Джон Макдональд - All These Condemned

“Hey!” I said, and he made a funny little grunting noise to himself.

“Mavis?” he said. And he put the ski down.

I realized I hadn’t heard Wilma laughing or talking in quite a while. I called her. She didn’t answer. I wondered if she’d gone up to the house without telling anybody she was leaving.

It’s funny how alarms go off in your head. All of a sudden, as Gil started to call her too, I just knew something was wrong. I just knew it. And all of a sudden the water was cold. Awful cold. And all the stars didn’t look friendly any more. They looked cold too.

“Wilma!” I yelled. “Wilma!”

“All at once,” Steve said, and his voice was shaky. “Now!”

“Wilma!” we yelled. The night didn’t care. The stars didn’t give a damn. Our voices came back from the mountains. All faint and haunted and horrible.

“Wilma!”

She had those big books of reproductions. I had put on a shirt she had given me, and some comfortable ragged khaki shorts from the old days. I sat and turned the pages. Dufy, Rouault, Utrillo. What do they say? The honored dead. They leave patterns behind them. They couldn’t even draw. I drew every leaf and it went up on the cork board. Sister Elizabeth said it was pretty. There was something the matter with one of Sister Elizabeth’s eyes. It didn’t look at you. The other kids made jokes. They said it was the eye that looked at God.

It was dawn and I turned meaningless pages.

One eye looked at God and you couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but her arms were warm. Her clothes smelled musty and sweaty when she held me close. I was her favorite, so I didn’t mind being held that way.

She was holding me and I was laughing silently against the mustiness that day. When she held me away so suddenly, I barely had a chance to make a crying face again.

He’d held me out in the air over the bricks ’way down there. Then he pulled me back and dropped me and hurt my head and slapped me and turned his back on me, leaning on the railing. I was crying. I reached down with both hands and I grabbed his ankles and snatched and lifted as hard as I could. I knew I had to do it fast and hard and strong, because if it didn’t happen to him, he would slap me again.

“Aaaaaaaa!” he cried on the way down.

I was looking down when they came out. I was watching, ’way down there, the blood running in a little river down a place between two of the bricks, and he was like he was lying down to see it closer and better, his eyes right near the little river. Sometimes when it was after a rain, they would let us race toothpicks in the gutter. I never cared if I won or not. I like to watch it.

Sister Elizabeth said it was a dreadful shock to me. She held me close. She smelled funny. I said he was trying to show me how he could walk on the railing. What happened was I was off balance. I did not see him go down, because I was staggering back. That would have been a good part of it. I did not know how many times he went over in the air. And that would have been a good thing to know.

It’s odd that I should sort of forget that I’m different and it was Wilma who made me remember it all over again. I guess I never did really forget. It’s more that I didn’t use it. If you’re different, it’s something to be used, or it’s wasted. I only used it in little ways. Like that night in the park and hearing them, and creeping close through the bushes, creeping so close to them I could have reached out and touched them. They were like animals. I hit them both, and it was funny I only had to hit him once, but I had to hit her three times. I had been planning to do something humorous with them. Something to make you laugh. But I felt tired and I had forgotten what it was, so I left them there. It wasn’t even in the paper. So what good was it?

Wilma saw the importance of me. She brought it out. So that people pointed at me, and tried to talk to me, and even said sir.

I could do the pictures very quickly, and they were four hundred dollars for each one at first and then six hundred and fifty. And now one thousand. But Evis gets one third of that. I don’t see what he does that he should get one third. I ask him and he says things about the high rental area of the gallery and the cost of packing and shipping and things like that.

It’s important. One of them, I did this: I took the tubes. I squirted the raw colors into my hands. Then I made a washing motion with my hands, then smeared the canvas. The first time I had done too much of the washing motion. It came out gray, for some reason. So the next time I did it not so much and the colors stayed bright and raw and smeared. Then I turned the canvas around and around until it looked like something. Then with black and a little brush I made it look more like what it looked like. That one took a long time to dry, I remember.

Now I wish I could ask Wilma why she did it. There are a lot of things in the world that make you do other things. And people are always watching and thinking, and you can only guess what the real reasons are, because they all have their own.

She talked so long.

They were down there on the dock in the lights, swimming, and the lights were not on where we were. Our legs were over the bank and we sat on the clipped neat green grass, our hips touching, our thighs touching, like friends.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“It was a bet, darling. I’ve been telling you and telling you. You’re sweet sometimes, but really you are terribly dense. Why did we bet? Because there was an argument, that’s why. A stuffy and self-important man. One of those cocktail-party arguments. He said that, in the mass, the people have taste and perception. He said you can’t kid them. My answer, of course, is that the public consists of slobs who like what they are told to like. He was a tiny bit drunk. Drunk enough to bet me one thousand dollars that I couldn’t pick somebody off the street and turn him into an artist. Or at least what the public would consider an artist. I looked around. I thought it would be more amusing if I could find somebody pretty. And there you were, dear, behind that counter, wearing your silly little hat and positively reeking of sex. With Steve Winsan’s fees and the money I’ve spent on you, dear, it has cost me nearly seven thousand to win one. But it has been delightful, really. So I’m just telling you that the party is over. That’s all.”

“But the critics...”

Her voice got harder. “The critics worth a damn said you’re a farce, and you are. The sheep went along with the big fad. They didn’t understand those globs because nobody can, and because they couldn’t understand them, they said they were good — pushed in the right direction by Steve, of course. And that created a stir and the stir meant more publicity and that meant more sales, and I got my thousand dollars over a month ago. My God, I couldn’t let you try to draw things , objects, anything recognizable. Your work would be infantile.”

“But you told me... Wilma, you said I’m different. You said I should be...”

“Arrogant. Of course. You had to take yourself very seriously. So others would. You had to believe in yourself. That was part of the stage setting, darling. Good Lord, if you keep telling a frump she’s lovely, she’ll start believing it and even start improving in looks. You can pat people into shape like tortillas . Almost any shape you want.”

“I’m a good artist,” I told her.

She patted my knee. “Poor Gil. No, baby. You aren’t any kind of an artist. Not any kind at all. You’re just a big guy with muscles and you’ve had a good time, haven’t you? The end of the line, baby. All out. Evis may be able to unload a few more, but a year from now nobody will even remember who the hell you were. Unless you can keep on paying Steve’s fees, and I know damn well you can’t, because you haven’t saved a dime. And I’m not going to keep on with it, certainly.”