Copper Man
Things got weird the first week I was open. A guy walked in with a question, but I could only focus on the man himself. It was the late ’80s, and he looked like a medieval monk with an MTV makeover. His head was shaved in that peculiar way: a skinny halo of short hair, dyed a garish, rusty orange, with gray roots. Ditto the rusty orange beard tracing his jawline from temple to temple.
I was transfixed by the collar of his shirt. From tip to tip, the edges were woven with fine copper wire. The seams attaching his sleeves to his shoulders were done up the same way. From my vantage behind the counter, I couldn’t see the rest.
A half-baked plan I had for my new venture, this used-record store, was to set it apart by catering to a fringe clientele. And here was this guy: my test market. It was showtime.
He wanted Gregorian chant records. And, yes, I had some, as part of a small but broader “early music” section. When I stepped from behind the counter to guide him to it, the rest of his outfit hit me like an optical migraine.
His blue, acid-washed denim shirt matched his jeans, and from the collar of his shirt to the cuffs of his pants, any features offering themselves for ornamentation with copper wire were ambitiously addressed.
The seams of his shirtsleeves were embellished with copper wire in tight, whipstitch loops; likewise, the seams down the sides of the shirt. On his back, the length of the yoke between his shoulders was ingeniously worked with varying gauges of wire in a pattern that combined a zigzag with a spiral. His shirt buttons were copper wire, crafted in the design of a Turk’s head knot. The cuffs were closed with cufflinks artfully fashioned from a pair of small pentagonal copper coins of unknown origin, and there was an elaborate copperized monogram on his shirt pocket.
The seams of his pants were braided copper wire, top to bottom. The way he moved was suggestive of a knight in armor.
The records he wanted weren’t easy to find, and customers for them were rarer still. Surprised and pleased with the selection, he bought them all. I was also pleased, but to me, the sale was secondary. On the True Path, reward comes from delivering on an odd request. I recommended he check back in a week or two. I would have more.
My girlfriend in those days had a shoe store next to my little shop. She was brand-new in business, too. Our downtown neighborhood was a little down-at-the-heels. Together, we kept a close eye on any noteworthy incidents and developments.
Between us, my new customer became Copper Man.
Copper Man stopped in every couple of weeks that summer, always with a new copper ring or a new copper bracelet or two, and he’d snap up whatever I’d brought in with him in mind. The season passed quickly, as it always does, and when he walked in one day as summer was winding down, he was wearing new boots that really knocked me out.
His once-ordinary work boots were brashly encrusted with copper wire in whorls of random diameter. Spirals of heavy-gauge copper wire — large and small; some spinning clockwise, others the other way — overlayed angular and precise geometric forms made of super-fine wire.
I never wanted to make a spectacle of the guy, but my girlfriend, being in the shoe business, had to see these boots, so I dashed next door and we furtively marveled from a discrete distance.
I never knew Copper Man’s name. He never told me and I never asked. But we’d become loosely acquainted, and maybe galvanized by the sight of those boots, I felt at liberty to finally ask, “So, uh, what’s the story behind all the copper?”
He seemed a little taken aback, but his response was immediate and authoritative. “Most people think the streets of heaven are paved with gold,” he said. “They’re copper!”
“Huh,” I replied. “I had no idea.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Copper Man. “Very few among us know, and I take it upon myself to make it known.”
I pondered that for a moment. “Do you know Jesus Christ?” he asked.
”I don’t know the guy, but I’ve heard the name.”
Reaching into his shirt pocket, Copper Man produced a clipping from a glossy magazine, a little bigger than a large postage stamp: somebody’s stock image of Jesus. Holding it next to his face, he asked, “See any resemblance?”
Speechless for the second time in the same minute, I stared at his intricately interlaced copper monogram and, for the first time, saw the letters I hadn’t bothered to puzzle out: “JC.” When our eyes met a moment later, he gave me just the slightest hint of a somber nod.
I never saw Copper Man again, but I married my girlfriend and we still remember those boots like he walked in wearing them last week.
