rainbows
By culturehero
- 680 reads
RAINBOWS
Under the telephone pole that had broken four years ago and that had
turned black and sad with wear and tear the children in the
neighbourhood said there lived a man made entirely of rainbows. His
face arced and shone like a rainbow, some said, and his body too was
just like one big Vegas shimmering rainbow, curving this way and that
with every piercing colour you can imagine sliding into each other like
they were drawn on wet paper, with perfect little rainbow limbs which
he could use for the general activities of his bright life. So they
said.
He had built a special cavern for himself that wasn't dank and scary
like most caverns you see around the place, but bright and cheery, with
grass and a blue sky feeling that made you smile from ear to ear for a
long time but that you couldn't quite put your finger on, you just had
that warm tingling, like freshly gloved fingers, tickling at the base
of your spine.
There were comfortable seats and puffy clouds and soft furry walls and
beaming rainbows in every corner, all dancing together through this
unusual cavern.
"It smelt like sweets," Bobby Hamilton said by the swings one day, who
had become a hero in our school since he claimed to have found his way
inside the hole beneath the old telephone pole with the rainbow man and
stayed singing songs and eating cotton candy for hours and hours of a
boring Sunday afternoon. On the surface we were all unable to withstand
the humidity of the day, but Bobby Hamilton, a kid two years younger
than me, said the temperature was always the same as the perfect day
for swimming, and ideal for cotton candy!
I didn't believe anything he said about his rainbow man experience, and
found it hard to trust somebody with all that metal in their mouth. I
imagined his entire teeth (including gums) would all come pouring out
of his tiny head if he didn't screw up his braces every day, and I was
too nervous to stand close to him because I was convinced that I could
hear the straining lengths of orthodontic metal just waiting to pull
the inside of his skull apart in a shower of half-chewed pumpkin pie.
But I believed in the rainbow man with all my heart, and could see his
entire cave just burning at the back of my eyeballs, a cave so wondrous
and so BRIGHT, like we were finally looking at colours with the remote
control switched right up like it should be, not the ghastly big black
white set my town had been using for the last fifty-two years. You
could swim in the colours that grew from the rainbow mans' aura, they
were so deep, and you had to think twice and squint before you looked
at them, because all that colour can't be good for you.
Sometimes just thinking about the cave that belonged to the man made of
rainbows made me feel like I wasn't alive anymore, because there was no
way in the world that I could have missed so much and been so mistaken
with my silly dull eyes, and only just noticed how red 'red' can be and
too much exposure makes your retinas pulse in waves of claret, or how a
real blue sky engulfs you in its blue-ness like paddling through a
glass or crystal enhanced blue liquor.
I guess this rainbow man, right there in my little town, was the World
Centre of Colour. Perhaps there were trade shows right there in that
cave, where other rainbow people got together and try to become as
bright as each other so the countryside and the cities can all be
coloured in properly, but they always gape in awe when our rainbow man
pulls some tricks out of his rainbow sleeves, and paints everything in
Technicolor? with just a point of his finger.
Although none of the kids around where I lived ever heard their parents
talking about the man whose body and head was made entirely of rainbows
I knew he was going to save the world when it most needed it, when
everybody was down and the trees were all crumbling like old derelict
buildings and the sky had turned a funny colour that wasn't blue (like
it should be) and the sea was too tired to move anymore and lots of
people had started hating other people so much that they would kill
them without too much thought, I knew that he would come on out here
into our grey silly world where we are greedy and sour and stroll
about, looking around like a child in a museum at the crazy exhibits,
making rainbow jokes that produced smiles in all who heard them and
slowly making everything fall back into its place and stop being so
dead. There will be no time for death in the rainbow mans plans! That's
how he'll come to save us all, making everyone gasp with a thousand
colours glistening together like a box of priceless jewels and the
entire world will be as bright as a shiny button.
There will be rainbows hanging in the sky from invisible hooks because
they are so big - all carried from his secret cavern under the ground
in my town - that stretch over entire countries and hover about from
sunrise to sunset and even over night, shining like a lighthouse to
guard over the happiness of the world.
