Vandals, Emily Heilman

40 VANDALS

Emily Heilman

Neither of them really cared about getting caught. At least, Nash didn’t. Or so it seemed. Daniel tried to ignore the heavy feeling of his hands, the blue can of spray paint feeling even heavier. He tried to ignore the shakiness in his legs, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He gave Nash a side glance.

Nash was examining their canvas with a discriminating eye. They were down on Oak, at the bridge that crosses the shallow part of the river. It was summer; the crickets chirped loudly, but hidden in the reeds, the frogs were even louder. Everything was dark around them, except for the single streetlamp that stood at the corner of the road down the block, and the light of the waning moon that drifted in and out as the clouds moved east. Daniel watched Nash eye the abutment as if he were doing a maze with only his eyes, like he was constructing a tag before paint ever hit brick. Their canvas was certainly not blank—the chipping brick was covered in faded and overlapping words, some with sharp edges and multiple colors, some simple phrases done quickly and for political purpose, a few haphazard dicks here and there. It wasn’t much of a gallery; people weren’t likely to take notice or care about the things painted there. But it was tradition, Nash had said. At least, it had been Nash and Alex’s tradition, before Nash and his mom lost him to a locked bathroom door and a Smith & Wesson.

Daniel shifted from foot to foot and shook the can a little. “Know what you want to paint?”

Nash didn’t look at him but squinted at the canvas and stroked his short beard. “Not sure. Might just do my signature tag.” He shrugged and began doing just that.

Nash got to work, and Daniel looked down at the can in his own hand. Never had he done something this blatantly illegal. This was the first time he

had seen someone do something like this without batting an eye. Nash was quite a bit shorter than Daniel, but he carried himself in a way that made him seem wizened with age unearned. He wasn’t that much older, maybe six or so years, but his small eyes, beard, and the permanent lines on his face gave Daniel the impression that he had seen some things, even if he wasn’t sure of what or how true that was. Daniel had gone off to college, sure, and had gotten out of this little town, but Green Bay wasn’t that far from here and it’s not even that big. Daniel said yes to this excursion after Nash had introduced himself at the arcade and they had played a few times on Daytona USA because he had the feeling that whatever it was Nash had seen in his life, he had to say it to someone. And somehow, Nash picked Daniel to say it to. Daniel wondered why, and figured it had something to do with Alex, but the older guy hadn’t mentioned him. Daniel only knew about Alex because he had been two years ahead of him in school. He’d been a real popular guy his junior year and was the talk of all the girls in Daniel’s freshman class. He certainly made waves before and after he was gone.

Daniel popped off the lid to his can of spray paint. He wasn’t sure what was expected of him, but if he was going to vandalize public property, he was going to do it his way. In his drawing class, he had preferred drawing birds over anything else. The scarlet ibis was his current favorite; the long beak and existential eyes amused him. But, more than that, Daniel admired the way the sun shone through their wings in the sky, pink and translucent. He could never get the wings just right, but who would care about a shoddily painted bird under a bridge in the middle of nowhere? It’s just vandalism.

Nash had done a base coat of an upside-down triangle in white and, glancing at the kid out of the corner of his eye, made the split-second decision to alter his tag and began doing details in red. He watched the kid next to him fumble with this new medium. Alex had never fumbled. In fact, the first time they went, it had been Alex’s idea. He must have been thirteen, fourteen? It had been just before he started high school and Nash was about to head off to college. Nash smiled. He hadn’t been so sure about all this at that time either, but Alex had been elated. This was the first spot they marked up,

but those unrefined works had been painted over and half-heartedly scrubbed away by the city parks department. Nash had sprayed a dick further underneath the bridge and was proud to see it still there. Sure, there was a gang tag over one of the testicles, but the rest had stood the test of time.

They’d tagged a bunch of places that summer, and the tradition continued every summer when Nash came back from college. Always, they’d start here. Get the feel for doing something that could land them a night in the jail or at least a ride home in the back of a cop car. Although they were never caught, the thrill felt new that first night every summer. Through the years, they developed their own tags. Nash had pointed one out to Daniel when he picked him up earlier. The green and white tag was on the side of an abandoned elementary school building, next to his brother’s red and white tag, but Nash had avoided mentioning the other tag at all, though it was similar in coloring and style.

