Peter Heller - The Painter

She stopped, cocked her head the way she does, listening for something it seemed inside her. She was more beautiful right then than maybe any woman I had ever seen.

“You killed him?”

Not really saying it to me. To herself. Listening inside for how she felt about it. Then eyes on me. The eyes different colors, the colors shifting, the way pebbles on the bottom of a stream, the way the fast water is constantly moving the lances of sunlight.

She said: “He didn’t say how . I guess he wouldn’t. That’d be giving a suspect inside information. Fuck . With a knife ?”

She shook her head. Like trying to clear her ear of water. She looked straight into me. Not only with her eyes, with all of her—her eyes, her breasts, hips, the sparse thatch of dark hair.

“Well you better have a good fuck.” She said it exasperated, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “You better store them up, who knows how long it will be when they get serious about you.”

I stood there. Kind of transfixed. Watched her turn and walk bare-ass into the bedroom.

Falling. Falling into her. Like stepping off a cliff and spreading arms and flying downwards. Didn’t matter to where. Because she would swoop up under me and carry me down. With Irmina maybe once or twice like this. Maybe not. Because she was always trying somehow to heal me, to make me better. Not now. Sofia let me fall. Met and wrapped and covered me and we went down together and I cracked open, not like hitting the bottom but like a chrysalis maybe, shuddered open all light and weightless and winged, blown skyward, hearing her with me with me—a cry—whose? No names no words, lost and falling upwards with her in blinding light. Like that.

When it was over she touched her nose to mine.

“You didn’t kill him did you?”

I didn’t move.

“You got up to pee once. And to get the gear from the truck, out of the rain. To hang it up. I heard you say that.”

I didn’t move.

“You were here in my arms all night, weren’t you? I don’t remember much about it do I? Do I ?”

I shook my head. Barely.

“Because we were sleeping.”

“We were sleeping.”

The search warrant was executed that afternoon. The bloody vest was enough for any judge and I knew it was coming. But I was careful not to touch it. Before they came I stood next to the hanging vest that smelled like fish and studied it from inches away, didn’t look like any pieces of brain. Like I said, I was pretty confident that the one blow hadn’t gone that far into the Simian’s brainpan. The blood? Where did all the blood come from? Must have hit and broke that vein that throbs on the temple.

A squad car, a white van, and a plain white Crown Vic with Sport driving alone. Seemed like a lonely man, to me. Twice as smart probably as anybody in the sheriff’s office, twice as sensitive. Wanted to be an artist. Well.

They didn’t take much. The vest, my rod, boots, waders. The light nylon sack with shoulder straps I sometimes use to carry lunch, a water bottle, extra pack of the cigars if I am going all day which I hardly ever do. They took photographs of the two paintings, first separately then side by side which I thought was pretty sophisticated. Evidence of a sudden shift in state of mind would be my guess. Premeditation. Sport asked us politely to stand outside, formal now, friendly still but making no effort to hide that this was a contest, a match and we were on opposite sides and he, beg your pardon, had every intention of winning. Watched him direct the tech to sample the clay under the truck in the frame, take an imprint of the treads on the tires, all four.

Took maybe twenty minutes, the whole thing. When it was done he walked up to us where we were standing in the shade of a young cottonwood on the west side of the house. Not wearing the green shell anymore, too hot, had on a short sleeved button shirt but not business, more like what a surfer or climber would wear at a barbecue, but tucked in, a wide checked pattern olive and soft yellow, and brown loafers, all very casual. He walked up, nodded to Sofia, to me, a frank not unfriendly look as if we had been friends for a long time and didn’t have to pretend anything, said,

“All done. They were very careful. Didn’t toss the place.”

I said, “Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

“Can I go fishing then? Up where I fought with Dell?”

“Sure. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Five of the hunters stayed on. Said they’d paid for nine days of hunting, they were going to hunt nine days. Dell’s brother is flying in from Tucson this afternoon. Grew up here too, knows the country better than his brother. I’d rather not have any more fights.”

I took the mostly unsmoked cheroot I’d just had time to light when they showed up, took it from behind my ear, lit it, inhaled. For a second the three of us stood in the shade and looked at the mountain, the sage hills beneath it flushing pale green with last night’s downpour.

“How about New Mexico?” I said.

His head came up sharply.

“You planning on going there?”

“I have a commission in Santa Fe. A portrait.”

He chewed that over. Let out a breath.

“I can’t keep you from going anywhere. But do me a favor: call me and tell me where you are. I’ve got your cell too. Better if we can get this whole business cleared up and I can keep you posted.”

“Right,” I said.

He handed us both a card. Turned to Sofia who was expressionless.

“Would you come down to the office and make a statement? Say tomorrow morning?”

She turned her face up square on to his.

“No,” she said.

He recoiled, as if struck and trying not to show it.

“No?”

“Unh unh. He was with me all night and that’s all I’ve got to say. We fucked twice. Once pretty fast, slept. Spooned. You know?”

He blinked at her.

“Then we both woke up and fucked once really slow and long. I had two orgasms. I mean two more. That hasn’t happened in a while. Then we were exhausted, wrung out, just drugged kind of, the way the sweat, the musk of sex, the fatigue it just takes you out. All tangled up in each other’s arms. Then we woke up because some assholes were knocking on the door. That’s my statement.”

She handed back his card and walked back into the house.

That evening I tried a new fishing spot, the one I’d heard about for years, the stretch where the Gunnison emerges from its gorge. I was agitated and I wanted to fish and I had to buy new gear anyway, a whole new set, thanks to Sport. And down there, right at the confluence of the North Fork and the main river, there’s an outfitter’s base with a full fly shop. It’s called Pleasure Park which sounds like an adult theme-o-rama. I drove through Hotchkiss, just a row of false fronted shops and a cowboy bar lining the county highway, crossed a deeply shaded creek, climbed a couple of switchbacks up onto the prettiest mesa, a high bench of orchards and green fields overlooking the West Elks and away south the hazy and high snow peaks of the San Juans. Say what you want about Santa Fe and Taos and the clean light, they didn’t have this. Kind of washed the dirt off me, just seeing it. I don’t know if truth is beauty or not but I have always put my stock in beauty every time, the real thing, the one that comes with cold rain and hard stories, and I had never seen a place like this.

And then the road dropped down to the railroad tracks thump thump and it was all desert out ahead, a hundred miles of rolling saltbush westward, and I took the turnoff on my left, south, and wound down to the river.