The ground will be as soft as a mattress everywhere you bounce and
people will slide down rainbows with whoops frozen in their throats
that they can't quite bring up because they feel like children again,
and like a modest superhero the guy made of rainbows would spend all
his time walking around checking that people were all having a good
time and asking them if they needed anything. Every now and again a
persons' greed will shine through and they might ask for this that and
the other, and the rainbow man never said a single word, just got them
their request and gave it to them brightly. When they have everything
they wanted they can't understand why tears wont stop streaming down
their face, and all of a sudden the lists and lists of things and
things doesn't seem so important any more.
Inside the world the boiling hot rocks shine harder than an enormous
electrical light bulb and it is only a matter of time before it has to
burst out.
You see, there is nowhere else for it to go.
Sometimes when I felt sad I took very long and very lonesome walks all
the way out to the old broken telephone pole that seemed embarrassed to
be making a nuisance of itself and just sat on a bench with a faded
engraving on its low wooden back and watched in total silence, but I
never saw any rainbows, or a man made of rainbows either. One time I
did see a dead fox by the tufts of yellow grass that grew at the base
of the pole, which seemed to have a smile on its little face, but I
sure didn't see no rainbows.
Another time I could have sworn that I could smell the sweetness of hot
sugar spinning furiously around and around like a baby cloud growing up
and hovering down the street, but the wind got a hold of it and carried
it away as quickly and mischievously as it had appeared.
I could still picture a cavern full of rainbows and smelling of cotton
candy around a dancing man who never once stopped smiling (and who was
made of pure rainbow).
Every now and again on certain days when the weather was being kinda
silly entire rainbows, and sometimes even baby half-rainbows, would
manage to escape from his cave and get a glimpse of what it was like
out here. Perhaps they wondered what all the fuss was about and wanted
to feel the brushing of the surface against their colourful sides, or
maybe he had released the rainbows specially, even though it begged to
stay with him and his friends, just so as we didn't forget he was
there, just waiting. "Don't worry, pal," he said to the rainbow as it
gathered its things and headed for the world, "we'll ALL be out to see
you soon enough!" And with a little jump the rainbow turned back just
once to wave and then it was gone from the cheering cave, proud as
punch of what it was doing, and bang, there it was, right there, for us
to see.
And boy did we watch that rainbow, our mouths open all the way wide, so
open and for so long that flies could just buzz on in and have a look
around and get so bored after so much flying that they just flew back
out turning their noses up all the way, and probably choosing to watch
the rainbow too. I mean who wants to sit in an open mouth?
A reminder would happen every now and again and we always counted the
days till the next time, because we knew there'd be a next time, right
up until the time when we were ready.
I slept soundly the entire time that man made of rainbows was in his
cave. Every time I woke up something took my breath away and I could
feel the energy waiting to burst all over town, and when I opened my
eyes it felt like the first thing I saw was a beautiful girl.
On my eleventh birthday I was sitting there on my bench where some of
the planks had fallen out. It was an old bench. The pole was looking
worse than I had ever seen it, like someone had been trying to uproot
it from the ground. It leaned at a precarious angle and swayed with
every breath the wind dared take. Its tangled wires upset me. I was
talking to the man made of rainbows, down there in his cave, because I
knew he could hear me and thought it was quite possible that he wanted
some different company what with being all the way down there with
rainbows the whole time. I was explaining that soon might be a good
time for him to come up here with his hands on his hips and that wild
grin and sort the mess we made of everything out. I didn't think we
could do it alone, and told him so.
An old man soon walked past me deep in conversation with a guy who he
couldn't see. He was probably around sixty years old and he was fat and
red, with white patches of hair around his ears. He smelt of whiskey
and stopped to stare straight at me.
"Who you talkin' to kid?" he asked me loudly. I felt real safe by this
telephone pole.
"To a man made of rainbows," I replied clearly. My voice surprised
myself when I heard it. It seemed as though something was different
about it. "He lives right beneath this telephone pole here."
The old man looked a little harder into my face, like he was trying to
make sure I was really there. He looked down to my shoes and up to my
hair. Then he laughed very hard, holding his stomach so it would not
fall off of his body. "Sweet gawddamn kid, they still tellin' that dumb
ole story?"
"Yep," I told him.
When I walked away from that man and my broken bench and the telephone
pole and the cavern with the man made of rainbows still waiting inside
the wind blew straight in my eyes and made me cry.
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