by KT Morrison
Hometown
First thing Maceo said when she picked him up was about her hair: “Janie, look at you, what did you do?”
He was sitting in the passenger seat pushed all the way back as if he wanted to take her whole visage in, cheek propped in the palm of his hand, elbow leaning on the door sill. His smile was wide and his eyes sparkled.
She hadn’t expected such exuberance and now she was self-conscious. “Is it okay?” she asked, moving her hand up to idly stroke at her hair.
“Okay? It’s beautiful, Janie. Look what it does for your face,” and now instead of leaning back he was leaning in, moving close to her in the cabin of the Yukon.
Now that self-consciousness was amplified, and she felt a static tingle in her fingertips and a creeping feeling along the backs of her shoulders. Had she made a mistake? She didn’t even know how it happened, but she ended up at Rosa’s, sitting and reading a Vogue and waiting to see if they had an opening; they did, and they ushered her in and now her plain-Jane long hair had been transformed into something the young girl (God, she said she was Rosa’s daughter!) called a ‘Julianne Hough’ and she didn’t even know who that was. Her hair had been washed, rinsed, color-enhanced, and cut in angled layers, leaving long bangs that she could still tuck behind her ears.
Maceo regarded her carefully, measuring the angles of her face with his artist’s eye.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked again timidly.
His hand came up, moving slowly, eyes not on hers but watching her face, studying her. He said, “It’s beautiful, it really is. How did you do this? I thought you went to the big store to get things for John.” He had a lock of her hair, and his thumb stroked at it. She could feel the gentle tug of his pull and could feel the warmth of his hand near her neck.
She said, “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what came over me. I went to the Costco, I bought all, you know,” she thumbed toward the back seat and Maceo looked back. The rear was filled with rolls of toilet paper, detergent, paper towels, cleaning supplies, and odds and ends mostly for the plow depots but some stuff for the homestead, too. “I was coming out of the parking lot and I was thinking of this little place where I used to get my hair done...”
“Ah, Janie, you treated yourself...”
“I don’t think it was treating. Was it treating?”
“No, not treating at all,” he changed his mind. “You’re being a woman.”
“A woman? That’s what women do, get their hair done?” She raised an eyebrow and set her eyes hard so he would know she was prepared to school him.
“No,” he laughed, “they do what they want. Then they have to find ways to explain it to men who can’t understand.”
Now she laughed too and felt easier about it. Both of them were facing out the front window looking at the snowy expanse of an athletic field that sat like an angled white sheet working up to the administration offices of the Chesborough College. Students passed by next to the car and Maceo’s hand still held her hair.
“You’re right,” she said, “I don’t have to explain myself.”
“You’re beautiful and you want to show it,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say, looking out the window still, licking her lower lip. Was that a compliment? Politeness? Or was it going too far? She turned to regard him, saw his charming smile and felt instantly disarmed. He was just a charismatic twenty-year-old kid. She said, “I can’t believe the place is still open. I haven’t been there”—now she didn’t want to say it—“gosh, maybe fifteen years.” Yeah, more like twenty.
“And you go for good memory,” he said, and he was still touching her hair.
She said, “How was your meeting?”
“It was good.” He let her go and sat forward. “Just paperwork, forms... And introductions—they had a student give me a tour.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s wonderful. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Did you get to meet that professor you came here for?”
“No. Adele Davis? No, she not here today, or she not around.”
They were quiet a moment. She said, “I suppose we should get going.”
He said, “You are going to take me to the plow company?”
That was the plan. They were going to drop off this load of supplies that she’d purchased on the company credit card. But she said, “Is it all right with you if we just go home?” She wanted to add: ‘...to paint,’ but was afraid that his answer would be he’d changed his mind.
Maceo said, “No. I love to. I go some other time. We go home we could draw and paint...?”
“You still want to?”
His hand came up again, and this time curled over her wrist, her hands draped over the steering wheel. He gave her a little squeeze and shake, and said, “I’ve been thinking about it all day. Who wants to do paperwork? I came here to be an artist.”
“Right?” she said, looking at his hand and how large it was on her. “Who wants to fill out forms?” His knuckles were big but his hands weren’t beaten or hard. It was hard to define what their shape did to her but there was something so alluring about the color of his skin, the luster and the masculinity without being beaten.
“Let’s go home, Janie,” he said.
* * *
South of Buffalo, in Hamburg, he pulled into the TSC parking lot. Jason was there with a dump truck and front loader. The lot was small, and they had enough accumulation that the snow they’d pushed into a mountain needed to be hauled out, so the farm supply had more room for parking. Jason had two guys with him, Davis and Rico. While Jason manned the front loader, a ten-year-old tractor with shovel attachment, Davis was in the dumper, so Rico used Jason’s truck and plow to tidy up the lot and square some edges. On the radio, Jason had told him there’d been an accident and if John was in the area, could he come by. From the tone of Jason’s voice he knew no one was hurt, knew that it was serious, though, but there was some humor involved.
