by S. M. Hulse
A pause. “That was a long time ago.”
I don’t say anything right away. Does Samuel like hunting? The question makes me uneasy, though maybe just because Devin is the one who asked it. Whatever crimes Samuel has committed, hunting isn’t one of them—at least not since the poaching, and he hasn’t done that in more than a decade, and then only for food. It certainly isn’t a crime to enjoy hunting—Devin would have to lock up half the state if it were—though he should’ve noticed there aren’t any trophy mounts on the walls of the house.
I think about a day not so long after our mother was killed, when I was still unwilling to be left alone. Samuel pulled me onto Lockjaw’s back behind him, and we rode to the far side of the property, Samuel carrying our father’s .22 rifle in his free hand. I spotted the rabbit a second before he did but didn’t tell him. My arms were wrapped around his middle, and I could feel him exhale as he raised the .22, could feel his body still for the briefest of moments before he fired and the rabbit leaped and fell. I remember being sorry for the rabbit but glad for the meat.
“Samuel only killed what he had to.”
* * *
Saturday I call the number on the business card Frances Bailey gave me at the plein air show. I half expect the owner of the Highcrest Gallery won’t remember me, but she invites me over right away.
It’s a longer drive to Whitefish than it was before the old road washed out, than it will be when the new road cuts close to an hour off the trip. I park on a side street just off the main drag downtown. It’s not peak tourist time—ski season long gone, Going-to-the-Sun not yet open—but I still have to negotiate plenty of other people on the sidewalks. The Highcrest Gallery has recessed glass doors, and I glimpse pale gray walls through the windows. Inside, huge canvases dominated by splashes of red and orange paint punctuate the walls, the lighting arranged to illuminate their surfaces just so. The gallery is nearly empty, only me and a middle-aged couple wearing matching polar fleece.
Bailey emerges from a door in the rear wall and walks briskly toward me. “Josephine,” she greets as she approaches. “So wonderful to see you. Come into the back where we can talk.”
She shows me to a well-appointed office. She settles into the chair on the far side of her glass desk, has already moved the guest chair against the wall to make room for my wheelchair. The window boasts an enviable view of Big Mountain, but the art on the walls does its best to compete. The canvases here seem as carefully curated as those in the gallery, and as opaque: three narrow framed panels of arcing blues and violets; the shapes and colors seem somehow urgent, but I can’t make sense of them. The flattery of the invitation is starting to wear off. This is real art, art you need a degree to understand. I don’t make this kind of art.
You really come all this way just to quit? I hear Samuel’s voice in my head so clearly I almost turn to see if he’s there.
“Jo,” I say.
“I’m sorry?”
“Jo,” I tell her. “I go by Jo.” I said that on the phone, didn’t I?
Bailey smiles. “Of course.” She pours two glasses of water from a pitcher beside her desk. There’s something floating amid the ice cubes. Flowers? She places one of the glasses on my side of the desk, leaves the other untouched. “I’m so glad you were able to come by today. I’ve been thinking about your work since I saw it at the festival.”
“I’m—that’s good to hear.” I have no idea what I’m doing. It must be hopelessly obvious.
“I’d like to talk to you about a show,” she continues. “The main gallery is booked through next year, but I’d like to get you in sooner. I think we can finesse the schedule for the Slate Gallery—that’s the smaller room on the east side of the building—and manage three weeks starting in the middle of next month.”
“Next month?”
“You do have other pieces like the one I saw?”
“Well, I’m working on—I mean—that’s a newer technique for me.” I start to tell her about the mud paint, the soil and water from the mines around Prospect, the energizing idea of painting a place with a place. I practiced this part in the car on the way over, tried the sentences aloud, tweaked them until they sounded like the professional artists’ statements I’d read in the catalog I picked up at the show.
“Do you have other paintings of Elk Fork?”
I look at Bailey. Her expression hasn’t changed. Her voice hasn’t changed. But something has.
