind of work as he had done nearly every day of his life. He died in the New Year the day before his eightieth birthday, when all the colour had gone-even the rust-and there was only white and grey.

One day this past October I noticed a single red leaf in the tree outside my window and I thought of him. In the moment, I tried very hard to think of a word that would describe the leaf, as though somewhere in the act of description I would be honouring him. The irony is that I don't think he ever felt the need to describe anything as more than it was. Things just were what they were.

The words I settled on were 'beautiful,' 'distinct,' and 'unassuming.' (My indecision, I fear, is a consequence of being part of a generation with too many choices.) I stared at the leaf some more and imagined climbing the tree to snip it and press it in a book of fairytales that I might give my future daughter years from now with the inscription, 'See how perfect everything once was.'

Today, I don the scuffed workboots I inherited from my grandfather and head out into my own backyard to rake the many neglected leaves into piles and stuff them into large paper bags. I convince myself that this is 'work.' When I call my grandmother and she asks about my day I will tell her how busy I was, 'working' in the yard-too busy to recognize a Sunday afternoon of raking leaves as one of those rare and often missed moments of perfection.

I take a pen from the Players tin and write down the image of autumnal rust in a notebook, hoping-like the leaf or the rust-that the phrase will be the beginning of something more. I go outside and look up at the leaf. I don't climb the tree. For a moment, I wonder if my grandfather would have climbed it, but then I realize that for him there was always enough to do down here, on the earth.

Daryl Sneath was raised in a small town called Beaverton, and were there a hospital there, it is where he would have been born. After receiving an MA in English Literarture & Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, he moved to another small town called Port Perry where he currently teaches high school English, writes, and shares his days with his wife, Tara. He returns to Beaverton whenever he can.

Email: Daryl Sneath

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