I liked your painting.
“Anamorphic,” Auggie said again as he leaned against his worktable, facing away from me. “When a sculpture or piece of art looks like one thing—or nothing at all—from one angle, and something completely different from another angle.”
“Anamorphic,” I repeated.
“Right.” He chuckled.
Faith by George Michael was playing on his radio.
I wanted to ask him why he always played his own music while working instead of just listening to AMOR like everyone else, but thought it was pointless.
If I had the choice, I’d listen to more than one song on repeat all day, too.
AMOR usually picked a decent song each day, but twelve hours straight of any one song was just too much.
“Sometimes, when you look at things from a different angle, it looks different,” he said. “That’s life, I guess. That’s art.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Things change when we change our view,” he continued. “Sometimes what we thought was true is different when we gather all the facts. Or, maybe, we expand our understanding of the truth.”
“I get that,” I said. “I really like it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, grabbing a tool from his table and banging away softly at a piece of metal.
I stood there, watching him, holding the anamorphic wire sculpture delicately in my hand. I’d carried it like a precious stone all the way from The Pueblo to the barn. Just to thank Auggie. And to ask about it.
“I liked your painting.”
I reached up to rub the back of my neck with my free hand.
“It…it’s just my first try. I’ve never painted before,” I said.
“Don’t do that.” Auggie stopped working to turn and look at me.
“Do what?”
“Diminish a compliment with an excuse.”
I smiled. “Thank you. I had fun painting it.”
He smiled back. “You’re really good with colors.”
“Honestly, though,” I asked, “if you weren’t there when I painted it, would you know what I had painted?”
“No,” he said.
I sighed.
“But I would be able to tell how you felt,” he said. “It was…inspiring.”
I looked down at my feet so my rosy cheeks were hidden in the shadows.
For what felt like an eternity of seconds, we stood in the barn, me by the door, Auggie by his worktable across the room.
“Have you seen the fliers?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“The fliers? Around town? I think they have one at the post office, Starbuck’s—there might have even been one up at The Pueblo today?”
I shook my head.
“They’ve been up for a while,” he teased.
“Tell me about the fliers,” I said with a laugh.
“It’s the annual Fourth of July BBQ the day after tomorrow.”
“Makes sense. That is the fourth.”
He laughed. “There’s lots of good food. Music. Amos usually adds at least one extra song to the line-up at AMOR. There’s dancing and stuff. Mingling. Fireworks once it gets dark. That kind of thing. It’s all free.”
“Sounds fun.”
“Do you…wanna go? With me?” he asked. “Like a buddy thing?”
I smiled.
“We could eat until we puke and watch fireworks and stuff. It’s usually…it’s fun. Yeah.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “On one condition.”
Auggie squinted at me.
“You have to tell me what this is.”
“Huh?” he asked.
“Your art…installation?” I gestured vaguely around the room. “Tell me what it is.”
More duct work—big enough for two men to fit inside snaked around the room, twisting and turning, over and under.
The large metal cylinder—maybe a section of an old silo—still sat at the center of the room under the skylight.
I desperately wanted to know what Auggie was creating.
I would have gone to the Fourth of July BBQ with him, even if he refused to tell me, but I had an opportunity to learn about his work, so I took it.
“It’s an observatory,” he said. “Kind of.”
“What?”
“Well, see,” Auggie stepped away from his worktable towards the giant metal cylinder in the center of the room, “all of the tubes can be crawled through. But you have to find the exact path to get to the two that open into the room in the center. In the silo.”
It was part of a silo.
“It’s pitch black inside the silo,” he said, “so, when you’re inside, and you’re looking up at the stars through the skylight, it’s like an observatory.
The silo blocks out all of the light and helps your eyes adjust to the dark better and quicker.
So you see the stars more clearly. You see more of the stars, actually.
There’s not much light pollution in Possibly, so that helps. ”
I stared at him.
“The gag is,” he continued, “you hit a switch. Here.”
He pointed at a level by his worktable.
“Lights come on. The lights and the skylight are on a timer. As soon as you hit the lever, you dash into the ductwork and try to find your way to the middle. If you get to the silo before the timer runs out, there’s another lever you can pull to stop the timer.”
“What happens if you don’t get there in time?”
“The skylight closes and the lights stay on.”
“If you pull the other lever?”
“The lights go out, but the skylight stays open,” he said. “Then you can stare up at the stars all you want. You can watch all the universe your eyes can see for as long as you want. Until dawn if you like.”
I smiled.
“Do you want to see it work?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, grinning widely.
“Tonight,” Auggie said. “Eleven-thirty?”
“Okay.”
He nodded.
“I—I don’t know if this is weird,” I said, suddenly wanting to tell Auggie a truth. “But I saw you a few times before I actually introduced myself to you at The Pueblo that one day.”
“Yeah?”
“Um, yeah. In the woods?” I rolled my shoulders. “What’s with the windchimes? Did you put all of those windchimes out there? Sometimes I hear them in town if the breeze is just right.”
“No. I didn’t put them all out there.”
“Who did?”
He made a goofy face at me.
“No one knows,” he said.
“Right.”
“Seriously,” he said. “No one knows. Or no one will say if they do. They’ve been there forever. Sometimes, like, people will add something to one of the windchimes—I have—but I don’t know how they got there originally.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said. “But, like, what’s up with them?”
“It’s kind of a silly Possibly thing.”
“Tell me. I won’t laugh.”
He sighed. “Well, there’s an old wives’ tale that windchimes ring when the dead are around—it’s a way of letting the living know that the ones they loved that have passed are nearby and thinking of them.
So, the people around here say that if they ring when you’re there, someone is thinking of you.
And, if you want them to know you’re thinking of them as well, you can ring the chimes yourself. ”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah. Sometimes people add things to them. Makes it more personal. When they ring for you or you ring them for someone else. That’s why some are full of keys or bottle caps or…whatever.”
“Is it okay to just go whenever you want?” I asked, kicking at the ground. “Like, if you wanted to see if they rang for you? Or to ring them for someone else?”
Auggie smiled softly.
“It’s public property,” he said. “It’s open to everyone. Just don’t remove anything except trash on the ground. And never take something off one of the chimes. They’re important to people here.”
“Okay.”
Again, we found ourselves standing there in silence, not really staring at each other, but not exactly not staring at each other.
“So, eleven-thirty?” he asked.
I nodded. “Eleven-thirty. Let’s see the stars.”
“Hope you’re quick,” he said with a grin. “And good at mazes.”