“I don’t … I don’t live there.”
“Of the courthouse?”
Silence. She looks at me, that same polite expression holding her features in place. Her hands are folded atop the desk; they don’t fidget. I pick up my glass, put it down without drinking. Moisture has beaded on the outside, and I wipe my palm on my unfeeling thigh.
“Why do you want paintings of the courthouse?” I’ve waited too long to ask the question. I know why. She knows why. Now I’m making her say it, and in doing so it seems I’ve done something uncouth.
She tries to spin it, but even that precise elocution and carefully modulated tone can’t make the meaning behind the words any less ugly. “Well, I was so struck by your festival painting,” she says. “The courthouse. And you, well…”
“You know my name isn’t Grady.”
“I know you’re his sister.” She unfolds her hands, puts them in her lap, looks down. Something of the practiced smoothness falls from her voice. “I thought you knew.”
“You want me to paint the courthouse because my brother bombed it.” I say it more to myself than her.
“I do think there’s great artistic interest in—” she begins, and I look at her and she stops. “I’m sorry,” she says, more quietly. “I thought you knew. It’s just … well, you are good, but you’re very young, aren’t you? Not formally trained. And…”
And my paintings hang in a gas station. I doubt she knows that, but now I also doubt she’d be surprised. I want to tell her that someone thought my mud painting from the plein air festival was good, bought it for more money than I’ve ever sold a painting for. But as soon as I think it, it stops being a point of pride. What if the person who bought it also knew I’m not Josephine Grady but Jo Faber? What if the person bought it because of who I am—who my brother is—and not because of what I know how to do with brush and canvas?
“I’d still like to do the show,” Bailey offers tentatively.
The worst thing is I’m tempted. I need money. How long did it take to paint that cityscape at the festival? I could churn out plenty more by the middle of next month, even with the move. They’d certainly sell for far more here than my acrylics do at Fuel Stop. I try to convince myself not to let pride stand in the way of practicality. I even try to convince myself that it’s only fair, that Samuel screwed up my life enough that if I can cash in on his name, I deserve to.
But then I think of how it would make Asa feel, for me to make money off what my brother did to his daughter. And then, because I’m thinking of Asa, I remember what he said at the plein air show. About creation. About my gift. But why would I put Asa’s opinion above this woman’s? He doesn’t own an art gallery. He probably doesn’t know anything about art. He’s a pastor. He knows about a single book, and a feeling he calls God. Maybe he doesn’t even think my art is good. Maybe he was just being nice.
He made me believe it, though, didn’t he? Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe he let me see I already believe it. My paintings—my mud paintings—have worth. Earth is my medium. I am creating and my creation matters.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Frances Bailey is right. Maybe this is my only chance to hang my paintings in a fancy gallery and sell them for real money. Maybe my mud paintings won’t even sell to tourists, and no one else will ever understand why I paint them.
Maybe I can live with that.
* * *
I still check the radio every morning and evening. Just long enough to hear nothing has changed. Samuel hasn’t been found. Emily hasn’t …
&nb
sp; A warning about a traffic accident on the interstate. A weather report promising showers. The relief of music. I turn the radio off. I think I should call Asa, but maybe I’m wrong. Hard to know if he’d want me to. It’s crossed my mind that he’s bargaining. That he’s helped me with the tree and the packing not because he wants to, and not even entirely because he wants answers about Samuel, but because he is trying to prove to God that he is good. That he should be rewarded. That Emily should be spared.
A frozen meal for dinner. I wonder what Asa is eating. He probably does have an endless supply of casseroles from his congregation, but does he eat them? After my mother died, I wouldn’t eat. The hospital would bring the tray and it would sit beside my bed, and then they’d take it away. They asked me to eat, then demanded I eat, but I didn’t. One day they let Samuel stay through dinnertime. Brought us two trays. He didn’t say a word, just sat beside my bed and ate whatever bland thing they’d brought. I stayed stubborn for about five minutes, then ate mine, too. I wonder if he’s hungry now, wherever he is.
