1
It’s not important for you to know my name, my name does not matter, you may make assumptions based on the painting, or even on reading this story I am writing to go alongside it. You can guess all you like, but you won’t get it right, you can drag up all the normal name clichés, Billy, Bob, Chuck, Buddy, Cletus, Mr the third, or Mr the fourth, they will all be wrong. They say not to judge a book by its cover, I would say not to judge a man by one picture, a single snapshot in time, an image as they pass through a particular place on their journey through life, or by one action of theirs at a point, more than half their life ago.
I took up painting in my twenties, never having given it a thought up to that point. I needed something to do, something that I could use to express myself, something I could do to help fill in some time in the dull monotonous existence I was living at the time. I had felt lost; I was stuck in a rut of my own making, the kind of rut that came about from making poor decisions and from picking the wrong people to have around you in your life, but more about that later.
I had struggled with the fundamentals of painting at first, my efforts were heavy handed, I would often overlap when I didn’t want to, then miss filling in gaps on the paper, and later the canvas as two colours came up against each other.
I later found that I was trying to be too precise, my childhood colouring books had ingrained me without me knowing, that every colour had to be within the lines, something that had shaped and hindered my creative vision. I was trying to be too literal with what I painted, trying to recreate what was in front of me as if it was taken by a camera, all the while without realising I was shackling myself, shackling the creative being that was inside of me, a being I had never realised was there.
It took many years for me to shake those self-imposed
shackles off, realising that they were symbolic as much as anything else.
Eventually I found my own style, one that I was happy with, one that I could
recreate, one that could draw the viewer in to the light and shade of what was
on show, allowing them to see the overview of the scene without spelling out
every single detail for them, allowing them to finish the story for themselves.
Even with my own style, if anyone had asked me, I would have told them I would
never do a self-portrait, at the time it would have been impossible.
2
From the age of nineteen I could never bring myself to look in a mirror, or any other surface that may have given me a reflection. I didn’t want to know what I looked like, what I was becoming; there were plenty of other people judging me on that every single day, I didn’t want to add to it. Over the years I might have caught a brief glimpse, out of the corner of my eye against a surface shiny enough to throw an image back to me, but I never lingered, never wanted to stop and inspect myself, afraid that I wouldn’t recognise the person staring back at me.
When I finally did see myself many years later, it wasn’t
in a mirror, and it certainly wasn’t intentionally. A relative of mine had had
my photo taken, walking through the wild, overgrown area out the back of my
childhood home.
3
I hadn’t been back to that house in over twenty-five years, I wasn’t aware it still belonged to the family until a few months ago. When my letters had started to be returned to me as “addressee gone away”, I had assumed that my parents had moved, moved to somewhere smaller and more manageable for them as they reached their retirement years, that they hadn’t even thought about telling me where that new home was. I hadn’t considered for a moment that they had both died, killed in a car crash in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, no indication of where they had been, or where they had been heading.
I was upset and angry that no one had tried to tell me then. Seven years on I found out as the search for their probated recipient of their will was stepped up before the property was passed back to the state. It wasn’t as if I had been difficult to find for most of that time, I had only had two addresses in that period, neither of them secret. Finally a young private detective had tracked me down where others, older and apathetic hadn’t bothered beyond a cursory search. My parents had left me the house and various others bequests to me. My remaining distant relatives had been hovering, circling, ready to fight the state for the proceeds of my parent’s estate if I hadn’t been found. They seemed somewhat less than impressed when I had strolled into the courtroom to claim my inheritance.
Some of my more grasping cousins had insisted on a DNA test, which the judge had agreed to all too readily, despite deep down knowing who I was. My first visit to my parent’s graves was to watch my father being exhumed so a test could take place. I was so livid at this that I nearly broke my long running vow of non-violence, to take up a handy two-by-four to beat the living bejezus out of the cousins.
I made my feelings crystal clear to them when the results
came back, with a curt refusal to accept their crocodile tear laden apology,
instead promising them that they would be prosecuted for trespass if they ever
set foot on, what was now my property.
4
Whilst we had all been awaiting the outcome from the laboratory on the DNA tests I had visited the house. I was surprised to find that most of the furniture was still in place, covered by dust sheets, left in the same spots in the rooms as they had been before my parents had left on their ill-fated final journey.
I wandered around the house being bombarded with memories I had buried long ago, never intending to find again. Opening the door to my old room was a real shock to the system, it appeared to be unchanged from the day I had last seen it aged nineteen. Faded posters still hung on the wall, what on earth had possessed me to get a Glenn Medeiros one? I opened the wardrobe and found clothes I hadn’t worn in a quarter of a century, hanging and sat where they had been left all those years ago. I pulled some out, looking at their sizes, then groaning inwardly as I realised how much I had filled out over the years despite my circumstances. I took down an old hat from the top shelf, trying it on for size, thinking that at least my head shouldn’t have grown over the years. It felt comfortable on my head, reminding me how often I had worn a hat back in the day, keeping it on as I shrugged a denim shirt off a hanger in the wardrobe and put in on over the vest top I was wearing. The buttons didn’t quite do up properly any more, but it was perfect to wear as an impromptu jacket.
