The Painter: A Novel

by Peter Heller

  “Here!” Willy yells. “Here! Take her!” He thrusts the jerking rope into my hand and spins and dives back in. I back up. Transfixed by the mare who is bellowing now almost like a donkey, transfixed by the flames that are eating the far wall, backing, pulling the rope, and suddenly she lunges for the opening and I am clinging, hanging on, arm about ripped out of its socket, somehow catching up with her and unclipping the lead and watching her bound, unhampered, soundly gaited, watching her with huge relief run for the fields and the still galloping chestnut. Oh God, go. Nothing broken, running like a horse should run.

  I wheel around and plunge back into the barn. Willy is in the back, too close to the flames, struggling with the latch on a stall door. The black smoke gusts and rolls upward from the far wall, half obscures him. I can hear the thuds of hooves, breaking barnwood, the terrified kicks. I slide beside him into the searing smoke and grab the door and yank and we almost fall back together into the rushing sparks as the door frees and swings. No thought of safety, of bones, Willy dives into the stall. He yells, thud, a swat I can hear over the roar, and another big brown with a starred forehead bolts, jumps clean over me no shit and I can hear the clatter on concrete and she is out the big door and gone. “That’s it! That’s it! Others already out! Go! Go! Go!” I feel his grip on my upper arm, tearing at my shirt, tugging me after him and we are running. Running down the aisle between stalls as something behind us cracks and thwomp! collapses, running in a blizzard of sparks and sudden heat on polished concrete and my right foot comes down on a thatch of hay, hay slipping on the smooth floor and I am down. Willy’s hands now—can’t see him in the black smoke which is pouring toward the wide opening, sucked toward open air, can’t see him but feel his hands clawing into my armpits, hauling, pulling me again to my feet, a great shove in my lower back and I am spilling, tumbling out into the dirt yard and the night and the heat and wind is at my back and I land flat out on the stones and clods and look straight up into a sky luminous and clear as a spring, into a rash of rising sparks freeing themselves from the smoke and losing themselves in the paler stars.

  Two red pumpers, sirens wailing, screamed up the road, jounced into the yard. The volunteers in yellow slicker suits and helmets, six to a truck, were out and swarming the hoses. There within ten minutes of me and two minutes later they had four heavy streams shooting into the flames, the roof of the barn, the part unburned. Willy had his hydrant going and was spraying down the side of his wood and tool sheds with a garden hose. The pillar of smoke on the south side of the barn went black to gray to a violent steaming white that exploded and rolled. It flowered inside out in the blossoming of its own death. A crack of timber like a shot and the roof collapsed on the south end, showering orange sparks straight up into the dark. Within an hour they had it all out. Half the barn stood unharmed. The other half steamed in a blackened ruin that burned the nostrils with acrid and sodden char. Willy stood in the yard. He held the triggered end of a garden hose as if he’d forgotten he held it. He watched the firemen spray down the hot spots, the backup man pulling and hauling the heavy cloth hoses over the yard, the nozzle man bracing and working the bale trigger in bursts, the rush and billow of steam.

  I limped over to Willy. My lower back spasmed with shooting pain, trick knee screamed. I had to stop sprinting and rolling in the dirt every other day.

  He was standing holding the little hose, his thin hair sprung out, a lick of it sweatstuck to his forehead, his face smirched, shirt torn. He stared at the remains of his barn. I stood next to him.

  “I lost my hat,” he said.

  I clapped it against my leg and handed it to him. A fraying palm-straw wide brim Resistol stained by sweat and rain.

  “It was by the door.”

  He looked at me first, straight into my eyes and I shuddered. There was a cold emptiness there I had never seen. Then he shifted down to the hat, no change in expression. He dropped the hose to the dirt and reached out and slowly took the Resistol. Deliberate and slow he set it on his head and snugged it down.

  “Thanks.” Then he smiled. It was like the man I had recently come to know had just reinhabited his body.

  “I’d say Grant Siminoe chose to mess with the wrong people,” he said. He spat. A spit that hawked up and ejected an entire swatch of the universe.

