Peter Heller - The Painter

I didn’t answer.

“Yeah, I guess that’s a dumb question. Jim?”

“You gonna go? You gonna promise me?”

“Okay okay. Be nice to get up there anyway, it’s so frigging hot down here. Okay.”

“Okay, go.”

“Okay okay. Jim—”

I hung up.

What else? I wish I had a dog. I needed a damn dog. I wasn’t going to let whoever it was run me off, that’s just not me. But I’d be vulnerable tonight. So would Willy. I pressed on the phone again, hit his number.

“Hyell-o.”

“It’s Jim. I think I better come get the horse.”

“You too? Everybody wants that poor little horse today.”

“He called you too?”

“Yep. Just now. Said he was coming over to take the mare.”

“Who?”

“Dellwood Siminoe’s brother Grant. I told him his brother, RIP, lost all rights to the horse when he tried to use it for batting practice. He said he had the papers and that all their horses were owned jointly and he was coming over. I told him I already called the sheriff and let them know the mare’s condition and that I had her until it was sorted out. I said if he set foot on my place I would take it as a physical threat and put a new buttonhole in his shirt. He didn’t like that too much. He said I would dearly regret my attitude. I’ve been regretting my attitude my whole life. I keep wishing I’d thought to tell him that.”

Pause.

Willy said, “Somebody killed your pal Dellwood Friday night up on the creek. I guess you heard.”

There was a new tone in Willy’s voice. It was not gruff and hearty. It was like the words would be whatever they would be but the tone underneath was speaking a truth no one could alter.

“I heard that.”

“I didn’t hear your truck start up in the middle of the night. Didn’t hear it rattle back down your drive about three hours later.”

Pause.

I said, “What do you do awake in the middle of the night aside from not hear things?”

Willy said, “Draw pictures. Horses and such. Campfire scenes.”

Willy wasn’t being cute, he was dead serious.

I said, “They sound nice. Did you show the pictures to Sport? The detective. He seems to be very curious about art.”

“Nope. Gaskill came by to talk to me. I didn’t much like his attitude, to tell the truth. For him I was sound asleep all night. What’d you call him? Sport? Ha. He’s curious about fishing too. He kept asking me if you were wearing your fishing gear when I rolled up with the trailer. Waders, vest.”

I cleared my throat. “And?”

“I thought a minute,” Willy said. “Seemed to me if they were so concerned with them they must be some kind of evidence. Where I come from clothes that are used as evidence in a murder have blood on them. I chewed it over and I said Yes, pretty sure he was. And that vest had blood all over it from where he gave Dell a bloody nose. That shut him up. He got kinda pissy after that. I told him to be sure to write that down, because come to think of it the blood on the vest made a deep and vivid impression on me and I would be sure to mention it in court.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Jim?”

“Yeah.”

“Dell was a snake.”

“You knew him then? You said you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I know him. I caught him and a client poaching a Pope and Young bull pre-season once. He threatened Dorothy, my wife, and I let it go, didn’t call the warden. Didn’t seem worth it then. Her safety. That was a mistake.”

“Hunh.”

“Probably makes me a suspect as much as you.”

Pause.

“Jim?”

“Yah.”

“Take a vacation. Go bonefishing in the Keys. What I hear, Grant is a meaner snake than Dell. The police don’t have anything on you. They did, you’d be in county right now.”

I didn’t take a vacation. I pulled out another canvas. I cut two pieces of the baguette Sofia had brought, it was stale but I didn’t care, and I sliced a thick wedge of the sharp soft cheese and moaned as the smooth cream hit my palate and crumbs from the crust broke onto the counter. I ate another, drank a tall glass of cold water, poured my ugly mug half full with tarry bitter old coffee from the morning, and began again.

Another canvas, another road, this one coming toward me over the shoulder of the mountain, my mountain, Lamborn. How do you know if a road is coming to you or going away? I knew. A summer evening like this one. Coming out of the oak brush and junipers and dropping into the sage meadows. No black birds in this one, but a single horned owl perched in a long branch of Russian olive by the pond. The pond with fish, swirling here and there with the quiet feeding. Russian olive fragrant in its rags of dusty leaves. On the road a horse, small, reddish, the little mare trotting along the shoulder, coming almost jaunty, head high. Next to it another, a little bigger, spotted, the big antic eye patch of an Appaloosa, an Indian horse, spirited. Evening, like now, shadows thrown eastward in the long light, toward the mountain, the ponies’ steps in tandem, matching gait, the rhythm of their coming, the thudding of the hooves and the play of the late light all as if set to music, and the closeness of their flanks like a dance and then I see why they come together: across their withers bundled, balanced, is the body of a girl. I seize. Brush halfway to canvas: breathe. And then I paint through it. Paint the young girl bundled and joggled on their backs, not even tied to the ones who are carrying her, balanced in the swift loping, balanced I see now only by the complete attention of the horses, by love.

That a painting could bring her this close.

A week before she died I was painting in the many-windowed shed that was my studio. She hung in the doorway and watched me for a while saying nothing, the way she had done since she was a little girl. Except now she was stooped over her own lankiness, her hair hanging in her face. Tentative, brooding, the way she never was. She had been suspended from school three days before for smoking in the girls’ room, her grades were failing in three subjects. I was not pleased. Plus Cristine and I had been fighting for days and I was sleeping in the studio. Alce watched, I painted, drank from a can of PBR, finally she said, “It’s good, Pop. I like the clouds that look like birds.”

I grunted, didn’t answer.

“I know you’re mad.”

I painted.

“Jeremiah lives ten miles out of town. I don’t know, Pop. I really like him. He’s into some stuff, I get confused sometimes, but he’s a good person. Boys are weird. You know?” I turned. She pushed her hair out of her face and with great effort looked up at me. She had changed. She was no longer my little girl. I saw that like a stroke of bad lightning and it conjured a rage that shocked me.

“I’m trying to figure stuff out,” she said.

I turned back to the canvas, the loaded brush, forced myself to paint.

I heard her huff out her breath behind me. Heard her summon her strength, her stubbornness.

“I wondered if I could have a phone? You know, so I can coordinate with him.”

Could feel my breath quickening, hear the palette knife like sandpaper enacting its coarse rhythm. Finally, turned:

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. How old are you? Is this the guy who gave you ecstasy? Are you even using birth control? Have you remembered that school involves studying ? Jesus fucking Christ.”

She wouldn’t look at me. I had never spoken to her that way. She really loved him, the boy Jeremiah, that’s what she had told her mom. She trembled where she stood in the doorway, then left. She wouldn’t look at me all the next week, or speak.