It was in this moment of reverie that Daniel stepped on an empty Corona can and about scared himself shitless reaching for the black can of paint on the ground. Nash sprayed a line of red through his piece in surprise. He gave a half-hearted chuckle in Daniel’s direction and looked back at his tag disappointedly. Of course, he would mess up this time.

Daniel cringed in embarrassment as Nash began altering his work slightly to accommodate for the accidental addition. He tightened his face uncomfortably and looked at his own tag. The lines were too thick; he should’ve known that this would be a lot different with spray paint. He looked at the black in his hand and put it back down in favor of the blue. He couldn’t salvage the bird, that was for sure, but it’d be simple enough to turn it into something less detailed.

The cacophony of the frogs and crickets rang louder in Daniel’s ears now, having been reawakened to the voices of the night after breaking focus stepping on the can. Focus was something he had been having trouble finding lately. His last semester in his drawing class had ended with probably a dozen or so unfinished drawings. He hadn’t had the heart to finish any of the landscapes and had only done a couple portraits instead; after his teacher, Ms.

Galdonik, had introduced each week’s project, he would return to his seat, pull out his encyclopedia of birds, and begin drawing whichever one suited his mood. The first had been a full front view of a shoebill—a long-legged, bluish-gray creature with a tuft of feathers sticking up at the back of its head and its loafer-like bill pointing down as if it were, at some point along its length, attached to the bird’s neck. He had picked it for its stupidity, awestruck at the sheer audacity that the creature had to exist with such a form. Upon turning it in, Ms. Galdonik had frowned in deep thought, and eventually raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Then she asked him to clear it with her before he undertook any more alternative projects.

Tagging a bird here on the bridge now out of the question, Daniel glanced over at Nash, who was going at it with the red can. Daniel took the blue can in his hand and made two thick lines over his scarlet ibis, one through the body and one through the wings, turning it into a squat x. For a while, he stared blankly at the thick lines. The two young men were quiet, only the sound of spraying paint proved they were there under the bridge. Not knowing what else to do, he picked up the black and sprayed another thick line vertically through the center. He made the letters D and N on either side. D*N. It was his gamer tag on the leaderboards at the arcade, whenever he would actually beat a record. Someone would always come along and shove him off, though, and he knew that would happen to this tag someday, too. But it was simple enough for his first tag and, like the arcade games, he could always come back to make his mark again. To make a better mark. Or try to, at least. He really could bullshit meaning into anything. “How’s this?” he said to the frogs, putting his hand analytically to his non-existent whiskers.

Nash took a step back from his own work, putting his hand similarly on his beard. “Simple. Pretty nice. Needs a third color. There’s got to be some sort of artsy rule for that, you know? Like, good things come in threes.”

“Oh, yeah.”

He picked up the green can. He hoped that following Nash’s advice would bring him into whatever wisdom he had that Daniel was missing. Blue for the first try, black to fix mistakes, green for a new beginning. A pretty basic

meaning to write into cans of spray paint, to write into something that was just vandalism.

They spent the rest of their time in silence, and when Daniel set down the white can, Nash looked over at his tag and gave an approving nod. The paint dripped in a number of places, but it wasn’t about how good your tag was, just that it was yours. Nash finished up in the next few minutes. Daniel looked over the work, far more polished than his. It was a pretty good replica of one of the tags Nash had shown him earlier, but Nash had only called one of those his when he had pointed them out. The two on the abandoned building were similar in style and shape, and both were black and white with different accent colors. The one Nash had put here under the bridge was red where Daniel had expected green.

Nash closed his eyes as if honoring the ceremony of vandalism and let the kid squirm for just a few more seconds. Nope, certainly nothing like his brother. The moment felt unclean. When Nash deemed that they had stood there a sufficient time, which could only really have been a few minutes, he gathered up the spray cans.

“Should really get you home, then. Good work.” He casually sprayed a line of paint into the reeds.

“Yeah. It’s pretty late.” Daniel followed Nash up the embankment, and they made their way past the single streetlight and back into the neighborhood.