Razz Barker sat cross-legged on the side of the road, turning the large block of soap over and over in his hands. He had plucked it from the floor of the pantry where he had spied it lurking behind neatly stacked rows of quince preserves, a fallen remnant of a batch his grandmother had made four or five years ago. The soap, once a creamy beige, had darkened to a deep amber and it smelled of rancid lard. He studied it carefully, his eyes darting between the cool, smooth rectangle in his hands and the photograph that lay on the ground beside him not five inches from his left knee. He barely remembered this woman. It had been seven years since he'd seen his mother. Over half of his twelve years had gone by with no word from her and all he was able to recall now was her pale, cool skin and the smell of permanent wave lotion as he buried his head in her neck. It was his mother who had started calling him Razz and everyone soon adopted the name, except his grandmother who steadfastly refused to call him anything but Erasmus. She considered it a sacrilege to shorten a biblical name and added this offense to the list of reasons she had stockpiled to justify her denial that she had ever given birth to a daughter.
The noonday sun was shining directly overhead when Razz extracted his Swiss Army knife from the bib pocket of his faded and fraying overalls and commenced the task of creating a carved tribute from the brittle, stinking soap. The knife had been a gift from his mother's friend, the man who had popped in and out of their lives at irregular intervals until the day they drove off together in his green pick-up, vowing to return for Razz once they were "settled." As he carefully worked the blade around the edges of the soap, curled shavings dropped to the ground around him and his tongue absently played at the corners of his mouth. He stopped periodically to study the photograph, his brow furrowing and creating a countenance that was far too serious and full of intensity for such a young boy.
Hours passed as Razz continued laboring, steadily working the slick, scented medium into a crude likeness of the woman in the faded photograph. He possessed a very real talent for this art and repeatedly amazed his friends and teachers with his ability to turn the most shapeless piece of wood or clay into realistic and starkly beautiful images. At home, he wandered off alone to indulge in these rituals, escaping the icy stares and stern comments of his grandmother, who proclaimed all but the most practical and utilitarian exercises a sinful waste of the good lord's time.
As the sky grew greyer and his shadow began to fade, Razz's mind wandered lazily over a loosely stacked pile of thoughts. He thought about the time he had spotted Hardy Rice happily splashing around down at the swimming hole. He had taken his clothes and hidden them a few yards away in a hollow tree trunk, concealing himself in the bushes as poor Hardy ran frantically about, covered only with a branch broken from a walnut tree. He thought about his grandfather, gone four summers now, who had managed to instill in Razz a respect for dreams and aspirations, fueled by his own regret at never having followed his own. He thought about his dog, Rambler, who had proved himself true to his name by wandering off one day, never to return, leaving Razz broken-hearted but ceaselessly hoping for his eventual return. He had finally come to realize that Rambler was never coming back and as his mind reaffirmed this now, his thoughts turned to his mother once again. He winced as he swallowed something that felt like a stone in his throat and tears welled in his round, blue eyes. He said the words that were tumbling around in his head out loud now, to purge himself of them forever. "She's never coming back." He turned his face upward and the very first raindrop of the evening kissed his cheek and blended with a single tear. He uncrossed his legs and stood up, shaking the numbness from his feet. He tucked his knife back into his pocket and dropped the angelic image he had fashioned from refuse to the ground. It landed inches away from the faded sepia photograph and there they both remained on the side of the road as the boy walked off towards home.
It rained for hours that evening and some time just before midnight, a possum crossing the road stopped to curiously sniff at a melted mass of lard and lye.
©1997 Gail Von Schlichting