  “But then smarts were never the Siminoes’ most obvious charm.”

  As he said it headlights swung across his face. A pulsing blue followed. In that light he looked ill. A squad car pulled in, and the white Crown Vic, unmarked. Sport got out of it. He was wearing the soft shell wind jacket, hiking boots. Before he closed his door he took in the smoldering barn, the firemen, me and Willy. It didn’t seem to surprise him. He looked like a man coming to an event he had on his calendar. Out of the patrol car stood a broad shouldered, white haired officer in a badged green jacket. His face had the bitter not unhappy set of an old war general: the sheriff himself. Must be. He reached back into the car for his hat. Surprised me when I saw in the moving lights it was a hunterorange baseball cap. The sheriff walked over to an unhelmeted and bearded fireman who was talking into a cell phone. Must be the chief. Sport came to us.

  Willy looked at him with undisguised distaste.

  “Gentlemen.”

  Sport turned his body to watch the mop-up, the clouds of steam. Three spectators in a line. “Any ideas, Mr. Kesler?” he said.

  “You know, Craig, the Mr. really bothers me. My barn just burned down so I guess I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but I do.”

  “Willy.”

  “Nope. No ideas. No guesses. I know.”

  Sport took out his flip notebook.

  “Grant Siminoe called this afternoon, said he wanted his horse. When I told him it wasn’t his horse anymore he threatened me.”

  “Can you recall the exact conversation?”

  “Sure.”

  Willy told him. When he finished he said, “Jim got a call just after me. It was a little less polite.”

  Sport took it all down, the approximate times. When I told him that the caller said I’d be dead he stopped writing. He said, Just a sec. He walked over to the sheriff and the fire chief, pulled the sheriff aside, talked to him for a minute, came back. Asked about suspicious activity before the fire, headlights, etc. Nothing. The sheriff walked up. He scanned our faces.

  “You lose any horses, Willy?”

  “No. Almost lost Jim, though.”

  Sheriff worked his jaw. “Got a dip?”

  Willy hooked a finger into his breast pocket, took out the round tin.

  “Thanks. Swore to Lee I wouldn’t buy another can. Turned me into a beggar. Christ.”

  He pinched about a quarter of the can and stuffed it in his jaw.

  “Cluster fuck,” he said.

  “Well, yeah.”

  The sheriff spat. A black stream that splatted over the dirt like wet cow shit.

  “You all are giving me a headache. Willy?”

  “Sheriff?”

  “Grant’s at the camp. I went up there as soon as I heard the fire call come in. Him and five hunters swear on their wives’ coochies he was there all day.”

  “And?”

  “And you and I know he’s done this before. He didn’t go ahead and drop his driver’s license next to a gas can. We won’t find a thing.” Spat again.

  “I want this to stop,” he said. “Now. I don’t want any more bodies.”

  He turned his head and looked straight at me. His eyes were black and dark blue in the flashing lights and they were empty of kindness. “You fish the Forks today?”

  I think I must’ve shaken my head to clear it.

  “No?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “How was it?”

  I stared at him.

  “Good,” I said. “It was good. Pretty.”

  “Windy though, huh? And hot. Catch anything?”

  “Pretty big brown.”

  “On what?”

  Now I felt like I was
in a dream, a weird dream.

  “Bead head prince on the bottom. That’s what he hit. Had a royal coachman on top.”

  The sheriff nodded, spat.

  “Hit it on the swing did he?”

  I must have been looking at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Hearing the words but trying hard to understand the meaning, the intent.

  He pretended not to notice. He said, “I fished down there this morning early. Used a streamer just because I felt like it. Didn’t catch shit. Couple of little rainbows. I blamed it on the moon.” He smiled without mirth. “Always good to have a big fat moon to blame it on. You gonna do any creek fishing in the next few weeks?”

  “Sure. If—”

  “If you’re not in jail? We’re trying our hardest. Tell you the truth, the quality of witnesses isn’t what they used to be.” He glanced at Willy.

