Peter Heller - The Painter

She lived in a small adobe house shaded by one old willow and a few piñons in the middle of miles of rabbitbrush and mesquite. She had lost her husband to a car wreck very young. We had been lovers off and on for many years, before Cristine, and were both wise enough to know that our limit was a day and a half. Then she got breast cancer and had a mastectomy and I moved in with her for almost a year, to take care of her while she went through the treatments. We remained close, and after Alce died and Cristine left, we saw each other sporadically and it was always like coming home and we always kept it short. She was the one to teach me that this was not a bad thing, just a thing, something to honor that allowed a friendship to flower. It was a great lesson, one I have used in every kind of relationship since.

“You are a planet and you have a magnetic resonance,” she said, “and spin, and gravity. You have an atmosphere and a hot core. You do. I’ve told you that. Others have a core that is cooling. You have seasons and tides and one or two moons who will circle you for life.”

“I do?”

“Give me your hands.”

She held my big rough hands, hands I have always thought of as awkward—I’m missing half the right ring finger and the left hand is covered in scars—she held them in her round little ones, very warm, and squeezed them.

“You can’t run all the time. You can’t create all the time. You can’t always swim in an ocean of women.”

“I can’t?”

When she said that, my eyes got wet, I don’t know why. The way she was holding me and looking at me so steady and warm.

“You can breathe. Sometimes just breathe. Go ahead.”

I breathed.

“You are holding Alce so tight. That’s okay. How many years has it been?”

“I don’t know. Three.”

“It’s not possible to hold that much pain.”

Then there was a silence, and then she said, “Jim, even the earth rests. The moon swims up, thin as grass, and the stars, and you can see every one. It is a much quieter song.”

She had this way of talking in pictures which I also loved.

“You rest now. Rest for longer than you are used to resting. Make a stillness around you, a field of peace. Your best work, the best time of your life will grow out of this peace. And don’t worry, compa, you will be rowdy and out of control again. You will throw off every kind of light. You can’t help yourself.”

She leaned forward and kissed me, warm and lingering, and my rowdy aurora borealis self was like Fuck the field of peace, I want to bed Irmina right now, and then she pushed her little hands against my big shoulders and said, “Go now.” Smile. “Next time.”

And I thought, How long do you need between times to make one Next? Like could I drive out to the county highway and turn around and come back?

That was just over six months ago. I had been trying really hard to do what she said, until today.

After Willy and I had gotten the mare settled earlier this afternoon I drove back down to town and stopped at Bob’s gas station. The time was beer-thirty, just after closing, and he was sitting on the torn couch on one side of the front office with a twelve-pack of Bud Light, what else. A fat old redneck in suspenders with three days of grizzled beard was on one of the metal chairs—the man stood when I pushed open the door, stretched, crumpled his can in a ham fist and tossed it perfectly into the corner trash can with a neat ring of steel, said to Bob,

“Keep the dirty side down.” Nodded to me once and went out the door.

“Do I look scary?” I said. “Scared him away?”

“You don’t look that good to tell you the truth.” Bob pried a can out of the torn box and held it out.

“No thanks.”

He cracked it, took a long swallow.

“I forget you’re on the wagon. I should do.” Smiled. “Never happen.”

I sat on the vacated metal chair, still warm from the man’s big butt.

“You see a ghost or just didn’t catch any fish? I saw you go by. You were driving a little too fast so I knew you were going fishing.”

Being in Bob’s front office always settles me. Something about—I don’t know what. Always having enough time for whatever needs doing. Taking it just as it comes: everything’s fucked up, might as well meet it halfway and see what happens, that was Bob’s approach. And laugh about it if possible.

I said, “I went up the Sulphur. You know the second pullout, by that flat where people camp?”

He nodded, drank. He was watching me and his face was serious, like it rarely is. Could see I was somehow shaken, I guess.

“Somebody was setting up some wall tents, had the road blocked with a horse trailer.”

Bob’s new beer was already done. He crumpled the can, set it in a fruit box to the side of the couch.

“You met Dellwood,” he said. “Big guy with a gut? That could ruin anybody’s day.”

“Dellwood?”

“That’s where Dell puts his bow camp every year. He’s an outfitter out of Delta. Camps there and rides his hunters up into the basin every morning on horseback. Ask me, it’s a back assward way to do it but that’s Dell. He gets a lot of return hunters so they must like it. Kinda like cowboy camp. For folks from Alabama.”

The compressor rattled. Bob cracked another beer.

“He doesn’t do too bad on bulls neither. I think he’s got salt licks but I can’t prove it. I gather you traded words.”

“How—”

“You got blood on your shirt.”

“Huh.”

I told him. The whole thing. The horse, the fight, Willy.

“You knocked Stinky into the road? Opening the door? Well shit. Goddamn, Jim.” He couldn’t contain his laugh.

“Then you took Fats into the ditch? Pretty good for an artiste. Goddamn.” Shook his head. Pried a tin of Skoal out of his breast pocket with one finger, took a dip that would make me faint. Offered it. This time I took a pinch.

“He won’t forget you, Dell. He’s a mean SOB.”

“I won’t forget him.”

“Yeah, I can see.”

Spat. Handed me the cup.

“He’s a different cat. Last fall I found one of his horses lying down by the creek. Curled up like a dog. Whimpered like a baby when I came up. Like I was gonna hurt her. Saddest goddamn thing I ever saw.”

“Ouch.”

“His hunters think he’s John F. Wayne I guess. He can spin a story that’s one thing. And they get their elk. So.”

He spat.

“Are they poaching up there? Who knows? If they are, they get the animals out at night. And he sure as shit is not easy on his stock. Half his horses are so broke down at the end of the season he ships the whole bunch down to his brother in Arizona where he sells the used up ones to the killers, is what I heard. Guess they make more money that way than feeding them right and working them to what they can handle.”

He spat. “One way of doing it, I guess. Not the right way.”

The compressor rattled, hissed. A truck rolled through the pumps, dinged the loud bell, a driver in a baseball cap leaned forward in his seat, waved, rolled on through.

“Alright,” I said. Stood. “I’ll let you go.”

“You don’t gotta run off. Soon as you do I gotta go move cows.”

I grinned. Bob had about four jobs when I stopped counting. In another week he’d start driving a school bus.

“Bob?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s his last name?”

“Dell? Siminoe.”

“Thanks.”

“Be good.”

Bob probably reading my mind. Be good. Be good.

I stood on the ramada and tried to shake off the pressure of Dell’s body pressing me into the cold wet of the ditch, the sound of his grunt. I smoked the cigar down to the root, crushed it on a flagstone, lit another. The smell of rain.