by Ilsa J. Bick
I said, as calmly as I could, “Because I saw Lucy draw her death. I saw it in my mind.” I pointed at the picture. “I drew that. I...I took it out of something—and I’d never seen Mr. Witek’s painting before that. But it’s an exact match.”
Uncle Hank didn’t laugh. He didn’t say I was crazy. He said, “And?”
“And I think it means that . . . he . . . he told me.”
“But Mr. Witek can’t speak,” Dr. Rainier said.
“No, ma’am,” I agreed. “Not in words.”
XVII
We pretty much left it at that. I mean, what else was there to say? No way I was going to spill everything. I was in enough trouble as it was.
Before she left, Dr. Rainier said, “Christian, I think it’s best if you skip the home for the rest of the week and come on Monday. Give things a chance to settle down.”
“You think they’ll let him come back?” asked Uncle Hank.
“Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong.” To me: “The way I understand it, you were interested in Mr. Witek’s paintings, you tried talking to him a little bit, and then you had a nosebleed. Is that about right?”
“Uh...” Not exactly. “Yeah. What about Lucy and Stephanie?”
“You let me handle all that. I need a chance to think about what you’ve said, but I don’t think you can be fired for a premonition. You had a hunch.” She fastened her eyes on mine. “Isn’t that right?”
I saw where this was going. I nodded, and her face smoothed.
“That’s what I thought, and that’s what I’m going to write into the official record,” she said. “Losing it with Stephanie will be harder to explain, but you were having a nosebleed and you were upset. So far as I can tell, there was no harm done except, perhaps, to Stephanie’s dignity. You might actually have done some good for Mr. Witek. He responded to you by opening his eyes. He hasn’t done that for anyone. I checked him before I came over, and while I wouldn’t say he’s ready for a round of golf, he’s not worse either. One more thing. I’d like to see you tomorrow instead of Friday, okay? Let’s just touch base.”
That was all right with me. Friday was a teacher workday and no school, so having the whole day off would be kind of nice. “Sure.”
“Good.” She smiled at me, but when she turned to go, she touched Uncle Hank on the arm. Just a brush of her fingers. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said—mainly to Uncle Hank, I thought.
Uncle Hank’s voice was husky. “God, Helen, I hope you’re right.”
Helen?
I wasn’t hungry; my brain was churning and my stomach too, but Uncle Hank scrambled up eggs and hash browns and made me eat. We didn’t talk—no shocker there. After the dishes, I said, “I’m going to bed.”
“All right.” He was sitting at the table with the last of the coffee. “You sleep well now.”
I walked to the hall but lingered in the doorway a moment. “Why is Dr. Rainier helping us so much?”
His face was cop-blank. I’d seen that look a hundred times before, so I knew he was hiding something. “Any doctor worth her salt’s gonna do what’s best for a patient.”
“But she’s . . .” I didn’t want to say lying. “I mean, she’s pretty much told me what to say. Is that allowed?”
“She’s giving you the best shot you’ve got to stay out of as much trouble as possible.”
“Okay.” I debated before asking, “So how much do you like her?”
For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to answer the question. To be honest, I was pretty surprised I’d ask. We’re not exactly talkative, my uncle and me. His eyes shifted to his coffee and then back to me, and he said, “I loved your Aunt Jean very much. But I’ve been lonely, and Dr. Rainier . . . she’s smart, tough. Got guts, get right down to it.”
And beautiful. But I didn’t say that.
“I like her, Christian. I like her very much. But I’m also not going to do a thing about it.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Looking back, Uncle Hank must’ve been exhausted or else he’d have never revealed so much. You have to understand how private he is, not just because he’s sheriff but to protect me, I think. I’m willing to bet that there’s a lot of talk and gossip and heat I don’t know about, even now, because he made sure I didn’t hear it and wouldn’t suffer more than he felt I already had.
People had tried to fix up Uncle Hank before. He’s only forty-one. Sometimes he feels older to me, but that’s because he carries around the weight of so many lives. He once said that you didn’t understand mortality or real grief until you stood over the body of a high school kid on prom night.
The way he talked about Dr. Rainier, like it was a done deal, made me feel sad. “Why not? If you like her . . . Aunt Jean would understand.”
“It’s not that. I know your aunt would. We talked about it a lot, actually. Even though Winter’s pretty quiet and we haven’t had a murder in I don’t know how long, things happen. Your great-grandfather died in a fire, after all. Drunks’ll run you off the road and roll outta their cars, not a scratch on them and leave you as a smear on the road. There’s black ice and tornadoes and fools driving their trucks out onto the lake when the ice is too thin. This life will kill you a million different ways to Sunday. So your aunt and I, we’d already had that talk about what to do and how to go on if something happened. Of course, we figured it would be me, not her.” His blue eyes bored into mine. “You don’t know how many nights I wish it had been me instead.”