  He spat a clean jet onto the gravel. “If you’re fishing the mountain creeks I’d get one of these.” He patted his neon orange cap. “Don’t want some asshole from Alabama thinking you’re a muley.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Thanks.”

  “I’m posting a deputy at your house tonight for your protection. Another will come tomorrow. And I’m taking the horse.”

  Willy started as if someone had touched him with a lit match. “Mark—”

  “Until we get this sorted out that horse is going into the witness protection program. She’ll be well cared for.”

  “Marly’s—?”

  “No not Marly’s for chrissakes. You know about Marly. So does Grant. Don’t concern yourself. Why don’t you go get her. Keep her back in the corral if you want. Just a few minutes. I just called Eckly, he’s on his way with a trailer.”

  “She needs a vet’s attention. He clubbed her, nearly killed her.”

  “She’ll get it, you have my word.”

  “I don’t want a deputy,” I said.

  “I can’t post one on your property without your permission.”

  “Then don’t,” I said.

  He studied me. “Okay.” He nodded to all three of us, lumbered back to his car. Leaned against it and began talking on a phone.

  Willy called in his big gelding and hopped on him and hazed the other horses back into the corral. When Eckly arrived, Willy led the little roan slowly from the corral and she was unsure and trembling, and she shied when she neared the barn and there was a sudden hiss of steam. She was frightened by the sliding snake of a hose getting rolled in, but she never balked as he led her. He walked her right up the ramp of the sheriff department trailer, talking to her low and gentle the whole time.

  I lay on top of the quilt naked and I cried. For the horse. Who was being moved to another strange place, into the tenuous care of more strangers. For myself, who couldn’t seem to stop spreading trouble wherever I went. How the violence seemed to follow me, and it was wildly undiscerning and it hurt the things around me: horses, friends, neighbors. I cried. Jesus, Jim, Irmina was right, you need to get calm, make some peace around you, not mayhem. For everyone’s sake. How did you get like this?

  The three quarter moon rose over the shoulder of the mountain. At some point I heard the diesel pumper trucks roar, the air brakes, the fading growl as they went back down the road. At some point I stopped feeling sorry for myself, for everyone. The horse was in much better hands than she was a few days ago. Willy’s barn burned, but not all of it, he hadn’t lost any animals, and he told me before I left not to lose any sleep over that—he was heavily insured. He said the tack room was getting way too small anyway and that he had insured the building for so damn much he was sure they would think he burned it down himself. I got up and went to one of the poetry shelves set into the wall at the end of the bed. I flicked on a light switch there that lit only the books. Picked out a thick volume of Derek Walcott’s collected poetry and scanned the titles. The Schooner Flight caught my eye.

  In idle August, while the sea soft,

  and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim

  of this Caribbean, I blow out the light

  by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion

  to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.

  It’s an old style sea tale. Reminded me of the Ancient Mariner and Moby-Dick and “The Secret Sharer,” all those poems and stories I’d read in school. It lulled me. I thought: Maybe that’s what I need to do, go back to the coast, go past it, get washed by salt fog. Or. I had no idea what I needed to do. I reminded myself that I never had.

  The next morning I loaded the new paintings and my dovetail jointed paint boxes and my new fishing gear and drove to Santa Fe.

  On my way through town I stopped in at Bob’s to fill up. He came out of the station slowly, snapping his jacket at the waist and hunching his shoulders like a man going out to do a chore he didn’t much like. He unspun the gas cap and hit the lever on the pump without asking me how much, and as he cleaned the windshield he didn’t look at me. I leaned out the window and opened my mouth to ask him how his cows were doing, then shut it. I’d never asked him that before. Fuck. I got it. He stopped at forty zero zero, no need for change, no extra conversation, and cradled the pump handle with the same remoteness. I held out two crumpled twenties. I felt nauseous. He took the bills, turned away. Stopped. He took a deep breath, turned back.

  “Jim, if anyone deserved an early demise it was that sonofabitch. But you know, we can’t just go around killing each other. Just saying.

