The Painter: A Novel

by Peter Heller

  “Jim!”

  Knocked out of reverie. A toe prodding my shin. Who—?

  It was Celia Anson, wife of the renowned gallery owner.

  “Prodigal Jim, wow!”

  Her husband, Happy Anson, had famously died a couple of years ago and left the store and his entire collection to this twenty-seven year old massage therapist who cared most about White Russians, not the men, the drink. Well, I knew about massage therapists and clearly had nothing against them, until they came after me with a kitchen knife. Celia was naked, of course, and when my eyes came down out of the trees and registered probably surprise, she slid over on the underwater bench and leaned in and kissed me hard somewhere between my cheek and the corner of my mouth and let her ample breasts float like happy ducks against my shoulder and collarbone.

  She pushed herself off me, and her left hand slipped into my lap, which, in the buff, and the way things float around, was not just a lap but something more.

  “Oh,” she said, a little surprised. “Sorry. Maybe not!”

  She smiled, goofy. I always liked her. I always felt a little sorry for her when I saw her at openings and parties, the way the art society treated her, the snotty razors of nuance she never seemed to understand but always felt, I was sure. She was very pretty, and she always dressed as a stunner, and she was much younger than the patrons, so of course many of the women hated her. But she tried. She was a sunny open soul from Half Moon Bay, a part of the north-central coast I knew well, from a hippy family as she described it, that ran an organic orchard and farm right along the bluffs south of El Granada. She tried hard to be forthright and friendly and she wore her hurt in a bewildered half smile. Where she came from, if you planted seeds and watered them, they grew. If you rubbed and kneaded a cramped muscle it uncramped. Cause and effect. Why, now that she was Happy Anson’s wife, did kindness and offerings of friendship produce wilted plants year after year?

  I think there should be tribunals for social cruelty as there are for physical assault. Calculated cuts in the first degree. Snobicide or its reverse. I always talked to her in those crowded rooms, took her on my arm from painting to painting when I could, and discovered she had a sensitivity and intelligence toward the works that might have surprised even her husband. Clearly she had been listening. And she was always so relieved at this attention, she split open like a milkweed and her laughter floated into my eyelashes.

  Celia cheated on him of course, after a while. He had one of the best eyes for new work in the country and he was very busy promoting his artists. So not much consoling there. The rumor was that discovering her with one of his painters triggered the stroke that brought on his demise. He managed for more than a year, on a quad cane, and slurring out of one side of his mouth, but he had been a tall, upright, vain man, the kind of gallery owner that talked with a cultivated vaguely British accent he must have learned by replaying Alistair Cooke specials over and over. A real asshole. He didn’t give his new condition time enough to teach him anything like real humility or gratitude, he shot himself with an engraved Italian sixteen gauge worth forty thousand dollars. Messy. Made a Jackson Pollock of his brains on his study wall.

  Well. He left her the store, anyway. Must have, in his reptilian way, forgiven her and understood how much he had asked of the guileless, very young girl he had married, and how much he had damaged her.

  “So damn good to see you,” she said, smiling into the sun.

  She was genuinely glad, and she grabbed a fingerful of my beard and kissed the side of my face again and let her breast swell against my shoulder.

  “Are you back?” she said. “Please say yes.”

  “A week or two.”

  “Will you call me?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not married again are you?”

  “Nah.”

  “Steve told me you threatened the last one with a chain saw.”

  I laughed.

  “Word gets around,” I said. “I told him I felt like it.”

  “We all have those feelings, Jim. You don’t know how many times I wanted to shave off Happy’s eyebrows while he was sleeping off one of his binges. That would’ve been tantamount to murder wouldn’t it? He was such a peacock.”

  “Ha.”

  She was such a sweetheart. I thought she was going to say she wanted to cut his nuts off or put an ice pick through his ear.

  “You know,” she said, “you are the best artist in the whole joint. Happy always talked about stealing you away from Steve. He said you were a modern-day Van Gogh, how you are self-taught and all, and kind of have two left hands when you draw, and are such a wild hair half the time, and are a plain old, old fashioned genius.”

