The Painter: A Novel

by Peter Heller

  We were drinking coffee at the counter again, she on a stool, me on the kitchen side, and I was happy that we had fallen back into our old ease. She had brought a baguette, a jar of peach marmalade, a wedge of triple cream Brie, and we were devouring them. She smiled, her eyes all the colors you see on the bottom of some clear creeks, and she said, to me, “You know I hold your nut sack in my strong little fist?”

  “I know I know.”

  “I don’t want your nuts.” She opened her fist and shook her palm in air. “No matter what you ever do or say to me your nuts are your nuts. I will never change my story.”

  I looked at her and I believed her. As much as I could believe anything.

  “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?”

  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 w
ay. 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.

  Then she was gone.

  That day when she left the studio I went to the cupboard and found the bottle behind cans of turpentine and downed half a pint of Jack and threw the knife that was still in my hand against the wall.

  When I finished the painting of the horses on the road it was almost dark. Dusk gathered in the quiet room. I heard in the distance dogs barking and I smelled smoke.

  Smoke. A horn blare long and urgent. Yelling. Dogs barking.

  I tossed the brush the tools on the counter, stepped outside. A plume of white smoke billowed from behind the hedgerow between me and Willy’s. Twined in the gusting pillar were blowing strands and boils of black.

  Oh, fuck. The sonofabitch. The fucker.

  I hustle to the truck, overcrank the starter in my hurry, wince at the loud rasp, back up too fast, slide in a damp patch on the gravel, throw the shifter into first and peel out.

  It’s a minute to his ranch: I bounce up the steep drive to the county dirt road, sharp right at the top and two hundred yards to his gate which is open. Now I can see it: his bigger barn, the one flush against the line of old elms, is burning. The south side of it. The flames are consuming the tack room. It’s a lower extension of the barn proper, and they are licking at the eaves of the main roof. As I skid to a stop I see Willy, hatless, framed in the main doorway and fighting the haltered head of a huge gelding, a chestnut, who is rearing, eyes rolling back. Willy is hauling with all his weight, taking the hard jerks with his bent right arm.

  He gets the horse clear of the door and unclips the lead rope with one thrusting motion under his chin, yells “Yah!” The horse bucks once, throws both rear legs out in a tremendous kick, and bolts for the dirt track to another open gate and the sage hills. Willy whirls, a wild dervish, and disappears back into the maw of the burning barn. I am running. As best I can. I nearly collide with him in the door. He is leading the little mare. She is whinnying, different now than the cries of her beating, this is terror, not the piteous wail at a merciless universe but a cry for help. It breaks my heart open.