A Colourful Sidewalk

• Jess Treble, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2019

Every day he scrubs the walls clean. He erases the scrawls of broken winged butterflies, blazing fires and beds of crosses. The children get upset but they never cry, weakness is the ultimate undoing of today. Besides, tomorrows ideas are better, brighter, than yesterdays. Before he clears the wall, he takes a snap. Evidence that the day ever existed.
Music blares from his old radio. He’s oblivious to the sausage dog dragging the fragile Mrs Giddens along the path. He doesn’t notice it sniff his chemical bucket. Nor the thin line of pee dribbling down the debris filled drain. Neither does Mrs Giddens as she carelessly steps on the tiny stream. Nobody notices the dandelion grappling with life as it squeezes through the pavement. A wish unnoticed. He carries on with his daily duty dictated by his meagre wage.
On the first days of his contract parents with tear-stricken kids confronted him. Demanding that the artworks remain. Claiming they lightened the city; which was doused in oily darkness, seeded by the war. He only shrugged. He didn’t know why he did what he did. For him it was a job where he was armed with a hose and scrubbing brush rather than a machine gun. The ideal compromise.
The childish drawings reminding him that there was still hope. Peace could be achieved without a bullet to the heart. But the tyrants that he served refused to allow his point of view to be heard. They wanted soldiers with loyalty and conformity. Soldiers that would run blind into their melancholy fate. He didn’t exhibit those attributes. He didn’t fit. He still doesn’t, as white feathers flock his pockets and doorstep.
Twenty-four days after the dandelion had shrivelled with defeat, there was a picture that remained on the wall. It was small, hardly noticeable. Some might reason it was a glitch in the wall. Or an overlooked space by the exhausted eye. But it wasn’t a mistake. The next day another drawing lingered in the opposite corner. A small heart pigmented by a faint pink. A casual walk by wouldn’t take a second glance.
As the days tripled, so did the illustrations. People would stop in the street, glance up at the wall. Feeble smiles leading them to an improved day at work. He wasn’t seen so regularly but he still came. Sometimes he would wash parts of the wall; fragmenting the days mural but never completely eradicating the art. He chose what stayed; significant pieces, the promotions of love.
A month after the first heart was sketched, he was never seen again with a hose. The drawings had bloomed, dispersing down the sidewalk, tickling the roads edge. They flaunted increased colour the more they multiplied. The grey illustrations of bomb shelters and hungry eyes eliminated. Daisies replaced the barbed wire. The feathers had drifted away. Children flocked to add their latest signs of amity. People flocked to see the delightful scene. He took a picture every day. His name was Charlie.