  She grinned. “So there.”

  She blinked at me, at me and the sun. She looked as pleased with herself as a kid who has just tied a bonnet onto her cat’s head. Oh man, I loved her. Right then she had to be the cutest sweetest girl on the planet. What was wrong with me? An ocean of women. Is that what murder does? Some endocrine reaction?

  “Call me,” she said, and gave my ear a heartfelt squeeze. She rose out of the water. It poured off of her breasts. It ran its watery hands to her waist and down over the spreading round of her hips and the smooth flat of her lower belly and. Venus on the Half Shell. Celia rose out of the sea of Ten Thousand Waves a glistening magnificent thing, slowly, slowly turned, stepped one long tapered naked leg onto the bench and the deck, did not look back. Grabbed her robe off the peg and shrugged it on as she went. Good God.

  “She did that on purpose,” murmured an awed shaved-headed man to my left. “If I weren’t unreconstructed one hundred percent all American gay I would go for that.”

  “Whew. Me too. I mean—”

  We looked at each other and grinned. He had a bone in his right ear and a snake tattoo running down the side of his neck. “You’re Jim Stegner. Couldn’t help overhearing. Anyway I recognized you. Philippe Sando.” He put out a fist to bump.

  “Rocks right? You paint rocks hanging from strings,” I said.

  “You got it. You might wanna put that thing away.”

  He glanced down through the water. The bath was not sudsy or murky, it was very clear.

  “Around here,” he said smiling, “it might get you in trouble.”

  We surveyed the deck littered with muscular tanned oiled bodies and we both burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I felt oddly exuberant now and I needed to paint. I did not want to use the usual studio up at Steve’s, the one he kept for me. I did not want to tangle with Steve or the cops. I took an ice cold shower and drove up the mountain past the state park lodge, up away from the creek into the aspen on the backside of Lake Peak and parked at the overlook. I put the straps of the easel over my back and carried the wooden box and a small canvas and a can of turpentine and walked up the old logging road a few hundred yards until the path toward Hobbitville forked off to the southeast. That’s what I called it. They were crude tipi-shaped shelters of dead wood spaced down through the forest like a tribal ruin. They were artfully hidden from the trail. Most were wrecks, skeletons of once proud lodges, but others had been freshly woven with boughs and stuffed with leaves and looked like they might shed water, and they were all haunted with the inaudible vibrations of questionable practice, ceremony and ritual of God knows what. They were creepy. The hills of northern New Mexico are riddled with sects, orders, communes, religious cults of every stripe, so who knew. I liked them. I set up next to the one that felt most dangerous, a tall tightly woven lodge that reeked of recent embers. I stuck the .41 magnum in its cup holder on the easel, unscrewed a can of turps and poured a jar full of spirits for the brushes and began to paint.

  I painted mountains. Blue. A disappearing powdery cobalt blue—mixed with alizarin crimson and lightened up with a bit of titanium white—like those I could see through the opening of the trees ahead of me. I painted a dry valley and along it the one river, in some spots just an arroyo ri
ven in the rocks, I painted a trail and two figures toiling. One led on the narrow trail, hunched against the burden he carried in a sack. He turned, reached a hand back for the larger figure who was also having a hard time navigating the rocks. A harder time. The men were in league, the gesture was familiar, familial. They were brothers. It was clear. Clear to the silent woods on the slopes, clear to the clouds that massed and were not friendly. Clear to me. They were close in age and they had been traveling like this their whole lives. They were Dellwood and Grant for certain. Twisted and hunched and making their way together in a hostile country.

  I painted like my own life depended on it. Can’t remember when I painted in such a frenzy. The shadows of the big mountains. Where was the sun? Who knew. Where were the birds? There, hidden in the trees, not inclined to show even a little beauty. There was zero compassion in the valley, none anywhere. Traveling like that, season to season. What was it like to lose a brother? A little like losing a daughter.