At the far left of the lot, he could see the dump and the front loader sitting idle. The dump was loaded to the top with snow, and he could see Davis in the cab give a wave. Rico sat in the passenger seat of Jason’s pickup and Jason leaned at the door side talking to him through the open window. The lot was half full, and customer cars avoided the corner where the trucks were working. A long, metal trailer sat up on the walkway near the storefront, upside down and bent.
“Oh boy,” he said to himself as he came around in the F250, plow to plow with Jason’s truck. Jason walked to the window and John ran it down. “What happened?”
“Don’t laugh,” Jason said.
“Everyone okay?”
“Don’t let Rico see you laugh, I’m mad at him.”
“What did he do?”
“Plowing with my truck, I got the hitch on the back, he backed it right up to where all the new trailers are on display...” Jason waved over to the far side of the lot where there was a neat line up of different size trailers. There was a gap where one was missing, and a section where a chain should hang, but instead it snaked loosely over the scraped down lot.
“Oh no,” John sighed.
“Oh yeah, John. Kid snagged the trailer with the hitch, he’s got my radio playing loud, he pulls it out of the lineup sideways and drags it across the whole lot. The whole lot.”
“Cheez,” he sighed. “And our name is on the side of the truck.”
“You want to laugh, though, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I got him so worried. He thinks you’re here to fire him, so play along.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Kid’s gotta learn.”
“How many items you snagged and clipped?”
“I do it anymore?”
“No.”
“‘Cause I was scared I was going to lose my job.”
“Alright, I won’t laugh. Should I rub my beard?”
“Do it. And shake your head a little, too.”<
br />
John played along, rubbing his chin, stretching his neck, shaking his head. Rico was sullen and hunched over, eyes darting up and then back down. “How much is the trailer?”
“Twenty-eight hundred.”
“I guess we’ll go insurance.”
“Yeah. Manager’s inside.”
“I’ll go talk to him.”
“He was laughing.”
“He knows we’re good for it. We’ve been plowing here for more than a decade.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m mad at Rico so just drag this out with me. He’s my responsibility.”
He fished out his phone from the pocket of his coat, checked the screen. “I was going to head home, get some sleep before the storms.”
“Sorry I dragged you out.”
“It’s all right. I should call Janie, tell her I’ll be home later, after dinner.”
Jason leaned his forearms on the lip, stretched his back. “She alone with that Maceo kid today?”
“Uh-huh. She took him out to Rochester, show him how to get to the school.”
“The two of ‘em, huh?”
“Just the two of them,” he said, getting the inference, irritated even though it wasn’t said outright. “She loves having young people around.”
“I know. Young people are fun. Kids. Twenty, though? A little old to be an exchange student.”
“Evan’s doing it.”
“Never mind me,” he said, tapping the door and stepping back. “Make your call. But go straight in to see the manager, don’t talk to Rico. I want him sweating for another ten minutes, at least.”
* * *
When they got back home, she went in the kitchen and boiled a kettle. Maceo brought in the items for Costco, put them in the pantry and then went upstairs to get changed. She texted John and said she wouldn’t be by the depot, asked how his day was going. He got back to her saying terrible. That Rico had ruined a trailer out at the TSC in Hamburg and he was still there, plus he had a few calls to do, had to go back to the shop, too. He said he called, but she said she mustn’t have heard it. John said he was going to be late.
She put tea bags in a teapot and filled it with boiling water and Maceo came down ready to paint. He wore a plain white T-shirt, and a pair of paint-spattered shorts. His legs were bare, but hairy and muscular.
“Let me get changed,” she told him, then went upstairs and put on her painting clothes—an ancient flannel shirt of John’s, and a pair of jeans. She decided to go barefoot like Maceo.
When she came back down, he wasn’t in the kitchen. There was one steaming mug on the counter and she picked it up, went through the hallway to the pantry and then through the doors into the addition. Maceo was standing by the easel she’d brought back from the school and set up for him. But he was looking at a painting of hers on the easel beside. A landscape; snow, farm fence, mostly sky; a dilapidated barn. Painted from a picture taken on her iPhone just a few miles from here. She came behind him, and he was undisturbed, his eyes still going over her work.
She said, “You still like it?” When she’d shown him around the place last night, he’d seen the painting and said it was beautiful.
He said, “I love the color. Or the lack of color. It says so much.”
“That’s just how I saw it.”
“I don’t know what you saw, but what you put down here tells me something. I feel like I know this place.”
“Yeah,” she said, “it looks like everywhere else around here.”
“That’s what you like to do? Landscape?”
“Yes. I can spend hours in here—it’s a great way to pass the time.”
He cocked his head, still looking at the painting. He said, “I don’t think your work is about passing time.”
“Well that’s what I do it for. Now the kids are out of the house, seems like all I want to do is stand in here and paint.”
“It’s not passing time, Jane. You look for something.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “What am I looking for?”
He turned now to face her, said, “You don’t know what you’re trying to tell everybody,” he cocked his head toward her painting.
“I’m glad you have such profound insight into my work,” she said and sipped her tea.