I want to tell Samuel about the gallery. I want to hear the sneer in his voice when he tells me the Bailey woman is just an entitled parasite, and I want to hear the pride when he tells me I was right to turn her down. I want to tell Asa, too, tell him his words helped give me the strength to say no to her, to trust in the value of my own art, but I don’t know if he would understand, and if he did I don’t know if he would care.
I toss the empty tray into the sink. I rehearse the lines I would say to Asa if I were to call. Just checking in and Wanted to see how you were and Don’t mean to keep you. I rehearse the lines I wouldn’t say, too. When I was young, Samuel and I said we went to South Dakota but we didn’t. There’s a cabin in the mountains. I think I know where he is. I don’t know if a call would be too much or not enough, and in the end I leave my phone in my bag.
* * *
I’ve left the rivers and plains behind on this map. Into the mountains. I’ve started this letter around the Little Snowy Mountains, a spiral of words unfolding toward the west, curving now around the Highwoods, the Little Belts, the Castles, and the Crazies. The sentences are piled atop one another, following contours, stacking toward the heights of the ranges. It makes them hard to read, but it doesn’t matter. You won’t read this, will you? Maybe I wouldn’t write it if I thought you would.
A confession. Nothing serious, Jo, nothing like what you’re thinking, nothing else like the bombing. I looked for your diary once, when you were in middle school, maybe your first year of high school. I wanted to read it, but not because I was worried about you. That’s why guardians usually read diaries, right? They’re worried about drugs, booze, boys. I knew I wouldn’t find any of that. (Not because of the wheelchair. Just because you weren’t that sort of kid. Kind of a goody two-shoes, really, Jo.)
No, I was worried about me. Every day since I took you out of that rehab center and brought you here to the cabin, I’ve wondered if I did the right thing. I know it was what you wanted. I know you couldn’t stand the thought of us being separated, of going somewhere else to live, with someone else. And it made sense to me at the time. Why heap more tragedy and loss on top of what happened to Mom? Why put you through more changes when you already had to deal with being orphaned and paralyzed? And those tears of yours, Jo. Kills me to think about them even now. I’d have done anything to make them stop.
But I was so lost. And not just because I didn’t know anything about raising a kid, let alone a traumatized, paraplegic kid. I didn’t know what to do with myself after that night, Jo. I didn’t know what to do about what I’d done. Hawkins was the only one I could talk to about it, and he never said anything other than “You did what you had to.”
I wondered what you thought about me. That’s why I wanted to read your diary. I was so afraid I wasn’t the guardian you deserved. I wondered if you regretted running away with me that summer, if you wished you had an adoptive parent instead of just an older brother, if you knew what I did that night Mom died and if you were afraid of me because of it. If you blamed me for not doing more.
So I called in sick one day and went through your things while you were at school. I found a lot of sketchbooks—you must’ve drawn ten thousand horses by now, Jo; you had a good start even then—but the only diary I found was from when you were in grade school. You wrote in it twice. Once on your birthday to say you got it as a gift, and once a day later to say you fed Lockjaw carrot greens after dinner. And then three hundred and sixty-three blank pages.
So no diary, no journal. No way to know your thoughts. It was wrong of me to look. I still wonder what you thought of me, though. What you think of me now.
* * *
I haven’t added Asa to my phone’s contacts, but I recognize his number when it shows up on my screen. “It’s Asa Truth,” he says when I answer, as though I’d know more than one.
“Is everything okay?” I tuck the phone beneath my ear, wheel across the living room, spin my chair when I reach the wall of moving boxes on the far side. “Is Emily all right?”
“Yes,” Asa says quickly. “Yes, she’s … nothing has changed. Everything is the same.”
I almost say, That’s good, but I’ve learned not to force optimism.
“I wanted to see how you were doing. Make sure the moving plans were all in order and so on.” The words come tentatively at first, then in a rush, and I know he has called for no such reason.
