Peter Heller - The Painter

“What did Dugar say? At the end?”

“He said he thought we were the perfect couple. Not that he loved me more than marine wildlife or poetry, but that we were perfect together. ‘I, Dugar, have a strong back and a huge heart,’ he said, ‘and you are smart and great with people.’ Can you believe that? He carefully rolled us each a Drum cigarette and said we should start an organic farm. Then he took the little feather out of his left ear, the one he’s had since he apprenticed with the Arapahoe, and he gave it to me. Tried.”

“He apprenticed with the Arapahoe?”

She slid her mug across the butcher block, allowed me to refill it.

“Maybe it was the Cheyenne. Or the Shoshone. I can’t remember. He was like nineteen. He lived on the rez in a willow stick thing covered in blankets and he was boffing the shaman’s wife so they kicked him out. Put a curse on him. Come to think of it, that explains a lot.”

She drank from the full and steaming mug and looked at me past the tilted rim. She put it down lightly on the counter.

“Do you want to paint today? It’s been a while.”

“No. Maybe. I don’t think it will have a woman in it.”

“No?” She leaned forward. She was wearing one of her signature spaghetti strap tops. She squeezed her biceps into the sides of her chest and her breasts did that thing where they dominated the universe for a minute. I held up a four and a half fingered hand.

“Not this morning.”

She relented.

“I can’t tell if you need me to help you get your mind off of things or if that’s exactly what you need, to focus.”

“Tell you the truth I’m not sure either. Think I need to be alone this morning.”

She pursed her lips at me. Her eyes were serious. Shadows of big trout swimming along the bright pebble bottom. “I bet you do,” she said. “Call me later if you want to swim with beautiful naked girls.”

She came around the counter and tugged my beard, kissed my temple and strolled back out the front door.

Roar of Tops, then silence. Me and two crickets, and the morning air already hot, breathing at the screens.

I walked over to the west end of the house and picked a twenty-four thirty-six out of the stack of pre-stretched canvases leaning against the wall. Put it on the easel, squeezed ten measures of pigment onto a piece of plastic covered fiberboard, lifted a medium stiff brush out of a glass of spirits and began.

I painted a road. Cracked tarmac running over the desert hills west of here. Burnt brush, cracked clay, washes of white alkaline in the low places. The road climbed a hill, there were piñons at the top of it, a ridge, the road disappearing into them. It curved left into the shadows of the pines. Hot. Hot on the road, not much relief in the shade. Along the road grew flowers. Small asters on the shoulder, purple and blue, breathing out the last colors, the last moisture in the whole country. My hand moved from the spirit jars holding the brushes to the palette, to the canvas, the palette knife, a rag. Moving, it seemed, faster, without pause. The loaded brush carving a single living cloud in the washed sky. Then a big bush by the pavement, rabbitbrush, fading its green, and in the laced shadow of the bush a shape.

Brush to palette to canvas: an arm sticking out from under. On the arm, bracelets. A girl’s arm. A girl’s body at the base of the bush.

And then. On the rock, in the trees, on the hill, the four birds. Not together now, perched and watching from their separate distances. Black and huge. On rock, on tree, on another branch. Saw them appear with a dread. Could not make them not come. Not not come, they were already there like the road and the sky and the dead girl. They had been there always, with the unrelieved heat, the relentless sky.

Phone rang. Jarred me out of the place. How many hours? Wasn’t sure, it was hot in the house, already afternoon. Rang four times stopped. Began ringing again.

Okay okay. Too much going on probably not to answer. Put down the brush, board, rag, lurched over to the counter. Stiff, wrung out, like I’d been shoveling all morning, swinging a pick.

“Yah.”

“Stegner?” Static on the line, wind. Voice scratchy, deep. Familiar.

“Yah.”

“I want my horse.”

Pause. Hair on my forearm standing up.

“Whoever this is, it’s not your horse.”

“Why? Because you think you killed me dead? In the creek?”

Static.

“With a rock? While I was taking a leak? Cracked my skull and left me for dead?”

Neck prickled, goosebumps: “Who the fuck ?”

“Well you did. Good job. Dead as the rock you used and tossed into the creek.”

Heart hammering, could feel my pulse racing in the thumb I was using to grip the phone.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Tough guy. Using lots of grownup cusswords. Nice.” Gravel laugh.

Then: “You wanna know Who? The fuck ? Well it sure as shit ain’t old Dellwood is it? Thanks to you.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“No. No you won’t. You hang up you’ll be dead. Promise. Cross my heart. Be joining Dell.”

I hung up.

Immediately the phone rang four more times, I let it ring. Nothing on the caller ID. Blocked number. Ring ring… silence.

I hobbled over to the armoire in the corner—felt like I’d run some race, knee sore, legs stiff and tired. Hobbled over trying to unkink my lower back and opened the fragrant pine door, reached under a stack of wool sweaters and pulled out my .41 mag. An ugly, heavy, black Smith & Wesson revolver I’d had since I was a teenager, the one I’d shot Simms with, the one the state let me keep because I pled down to misdemeanor assault, the DA allowing it because they wanted Simms the fucker behind bars more than they wanted me. I took out the gun and thumbed the cylinder twice around. Loaded. Good.

I lay it on the counter next to the tubes of paint. Walked to the little guest room on the other side of the woodstove. Pushed open the blue painted door. Small room with a quilted bed, one window with a view west to the uplift of the Black Mesa. On the bed lay a pile each of khakis, jeans, flannel shirts. My walk in closet. In the corner behind the door was a soft camo gun case. Lifted it onto the bed on top of the shirts and tugged the heavy zipper. Wrapped the grained wood stock with my right hand and pulled. Out of the flannel lined sheath slid a shiny stainless short barreled shotgun. A twelve gauge pump, triple plated Winchester. The Marine. Made for boats. I’d never had a boat, but I liked the idea you could drop it in the swamp.

What else? Check if it’s loaded. I turned it side down toward the bed and worked the pump six times, kicking the shells out onto the quilt. The sixth pump empty. I gathered the cool plastic buckshot shells under my palm and thumbed them one at a time back into the sprung door of the magazine on the underside of the receiver. Five. I racked the pump once more to chamber a shell, leaving space for one more. Where? On the rough painted bed table was a box of Fiocchi dove loads. Well. At close range it would ruin someone’s day just as bad as buckshot. Tore the cardboard top and fished one out, loaded the sixth. What else?

I lay the shotgun on the counter next to the handgun, picked up the iPhone that still lay there, punched in Sofia’s number.

“Hullo!”

“I was just threatened. On the phone. I don’t want you to come by today.”

“Wha—?”

“In fact, you have any friends in Telluride or Aspen?”

“Crested Butte.”

“Go there. For a couple of days. I mean it.”

“Jim what the fuck? What did he say? Who was it?”

“Dunno. It was bad. Just go to Crested Butte. Soon as you can. I’ll call you.”

“Did you call the police? I mean, like the detective what’s his name? The one you call Sport?”