I went back downstairs, then out of the back door, crossed the porch, going down the steps out into the garden. Here the property differed from inside, out here nature had started to reclaim the space as its own. Everything was overgrown, as I wandered through the waist high grass, yellowed from the sun and the lack of water, I tripped a couple of times over hidden steps, or garden equipment left out, probably for my father to come back to, intending to finish a job my mom will have given him.
What I didn’t know on that day was that my grasping
cousins has hired a private detective of their own, they had tasked him with
watching my every move, to see who I was talking to, where I was going and what
I was doing, they had told him I was an imposter, and that they wanted to know
who had put me up to it. The private eye must have been bored to death,
recording virtually nothing as I kept to myself. He had taken several photos of
me during that time, including one of me in the garden. I appeared to be
staring directly at the camera, but can’t remember seeing a thing; the private
detective must have had one of those telephoto lenses. He had handed me the
pictures in a folder after the DNA results had been confirmed. He looked
sheepish and apologized, saying he was only doing his job, and you know what,
he was, one that my grasping cousins had set him to do.
5
I didn’t look at the file he handed to me until quite a few days later on; I was too busy sorting out all the paperwork from the estate of my parents. I had briefly thought about moving back home, but decided against it as there were too many downsides, I didn’t belong here anymore, I had a life in a different town, a different state, where the people accepted me for what I was and for what I had done.
Despite not moving home, I didn’t even sell the house, the death duties along with the taxes on the proceeds from the sale would have left me worse off. I donated the house to the local fostering association as a charitable gift, no one had to pay anything out that way, and it would help the community out. Ironically, a community that if they had known I was there would have only been willing to help me out, out of town that is.
That was the main reason I couldn’t stay there, it would drag up too many bad memories for too many people. Even though it hadn’t been me that was ultimately responsible, I had been there when it had all gone down, I was the only one that had been caught, and I was the one that ended up spending twenty years in prison for it.
I lost the love of my life that night, and my freedom to boot, but others lost their children, their hope, their livelihoods, their futures. They needed someone to blame for it all, and there I was, there to be used as that punching bag for all those angry people who had lost something, there to be vilified by a community that thought they knew everything, a community that drew ranks and cast me out as a piece of rubbish that was spoiling their lawns.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
6
I wasn’t even supposed to be in the bar in the first place, at nineteen I was too young to be drinking. The bartender knew it as well, but as always the little weasel was more interested in taking my money than obeying the law. It was a busy night in the bar; I was out alone, my girlfriend Trudie was working at her family’s convenience store, pulling the night shift with the son of the local sheriff and chief pain in the ass Marty.
I was playing pool when the other guys made their way into the bar, I hadn’t seen them before, turns out they were making their way through town heading for the west coast, or at least that’s what they told me. We played pool for a few hours, sinking beers as we did so, moving on to shots of tequila as the evening went on. Thinking back, we never exchanged names, just drinking and playing pool together as if it was an everyday occurrence. It was getting on towards closing time when they mentioned a party they had heard about, asking if I was interested, they just needed to find somewhere to get some beers to take to the party.
Without thinking I pointed them in the direction of Trudie’s store as I hopped onto the bed of their pickup truck, hopping back out when they got there, grabbing the opportunity to see my girl.
My new found nameless friends made their ways over to the fridges to stock up as I made my way over to the till. Trudie was glad to see me, however her assistant for the evening wasn’t, I was sure that Marty liked Trudie in a more than friends kind of way, he enjoyed the chance to spend time with her on the night shift. He had intimated on several occasions that I wasn’t good enough for her, that she’d be better off with someone of higher standing in the community. He meant himself of course, thinking that he was hot shit being the sheriff’s son.
Marty sneered at me as I walked up to the counter, saying I wasn’t old enough to have been drinking, that he wouldn’t be so disrespectful to his girlfriend. Trudie glared at Marty, telling me to ignore him, but his jibe had caught the attentions of the other guys I was with, they came swaggering up to the counter, beers in hand, eyes all over Trudie.
“How about you come partying with us sweet cheeks?” One of them leered in her direction.
Trudie laughed it off, saying she was happy working, the guys snorted derision at that, asking her why on earth she would enjoy working in this shithole? Trudie got riled up at this insult to her family’s business, shouting at them to get out of her family’s shop, if it was such a shithole, they could go and get their beer from somewhere else.
At that point the shit really hit the fan, one of the guys drew a gun and shot Trudie, she went down in a heap behind the counter, he then took a pot shot at Marty who was already running for cover. Marty went down as well, as he did the guys were jumping over the counter, emptying the till out before running off out the door back to their pickup truck and roaring off into the night.