“Fine,” I tell him. “You helped me get just about everything packed. Not a lot to do now but wait.” I wish I hadn’t said that. He’s waiting, too.
Silence.
I rock my chair forward and back, then tighten my grip on the handrims, stop the chair short. Don’t let go of the handrims because if I do I’ll hang up. This is stupid. Worse than stupid. There is no friendship here, no friendship possible. Asa and I should not know each other. Should never have heard each other’s names. I don’t dislike him. He seems like a good man, and he has been good to me. But I cannot give him whatever it is he wants. Answers. Understanding. Healing. They are not mine to give.
I’m trying to figure out how to say that—if there is a way to say such a thing kindly—when I hear a deep breath on the other end of the line. “I was wondering—hoping—you would come visit Emily.”
I want to tell him no. I want to say I’m too busy, sorry, the move and all. I want to tell him it will not do anything if I come, not for him and not for anybody. I want to tell him I couldn’t even save the one person I love most; there’s no way I can do anything meaningful for anyone else.
And I don’t want to see her.
I don’t want to see what Samuel has done.
I press the silent phone against my ear and stare at the rug on the living room floor. I’ll leave it here when I go. Can’t possibly bring myself to roll it up, reveal what lies beneath. “There’s nothing I can do for her,” I say quietly. “You know I’d undo what my brother did if I could. But I can’t.”
Asa is quiet for a long time, long enough I think maybe he has hung up. Then he says, “It would be doing something for me if you came,” and I know I will go.
* * *
Another prospective buyer for Lockjaw comes out the next morning, a boy accompanied by his father. The kid doesn’t have a lot of experience—he’s ten or so, and has been borrowing a pony from a neighbor—but the father does, and Lockjaw likes them both. The boy’s balance isn’t perfect, and neither is his timing, but he’s careful and attentive, the kind of kid who wants to learn and will. The father strokes Lockjaw along the crest of her neck, just behind her ears, and she lets her lower lip droop. Feels a bit like a betrayal. I should be glad—ecstatic, really—to find people like this, but when the father holds the check out to me in the barn aisle, I can’t make myself take it.
* * *
So I didn’t sell the mule. I can at least get rid of the boxes and bags designated Thrift that are cluttering up the dining area. I cram them into my car to the roof, l
eave only enough room for my chair. Before loading the last box, I tear the tape off the top and rifle through it, retrieving one paper-wrapped package. I leave it on the porch, then take everything else to the thrift store in Split Creek.
* * *
Still time to kill before driving to Elk Fork. I work for an hour on the painting. I’ve been making slower progress over the last few sessions. I tell myself it’s because I’m doing the detail work now, but really it’s superstition; I want to believe I can’t lose the house if I haven’t finished the painting. By the end of the hour, the long patch of grass beneath the drainage spout is there, planted one stroke at a time, blade by blade; each shingle on the roof has been painted into place; and the delicate spindle of the railing lines the porch, each baluster carefully carved by my brush. I roll my chair back a few feet, squint. Almost done.
I haven’t painted the shadows. Not the deepest ones. I know I need to. I know the painting won’t be right until I do. It’s not the only thing I’ve left unfinished: one window remains blank. One window still stands stark and empty.
* * *
The hospital in Elk Fork is one of the taller buildings in the city, but that isn’t saying much. Five stories, maybe six. I’m headed to the third today. An older man gets onto the elevator with me, and before he disembarks at the second floor, he looks at my chair and says, “Get well soon.” I don’t bother to correct him, jab the “Door Close” button as soon as he’s gone. A relief to get the oversized Visitor badge at the reception desk on the children’s floor. I held off the nerves during the drive down, but they hit me now, and I would like to linger in the hall a few minutes more. But the receptionist called Emily’s room when I arrived, and there’s Asa now, leaning from a doorway halfway down the hall, one hand raised in a wave as though we’ve spotted each other across the grocery store.
