SALVAGED TEXT
The Salvaged painting series was based on fictional vignettes written by Brad Bunkers. He completed a large portion of the work while at the Ucross Foundation residency program in Clearmont, Wyoming. See the art blog for a synopsis written by the one and only Mitchell McInnis.
LANDEL never got over the executor role, a half-hearted grin as Clance and his wife Jenda signed the papers of ownership. If blood be thicker than water, it’s no match for the decisiveness of a fountain pen.
BACK THEN the staples of brotherhood stitched Landel and Clance together on a metal roof known as the Royham family. Now, after years of desuetude, the scar-tissued relationship was reduced to a sense of apprehensive loyalty.
CLANCE, BUSTED MORE THAN NOT, messed around with endeavors so ill-conceived they couldn’t be considered dreams: organic turkey farm, used satellite dishes, 24-hour motocross track.
ROYHAM SALVAGE kept its neck in through war, mining busts, and the occasional wind-blown vacuum salesman. A chunk of land too rocky for wheat and too perverse to develop, the salvage was salvation to Jenda.
IF CLANCE was the “Prince of Junk,” Jenda was the “Dashboard Debutante of Discarded Tramps.” Stray mutts, one-eared goats, a bum left for road kill on highway 40. No matter the low, she propped herself up as she worked to polish the abandoned.
CLANCE had one emblem he flagged his life on, “everyone of us, no matter how beautiful or blessed, ends up junked, crushed, or under a blanket of dirt.” In his mind, this mantra translated to a steady stream of neglected worn out cars in need of a roadside burial ground.
WHEN LANDEL wasn’t staring down the barrel at a gopher or losing coin at internet poker, he jostled around his F-350 hauling junkers to Royham Salvage. “The pay was a bastard’s ransom, but the huntin’ was pretty.”
LANDEL would pull into the yard with a wrecker full. There, Jenda would be waiting, dressed as if she had an audience waving dollar bills.
JENDA STOOD IRREGULAR, like a combine head that had met too many field stones. A rust-colored pig by her side, the only creature with the stomach for radiator fluid, oil-swirled water, and buck-shot gophers.
NAMED “BRUCE LEE ROYHAM,” the pig spent the bulk of his day camped out in a left-for-dead Chevy Impala.
BRUCE LEE was a throwback, left over from when Clance had the idea of selling cheese-filled pork fritters at the county fair. The deep-fat-fried business sputtered along until the ‘86 flood washed away farrowing sheds filled with screeching piglets.
LANDEL threatened to end Bruce Lee, “one bullet ‘til bacon,” he would say. If not for Landel’s longing to have Jenda’s dress pressed firmly against his polyester pants, Bruce Lee would no doubt be in the freezer by now.
CLANCE WAS INDIFFERENT. He couldn’t recognize true feeling let alone the desperate flirtation volleyed between Jenda and Landel. Like rust bleeding through the blistered paint on an old car fender, Clance stared at the dirt as life faded in front of him.