Mending Dead Fences

Mending Dead Fences


By Kevin Murphy

It used to be that when Donny looked in a mirror he saw…what? He saw in himself who he was, where he came from. It used to be that when Donny looked in a mirror he was proud of his heritage, his upbringing. It used to be that he saw in himself the vibrant colors of the fields he ploughed with his old man, the golden hues of acres of unharvested wheat. He could feel the comfort and warmth of the rippling fields. He saw his mothers love reflected in a dinner table laden with fresh ham and fruit and the sweetest of sweet corn tended and pick by his own hands.

He would remember how, when he first saw the ocean off the shores of Kauai that he thought it was wonderful how the waves and flow of the sea looked so much like the blowing fields of wheat. And how his father had laughed, a rich and full laugh, and told him he figured that most people would see the wheat fields and say they flowed like the sea. Perspective, his father had told him, was a wonderful thing.

He used to see in himself the days upon days of intense labor in the fields. He was young, but with the muscles of a man for he did a mans work. He would see the green fields of corn, stalks taller than any man he knew, and wonder at how many people his father fed. How many hungry families would have their bellies filled with the produce from his fathers farm.

He used to see in his eyes the very color of life, the purple and pink hues of a giant autumn sun laying to rest nestled in the soft green soy bean fields his father worked every year.

And the scents, the smell of a crisp autumn morning as he crunched leaves under foot on his walk to school. The smell of a pile of burning leaves filling the countryside. The clean almost sterile scent of a blustery winter day, the air so cold it seemed almost unable to carry a single scent with it. The rejuvenating scent of a spring rain. He’d heard people call the smell “Ozone”. He didn’t know what they meant by it, but figured it was as good a word for it as any he could think of. And even the smell of a blistering summer’s day, the air so full of moisture it was almost like it was too wet to rain. The smell from the cow pasture even made him smile. He was a proud farmer. A proud man. A man who placed principal and honor amongst the admirable traits he could find in a person.

But as he stood staring at his reflection in the shattered bloody shards of mirror at his feet he saw none of that, or rather just the opposite of it. He could see the same pictures but saw them as if they had been touched by the hand of the Reaper. The wheat fields were grey, limp and lifeless. The acres upon acres of corn scorched as if by a wildfire. The stalks still burning red inside like the cherry of a cigarette. The sun didn’t set on those fields of soy any longer, for the horizon was filled with smoke and smog to the point of suppressing life itself. These were the visions he saw now. The visions of his life on Crystal Meth.

Meth was the scourge of the country. This was the center of the Meth world. An industry fueled by things Donny couldn’t understand had taken root in his state and even more so in his own heart. He’d heard once, before he got hooked, that Iowa was the “Meth Capital of the World”. He’d thought that rather unlikely. Assumed it was a desperate news station sensationalizing what would turn out to be no big deal. He knew the local news stations would do whatever they had to in order to get ratings. But they were right. It was a statewide epidemic. Not just in the bigger cities but eating away at the fabric of rural Iowa as well. If only he'd paid more attention to that story maybe things would be different for him now.

As it was he had been wasted, hunting for a fix, or in withdrawal pretty much every waking moment for the last 4 months of his life. He’d dropped out of school so that he could get high whenever he wanted. He’d run away from home because he couldn’t look his parents in the eye and pretend he was anything more than a disappointment. He felt ashamed for them, whether they were ashamed of him or not. His dealer had said he could stay at his place. Of course Donny hadn’t realized his place was an abandoned warehouse full of mice, snakes, spiders and the like. Though the animals were the least of his concerns. This was a flophouse for people just like him. A dank, smelly place where the inhabitants thought nothing of defecating where they slept.

Donny had lived there for about a week when he came back one night with a big long mirror. He’d stolen it out of a mini-van, along with some other stuff to sell for more meth. His dealer had tried to take it. He had found that tweakers don’t like to look at themselves. They didn’t tend to like to see the lesions and the sallowness of their faces. Donny resisted giving it up. He didn’t know why exactly, but he wasn’t really rational about much these days. He told his dealer if he took the mirror he’d kill him. And to his own horror he knew that he meant what he’d said.

It was the only thing that gave him any relief from the pangs of addiction. Even though what he saw in it saddened him, at least it allowed him to see. When he’d first studied himself in the mirror he was appalled. His once muscular tanned body had grown thin and ashen, and in less than a months time. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate anything other than a candy bar or a morsel of garbage. He forgot those worries though, lost them in the haze of his addiction.

But this was the beginning of a new chapter for him. He was going to get help. He’d hit rock bottom as he’d heard someone say. He backed away from his mirror lying in a broken pile on the floor of the warehouse. His dealer’s blood was oozing into the cracks and crevices of the broken glass. He looked down at the body of the man who’d provided him with his fix for what seemed like a lifetime but did not feel any remorse for what he’d done. He promised that he would kill him if he ever tried to take the mirror again. And he’d meant it.

He replayed the incident again in his mind. This time watching as if he were a bystander. He watched as his dealer came into the warehouse. Donny saw him glance left then right, trying to be sure he was alone. But he didn’t see Donny, Donny was huddled in a corner under a pile of debris trying to keep warm. When he snatched the mirror Donny scrambled to his feet and charged forward carrying a large stick, a broken tree limb actually. Before he knew it, it was done. He’d raised that limb and brought it down squarely over the back of his dealer’s skull. The dealer fell forward and landed on the mirror, shattering it. Donny watched him for a while longer but decided the amount of blood pouring out of the back of his head was significant enough to have killed him.

It was funny. The adrenaline rush he’d felt when he struck the dealer brought with it a moment of divine clarity. He was free. His dealer was dead, a fact the entire county should be thankful for. He would not be able to get more meth for a while, that had been the only dealer in the area. He could take that time and check himself into a hospital to get help, and call his mom and dad and beg for forgiveness.

And so it goes for Donny, and many others like him. He got clean, and has been ever since. Nobody ever knew he was the one that killed the dealer. Nobody but his father. He’d told his old man some months afterward while they worked the fields together. His father nodded and hugged him and they never spoke of it again.

These days the color has come back to life for Donny, but it’s not the same. The golden fields of wheat seem dampened, the sunsets not as bright. A man’s history will always be with him, and the colors of his past will forever bleed into his future.


Word Count: 1,507