  I had. I had killed a man, someone’s little brother. I stared at the picture coming alive in front of me. How could that be true? I had killed both him and my daughter in some sense. What I felt. Not what Irmina told me, but what it felt like, the certainty I could never talk myself out of. Who the fuck was I?

  I stuck the brush in the jar, lay the palette across the open travel box on the ground and walked twenty feet to a lichen covered rock with a view down the valley. Up here the aspen were already starting to go tender with the pale greens that presaged the yellows of death. Some leaves had already fallen.

  Sat on the rock. Up here not desert. Up here it was cool. When the wind came through it spun the leaves like a million chimes, they ticked and turned their pale undersides back, so that the wind swept through with a brightening of the canopy, a wave of light that carried the sweet smell of dying leaves. Already some blown down, littering the ground. This time of year. He had beaten a horse nearly to death. The horse. Focus on the horse. The little bleating terrified roan. He was a drunk, who wasn’t. He bluffed and blustered. Who didn’t? His older brother was his partner. Likely his only ally on earth. He loved him somehow. Who knew what tribulations growing up, the two of them, what threats Grant had protected him from. What vicious fights. Maybe Grant’s only true project on earth, to protect his little brother. Well. He had failed. We knew about that.

  I needed a drink. Alce, I need a drink. Little one. I can taste it in the back of my mouth.

  Silence. Wind.

  What are we here for? Surely not to purge others who have no clue either. There would be no one left. Urge rose up like bile to drive straight down to the police station next to the courthouse and confess everything. It choked me. I swallowed it back.

  I thought about leaving the canvas up here in this unholy spot as kind of a tombstone, but then I thought, Screw it, Steve will love it, I know him. He will scrunch up his lips and digest it and look at me sideways wondering what the fuck is going on with me, what’s true, and he will sell it for seven thousand dollars.

  I backed out of the parking spot at the trailhead and swung a U-turn onto the two-lane and did a double take on a black El Camino parked on the shoulder across the road. The driver window was down and he looked straight at me, a dark bearded man in a trucker’s cap and aviator shades. The shock of recognition. Fucking Jason. He looked straight at me, made sure I saw him, saw him speaking emphatically into a cell phone. Fuck.

  Steve called me as soon as I got back to my room.

  “Do you have a camera in here?” I said.

  “No, I have Kimberly at the front desk. You know, the gringa. Who, by the way, adores you.”

  “Kimberly. You. And the cops.”

  “A Detective Hinchman is on his way to see you. Very courteous. A bit fat. What time will you be at the Pantelas’ tomorrow? The canvas is already there, you know, since we expected you yesterday. I set it up in the piano room, remember? Off the courtyard with all the hollyhocks. Remember that big spacious room with the north light, where Julia serenades us with all that awful Bach. Imagine! Taking up piano at forty. Should be illegal. I always felt like I was at a kid’s recital. Why couldn’t they just let us tipple in peace? What time did you say? Ten a.m.? That seems perfect to me. Give the hairdresser time to get the girls up to running speed. Did I tell you they hired a hairdresser? Who specializes in kids?”

  No he hadn’t told me, and I hadn’t said a time in the morning, but this was Steve and ten sounded right.

  “Steve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I better hang up and wash the blood off if Officer Hinchman is coming.”

  Silence. Shocked probably.

  “Ha!”

  Steve was always nimble, never took him long to recover.

  “Ha! Some joke. Speaking of which. You know I’ve been revisiting your last two paintings. The ones from last week.”

  That usually meant he was reconsidering whether he should show them. Or that they hadn’t sold and he was going to offer buyers a further consideration or find other ways to discount them.

  “Yeah.”

  “They are disturbing, that’s all. Not really like anything you have ever done. Ah—”

  “Wait till I show you the one I did this afternoon.”

  “Really?” Excitement back in his voice. “You have another? Already? Well, you’re Jim Stegner of course. Wow. I—” He stopped like a car coming to a clanging railroad crossing.