“Somebody do something with purpose, it deserves to be, uh, studied. No, uh, considered...”
She said, “Do you think this shows merit?”
“Merit?”
“Value. Worth.”
“Ability, for sure. And when you don’t think you’re just passing time, that’s when you find something...”
She set her tea cup down on the worktable next to a paint smeared pallet. She folded her arms and looked at her own work. Merit? Ability? It was just a painting that she’d done from a photograph. But then why did she take the photograph? Sometimes when she was in here, she felt like it was nothing but paint-by-numbers. Spending time painting like she was doing a jigsaw puzzle. But what if Maceo was right...? What if she took that photo because she saw something in that landscape. It wasn’t even just a painting of a dilapidated barn. It was mostly sky. And in the sky were a thousand brush strokes. Not just gray, but all sorts of bottle greens and cobalts. She spent most of her time working on the sky. The barn was just a series of strokes done with a thick brush then picked up with highlights using a fine sable point. She’d probably spent about ten minutes on the barn. But that expanse of sky…? “So what do you think—”
Maceo was gone, opening a two-pack of plastic-wrapped pre-stretched canvases.
“You’re going to paint?” she asked him.
“That’s why we here,” he said with a smile, his eyes turned down as his hands worked to pull free one of the canvases, a square, two-feet-by-two, then standing and placing it on his easel. Then he took the legs of the easel and moved it around thirty degrees to get better light. They would be working side-by-side.
She asked him: “Do you know what your message is? Do you know what you want to paint?”
“It’s always different. There always something that I want to say, I don’t know what it is when I start, but I do when I’m done. When it’s done, I put it out. And I wait for something else.” He took a pencil, held it loosely between thumb and forefinger, began roughing out shapes. She picked up her tea and stood behind him to watch, asking then, “Is it alright if I stand behind you?”
“I like it,” he said, and now his hand was moving with more flourish. Slowly the block shapes took form she could see with her eyes: a figure, properly proportioned, eyes then and a nose, all done without reference. She said, “I can’t draw figures.”
“That because you don’t think you can draw figures,” he said.
She said, “I don’t think I can draw figures—and it’s been proven.”
He disregarded her, his hand still moving. In a few more minutes, she swore now that he was drawing her. She was sure when he began to flesh out with pastels her blonde hair shaped in her new haircut.
“Hey, you drawing me?”
“Is that okay? I like to warm up.”
“I’m just a warm-up,” she said, smirking then sipping.
His hand paused now, and he peered at her over his shoulder and cocked an eyebrow. She laughed.
“I don’t want to gush,” she said, “but you’re amazing.”
“That because I don’t think that I can’t draw figures anymore.”
She wanted to poke at him amicably, kick at his leg, but his legs were bare and her feet were bare. So she just laughed now, turned and sat down with her rump against the back of the couch where John watched sports when he had the time.
Maceo stopped, said, “Janie, you need to come and finish painting.”
“I’ve been working on it forever,” she said.
“You lost interest?”
“No, I just don’t know...”
“You’re afraid it’s done, afraid because you don’t know what come next.”
“No, it’s not that,” she
said, but then began to doubt it. Was that it?
He looked at her painting again, turned to her and said, “It’s done, Janie. It’s done, but you don’t know it. That’s what the problem is. You said what you want to say, now it’s time to move on.”
“Is that it?” she said.
“I think so,” he said.
“Well, if you’re so smart then, tell me what it is I want to say.”
“Pick up a new canvas,” he said, “and get your hand moving.”
“I need to go through some of my photographs...”
“No pictures,” he said, setting a pastel down and taking up the second blank canvas from the package he’d opened. He removed her painting of the sky and barn and plopped the blank square in its stead. Now he held her painting in two hands and looked at it again. He said, “Janie, it’s perfect. Time for new one. Come and sign this one and then move on.”
It felt warm and friendly, watching this young guy working with her, wanting to communicate, trying to convey his own thoughts, his own young ideas, wanting to befriend her and impress her. And she felt it, too: camaraderie. Was this what it would’ve been like if she’d gone to school? If she’d gone to college, studied art, would she have had a boyfriend like Maceo?—would they get an apartment together and paint? What would that have been like? She could picture it; wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of that sort of thing before. Actually finishing high school, being a free spirit whose only need was to find herself rather than breast-feeding her baby in this snowy farmhouse all by herself. But that built character, too. Made her who she was today, and she liked herself. It wasn’t like kids that came out of those art programs were some kind of better beings. Most of them longed to find her kind of authenticity. Most of Marissa’s friends admired her as a woman. She did have toughness, and a sense of reality. Maybe going to art school and hooking up with some well-hung Italian artist would’ve ended in misery. No money, no future, just a lot of fun and nonsense that amounted to nothing. She could only think of the lubricious times; and imagination was always better than reality. How often would she and this imaginary young artist have laid in bed listening to vinyl on phonographs, pontificating on Nina Simone, or blowing off a day of school to go to a protest or something? She didn’t remember what they used to protest back when she was nineteen. Abortion? Yes, you remember that.