  “Be good,” he said again, the way he does.

  A partial reprieve. It was fifty miles of state highway before I could breathe normally again.

  VI

  Just Before Fishing?

  OIL ON CANVAS

  20 X 30 INCHES

  PRIVATE COLLECTION

  I have never painted in plein air. Never set up on some hillside, on some shore, in a big hat. But I did on the road south of Saguache. I made the right turn off the state highway onto a smaller paved road that went over a swell of grass hills and dropped down to a little creek limned with willows that ran off through open hills and pinewoods. The stream along the road ran dark and clear. It ruffled to white then smoothed almost black again. I slowed the truck, leaned out the window. I watched the creek, the purple stemmed willowbrush, the redwing blackbirds rising out of it, and I had two urges: to fish and to paint. Also, I wanted to shake off the scene with Bob.

  As I studied the trout stream, the painting won out.

  I turned a corner around a ruddy rock outcrop and saw the creek fan into a plain of willows, beaver dams, tannin dark pools. The pools stepped down the valley and cloud shadows tugged across them and the still water was touched with the quiet rings of feeding trout. In almost every one was a stick lodge. The beaver lodges were covered with a spotty packing of dirt, as if the animals had tossed shovelfuls of mud onto the roofs of their houses. How did they do that? Where did they carry it? I pulled over in a widening of trammeled tire tracks. The bank looked over the braids and pools, the thick low brush. A worn trail cut down to the water. For the first time in maybe my life I didn’t take it. Kinda blinked at myself. Gee, Jim, are you growing up? Or old? Art over life?

  I could paint, then fish. There was plenty of daylight and I was in no hurry. Nobody would bother me out here.

  But just in case, I set up the easel, swung down and latched the narrow shelf for brushes and stuck the .41 magnum in a hole meant for a jar.

  The sheriff hadn’t been taking any chances, either. When I pulled out of my driveway this morning there was the young flattopped deputy who had admired my nudes. He must have been there all night. His beefy face in the open window was blotched with lack of sleep. He waved, very friendly, I waved back, then he started up and followed me down the county road. He followed me through Hotchkiss, past the turnoff to the Pleasure Park, all the way through Delta. We passed the little airport and the salvage yard Black Jacks where I had stopped a month ago to get a side mirror and the proprietress had fed her big Rottweiler w
atermelon gum-balls. We passed the propane yard, and a mile after that he blasted his siren, one long two shorts, and I crossed the county line. The sign said,

  LEAVING DELTA COUNTY CANYONS RIVERS MOUNTAINS

  I looked in the mirror and he was pulled over and his arm was out the window and he was waving. I waved back.

  Now above the open creek I unwrapped the brushes from their rag, flipped open my folding knife and scored then broke off a rough square of fiberboard. I pulled out a for sale sign and taped it white side up onto the board. I’d use a similar palette to Ocean of Women. A tremor of anxiety and I realized I was thinking about Sofia. She was safe, right? I dug my phone out of my khaki pocket, no reception of course. Grant Siminoe wasn’t going to go after an innocent woman, a bystander. Nah. Well. He did try to burn up a couple of horses. Panic like reflux rose in my throat. She said she was going to Crested Butte. She wouldn’t have thought of it, but the road to the old mining town went right by the Sulphur, the steep turnoff where the bow hunters had their camp. Well. She was going to go in the morning, they’d all be in the woods hunting. Right? Grant didn’t even know I had a girlfriend. Right?

  I almost packed up everything right then, almost got back in the truck and turned around. Whoa. Cool off Jim. The sheriff would be all over Siminoe. If he was watching me he was sure as shit staking out the Sulphur road and keeping an eye on who was coming and going. He sure as shit didn’t want Grant burning down any more buildings. Or assaulting girlfriends. Is that what she was? Calm down. Breathe.

  Hey, Pop?

  Yeah?

  Don’t get so excited about everything. That’s what always gets you in so much trouble. Just leaping all the time. Like a chicken. A rooster. Right?