  “Is it dark and disturbing? I mean the paintings—something is going on with you. I thought you might want to talk about it. Do you?”

  He couldn’t help himself. His tone now was completely free of affect. Kind of in awe.

  “The phone is probably tapped,” I said.

  “Oh oh. Of course. Okay.” He was flustered. “Okay, go up tomorrow at ten! Whoa.”

  I hung up. I waited for Detective Hinchman. I waited for three minutes.

  He called from the lobby. I invited him up. Don’t know why, but I placed the fresh canvas next to the hearth in the sitting room, face out. Maybe because I didn’t want him turning it around a la Sport, and because I knew he would see it eventually since I was going to let Steve show it. It could hang next to the others on the Wall of Confession.

  A spirited double tap at the door, ta-da! announced Detective John Hinchman, homicide. He was fat and wheezed like a bulldog, and was the most cheerful man I’d ever met at death’s threshold. He seemed to be, anyway. Seemed about to drop from a cardiac at any second. He maneuvered through the door and was genuinely glad to meet me. His blurred smile was infectious. I say blurred, because it was hard to see him sharply through the cloud of good cheer he brought with him the way Pig-Pen brings his dust.

  He said, “Been an admirer for years. Did you know you were the first man to paint magpies on furniture? I did the research.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I know, huh?” He chuckled. “You have a true creative impulse and within no time at all the market turns it into kitsch.” He shook his head in mirth. I offered him a seat in a wingback and he waved it away.

  “May I?” he said.

  “Be my guest.”

  For such a big man he moved pretty smoothly, a little like a parade float. He studied the new picture.

  “You paint that today? Still smells strong.”

  “You must be a detective.”

  A goofy smile stretched to his sideburns.

  “One thing I love about this job. Nobody knows anything about being a detective except what they see on TV and in movies. So they talk like that. The dialogue, it usually runs along those lines. Even in interrogation. Makes it easier that way, everyone knows the protocol.” He laughed.

  “What is it?” he said, bending down and looking more closely.

  “Two guys. On a rough road.”

  “Yep. Anyone you know?” He straightened.

  “Probably Grant and Dellwood.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Well. Off script,” he said.

 
“Not really.”

  “You’re a pretty straight shooter. I thought you would be. You can tell a lot about a person from his paintings.”

  “You want a beer? That mini fridge is stuffed. I think there’s some fancy German beer in there.”

  Waved it away again. “Any reason you’d be painting Mr. and Mr. Siminoe?”

  “They’ve been on my mind a lot.”

  Again his eyes. His smile at his own astonishment. Can a man really move through the world like this, with such droll good humor? I thought he was Buddha-like.

  “How so? On your mind?” he said.

  “Well, let’s see. Dellwood almost beat a horse to death in front of me, then fought me, then got himself murdered so everyone thinks I did it, so that’s Dellwood. Grant, well, he threatened my life a week ago and burned down my neighbor’s barn. Because of aforesaid horse and brother. So maybe that’s why.”

  He nodded. He looked serious for the first time since he’d come through the door.

  “These guys, in the picture, they’re having a really rough time.” He frowned. “The older one in front, that must be Grant, he’s trying to take care of his brother, protect him, like he’s done ever since the two of them went to foster care.”

  It hit me like a blow. I felt dizzy. Not even sure why. Of course they were raised in foster homes. I guess of course.

  He was watching me. I liked him. He seemed to be just about wincing, feeling my pain.

  “They always went together. Since they were like ten and twelve. Couldn’t separate them. They tried, the state, but they always ran away and came back together. Child welfare just had to make allowances.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You see Grant lately?”

  “Never met him.”

  “But he’s in the painting. Wrong scale, though. You’ve got him smaller than Dell. I’m assuming that’s Dell right? Yeah, Grant’s even bigger. Hard to believe he’s bigger, huh? Given how massive Dellwood is. Was.”