Dumbstruck, I made my way around the counter to Trudie on the floor behind it, passing Marty who was whimpering in a corner on the floor. Trudie was bleeding profusely from a hole in her upper chest, already unconscious; I tried to stem the bleeding, whilst shouting at Marty to call for an ambulance.
Between whining about being shot himself, and blaming me for it all, it took him a couple of minutes to actually get round to making the call. It seemed like an eternity before the paramedics turned up, bringing the police with them. By the time they arrived, Trudie was already dead, having breathed her last in my arms. I was covered in blood, distraught and numb, those feelings getting worse when the cops put the handcuffs on me and hauled me down to the station.
I was questioned for hours by the sheriff, his son had already obviously gotten to him and given a much skewed version of events, I was up against it big time from the outset. Apparently, I had shot Trudie in a drunken fit of jealousy over Marty, before turning and shooting at him. The fact that no gun or bullets had been found at the scene didn’t seem to matter. No one even bothered looking for the other three guys, saying I made them up, that there hadn’t been anybody else there.
The weasel of a bartender had denied all knowledge of me being in the bar, let alone being there with anyone else, the sap was too busy protecting his own ass to own up to serving an under-age kid.
Even the store burning down the very same night did
nothing to arouse the suspicion of the sheriff. When his son died from an
infection picked up during treatment to his gunshot wound, my goose really was
cooked.
7
The lack of physical evidence, no verbal witness statements, or even my loud heartfelt, tearful protestations wasn’t going to stop the jury finding me guilty. Not one single person from the bar that night came forward to volunteer that they had seen me there, or if they did the sheriff just made them go away. The jury took less than ten minutes to reach a verdict, and the same judge that ordered a DNA test twenty five years later smiled as he gave out the sentence.
I was given twenty-five years in prison, with a chance of parole after fifteen, the prosecution hadn’t even attempted to ask for the death penalty, they knew it was all a crock, and that going after the death penalty would mean more intense scrutiny of the facts, something my own lawyer seemed allergic to trying to do.
The first five years in prison had been spent as a nobody from a small town; the verdict had even me believing that I might have done it. It was only starting out on the arts program the prison offered that enabled me to come out of the deep despair I was feeling, and the regular thoughts of taking my own life that had been dogging me relentlessly.
It had taken five years of parole applications before they deemed I was safe enough to walk the streets again, I was paroled out to another small town, in a state far away from my home town. I reported in to the local police station every Monday and Friday morning, and I saw my parole officer every Wednesday afternoon. He found me a job, I’m sure there was a twinkle of amusement in his eye when he told me I would be starting on a nightshift in a local convenience store. He was trying to have some fun at my expense, trying to goad me into a reaction, but that wasn’t going to happen, I didn’t want to go back to prison under any circumstances.
I was
still working in that same convenience store five years down the line when the
private detective found me, by this time I wasn’t on parole any more, the full
term of my sentence had run its course, I was a free man.
8
As I flicked through the pictures in the file I was struck by the one of me in my old back garden. With the sun behind me and the hat on my head, I could have been any age, from the teenage boy I once was that the hat and denim shirt belonged to, right through to a sixty-something year old version of future me. The beard in the picture intrigued me, I had never paid it any attention before, I could make out there were various colours in it, I wanted a proper look at it, so I went out and bought myself a mirror.
For the first time in twenty-five years I stood there looking at my face for hours, inspecting the different coloured wiry hairs of my beard, they went from white to black with all shades in between. The hair on my head was a thinning cover of sandy and grey strands; I traced the route of my wonky nose with a finger, thinking of the fights that had shaped it many years ago. Upon opening my mouth I saw the missing tooth, just off centre on my lower row of teeth, nothing to do with fighting this one, a damn olive stone had done that, having never eaten one before I was unprepared for the pit and over enthusiastically bit down on it, cracking my tooth, losing some of it that I probably swallowed. It was cheaper to get it removed than it was to get it fixed, so out it came. I felt the lines on my forehead, knowing that years of solemn frowning had put them there.
Finally I looked deep into my own eyes. The hazel-green irises looked back at me with an intensity that told me why people didn’t often stay around to talk to me for too long. There was nothing I could do about that now; it was too late for me to be able to change any of that.
When I finished my inspection, I hung the mirror up in the hall of my flat. Once I was happy that it was securely in place, I went to get a canvas, my brushes and the paint. I started my self-portrait there and then, using that photo of me as a guide to what I was to paint. I worked through the night to complete it, I knew it was me in the painting, it was the eternal me, me at every age possible, stood in the vague outline of my life, where I stood for all time.
I hung the painting in the hall directly opposite where I had placed the mirror the previous afternoon.
I would look at myself every day from now on.
I know what my name is!