Feeling Blue

Clyde’s dad, tired of the gray roof above the porch at his lakefront cabin, went to the local paint shop to buy two gallons of what he hoped would be Sky Blue.

The man behind the counter consulted charts, pulled down two silver buckets, poured in some base, pumped in two dashes of dark blue pigment, tapped on lids, and fed the end product to an aggressive, sputtering paint mixing machine.

The result? Two cans of blue.

At the cabin, a friendly Mexican cleared away the porch furniture, laid out sheets of clear plastic, and started slapping paint on the ceiling.

The paint, as it turns out, was blue. Not just blue, but blue!! — in italics, with exclamation points. It was a shade of blue that seared the eye, a toxic turquoise.

Work halted. Clyde’s dad consulted the paint store manage. Dilution. Remixing.

Back at the cabin, the Mexican laborer pried open the cans to reveal an almost identical shade of blue: less turquoise, more aqua. Painting commenced. Hours passed.

Later that afternoon, we all stood on the porch, looking up at the roof.

“It’s blue,” the Mexican laborer said.

“It’s definitely blue,” Clyde’s dad says.

Above us, the paint has dried: high gloss, reflective, concrete-pool blue.

“It’s not so blue,” Clyde said. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”

Above us: glaciers, ice floes, arctic skies.

The Mexican, still staring straight up, shakes his head. “It’s blue,” he murmurs. “It’s very, very blue.” He looks at me. “That is blue, right?”