JOHN DEER YELLOW AND GREEN
It was a fateful moment that summer when Lynch first talked to me.
He was tall, swarthy, and cross as a badger. His drinking, unpredictable temper, and womanizing were legend. I’d heard that when there was a gas shortage in town, he’d bought three Cadilacs and filled them each two or three times a day at Pete’s Garage. Then, he burned up and down the back-country roads with maniacal joy. According to town legend, his parents abandoned him by the side of the road as a young boy and that he had had no formal education. Every stop sign and bridge in town was covered with his painted name. Despite, or maybe because of, his “bad boy rap,” two renowned local artists had taken him under their wings.
I was working at the new local museum. All my peers there had at least two things in common: our fathers were on the Board and they all warned us to stay far away from Lynch.
About a week after the first exhibition opened, I heard him coming, teasing the guide in the gallery below, his deep guttural laugh reverberating in the stairwell. He strode right past me and headed for his portrait hanging on the far wall. It looked like a portrait of the ‘60’s: Lynch in a black leather jacket with wrap-around black sunglasses. He assumed the same menacing pose and stayed there all day, enjoying the attention of the middle-aged tourists who crowded around him. He seemed to take no notice of me, but I was sure he knew I was staring at him.
At the end of the day he finally addressed me: “What you lookin’ at girl?” His deeply pock-marked face was framed by a mass of unkempt blond curls. A three-day stubble covered his chin. His blue jeans were torn and smeared with paint. He black boots were covered in layers of axle grease. He still looked the part of his portrait “Draft Age.”
I just stared at my feet and said: “Nothin’.”
He would return almost every day that summer to resume his vigil before the portrait. One day Lynch caught me totally off guard. I was looking closely at a work in the exhibition with my back facing the entrance to the gallery. I heard him coming, announcing his arrival in a loud voice saying: “Forget all the rest, this time it’s for real. I’m in love.” Then he literally swept me off my feet and carried me right out of the Museum. He placed me in the front seat of his truck. He spun out of the parking lot and me took me straight to the local bar. I hadn’t yet reached legal drinking age, had never even been in a bar, and had no idea what to order. He took care of everything.
I can’t remember a single thing we said that afternoon. I just kept thinking about being in his arms and what he had said. Eventually the bartender told him it was time to leave as I was underage and my father would not approve of his antics.
So Lynch found other ways to amuse me. Once he let the air out of his truck tires and we rolled down the abandoned railroad tracks in town. But all too soon that summer came to an end and I was on my way back to school. I would not see Lynch again until I returned from a year of study in Paris.
It was a hot summer’s afternoon and I was walking down our long driveway to our neighbor’s pool when I saw Lynch’s van slowing down at the bottom. “I’ve got the yellow paint,” he screamed. “And the green paint and the decals. Let’s do this mother.” So I got in the van.
Lynch hadn’t changed: same blue jeans smeared with paint, same boots, and the dirtiest t-shirt I’d ever seen. I felt ridiculous sitting beside him in my bathing suit. Anna, his black as the ace of spades mongrel pup, just licked my face over and over again.
“What d’ya think about a John Deer Yellow and Green van?” he asked. Not much. I was just enjoying the ride. The window was rolled down all the way and the breeze felt delicious. I didn’t give a damn about painting the van. Just being with Lynch again left me dizzy.
“Why do you smoke those horrible French cigarettes anyway? You’re not there anymore. Just look out the window. This is the most beautiful road you’ll ever drive and Anna’s kisses are better than anyone’s, anywhere in the world,” Lynch announced.
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
I had never been to his house. He let me go inside briefly and I quickly found the most beautiful mural he had painted. He interrupted my thoughts by screaming: “You’re not here to hang around.” I can’t remember if I even picked up a brush. We enjoyed a few drinks and then I was back in the van heading home.
Silence.
At the crest of the driveway, Lynch suddenly through the van into park, pulled me close to him, and began kissing me. Never had I been kissed like that – deep yet tender beyond measure. My eyes were closed and I heard him say: “We can never do that again.”
Years later he would arrive at my house the night before my wedding in a bus with a few musicians aboard to serenade me on my last night as a single woman.
The last time I saw Lynch he was pulled over at the side of the road opposite Pete’s Garage in his old bus. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know just what he was up to then. This time he wanted to show me his most recent paintings. I was
dumbstruck, taken aback by the quality of those luminous oil paintings. Here was a man, an artist I barely knew.
His memorial service was surreal. His ashes were fired from a canon into the river where he used to float along in old tires with six packs tied to the edges. I let go of all those memories for a few minutes and read his son’s words in the order of service: “We remember the man that told stories of light in dark places and made diamonds out of stone.” I had barely left the service when I had to pull over on the side of the road. My whole body was shaking and racked by silent screaming. Why didn’t I ever look him straight in the eye? Why didn’t I ever let go of my childish idolatry and discover more about this man who “made diamonds out of stone.”
Why?