My chest got tight, and my eyes burned. Uncle Hank’s face blurred and broke apart the way light does through a prism, and then I was crying again. Yes, he would surely hate me if he knew....
You know what really got me? Uncle Hank thought my tears were because I felt bad for him, . . . which I did. But he got mad at himself for making me upset. He wrapped me up in a bear hug, patted my back, rubbed my hair the way he had when I was about ten or so, and kept telling me everything would be okay.
When he pulled back, his eyes were moist. “You all right?” I’m about four inches shorter, and he ducked down a little to grab my eyes. “It’ll be okay. We’re going to get through this the way we always have.”
I said something like yeah and sure and thanks, and then I got out of there. Only when I was in my room did I realize that Uncle Hank never had answered the question.
So, of course, I couldn’t sleep.
I was ashamed. Here, I’d been ready to, you know, die or run away, but Uncle Hank was hanging tough. He didn’t think I was a bad person.
I felt like a little kid inside, like there was this other me who was about five and wanted to be told everything would be okay. Maybe everybody feels that way. In history, we were talking about the Iraq war—there are a lot of local guys who’re army or National Guard—and someone said wounded guys call for their mothers. People kind of giggled, and the teacher snapped at us. But I didn’t laugh. I understood that feeling. Maybe only kids who’ve had parents hang around until they’re all sick to death of each other don’t get it. I did.
So that’s when I decided that I had to help myself. I’m seventeen, for heaven’s sake. Yeah, I was worrying about colleges and stuff, but it hit me that kids in college had it easy. Things are still done for them: their meals, their schedule, all that stuff. All a college kid has to do is get to classes, do the work, and figure out how to do laundry.
But take someone like Uncle Hank. No matter how much horror he saw, he dealt with it—because nobody else would or could. The same for Dr. Rainier, I’d bet. Somebody had to be responsible. So I had to do that too.
I pushed out of bed, went to my desk drawer, pulled it open, and unrolled the canvas brush roll. The brushes felt as right and natural in my hand now as they did back at the home. I’d drawn and been drawn to Mr. Witek’s room, and the moment I’d picked up the pouch, Mr. Witek opened his eyes. There was a message in all that.
So, enough self-pity already. I could be scared. I could be freaked out. But things were hap
pening; there were messages being sent my way and tasks that, perhaps, only I could do. I just had to figure out what and why.
So that’s what I did: fired up the computer and made a list of the things I knew and could remember from my dreams and what I’d heard. It was a short list: the White Lady, Mr. Witek, a murder back in 1945, a fire in September or October of that same year. After a few seconds of staring at the list, I added Marta. Anderson farm. Foundry dormitories. Prisoners at Eisenmann Foundry.
Then I Googled.
I realized that without a last name, I wouldn’t get far with Marta. Ditto on the farm. All I could find on the foundry involved the company’s website, which gave an abbreviated timeline and history of the Eisenmanns. The reading was fairly skimpy. The company’s founder, Sigismund Fried-rich Eisenmann, immigrated to the States from Germany in 1856, along with his second wife and nine children. The son of a cattle farmer, Sigismund had dreams of being a businessman and settled first in Chicago, working as a shoe salesman by day and attending college at night, earning his degree in metallurgy seven years later. Shortly thereafter, he came to Wisconsin to visit cousins and met a local businessman named Kramner, also a German, who wanted to take over a local foundry that was apparently going under. The two struck up a partnership, purchased the foundry, and operated it jointly as Kramner-Eisenmann Manufacturing Company for ten years churning out farm implements and residential items like cast-iron tubs, plumbing fixtures, and kitchenware. When Kramner died, Eisenmann took over sole ownership, and the company has stayed in the family to the present. The Eisenmann I knew, Charles, was Sigismund’s great-grandson. Charles’s son, Jonathan, currently managed the bulk of the company’s day-to-day operations, but Charles Eisenmann still had the final word.
One thing that I did find pretty interesting, though: Sigismund faced a serious shortage of skilled workers as his company grew larger. There were—still are—large German, Swiss, and Austrian populations in Wisconsin, many of whom came over in waves beginning in the 1840s. By the time Sigismund arrived, these first immigrants had established communities that welcomed new workers, and Sigismund realized that he could lure skilled craftsmen and ironworkers to his company if he provided them not only with a community but a means of integrating into American society. So he built dormitories: comfortable living quarters in which workers lived rent-free. Their meals were provided. Classes in American history, English, and business were offered twice a day to accommodate the shift workers; workers were put on a path to citizenship. The idea was to get the workers to view the company as family and stay put once they’d arrived.
Hunh. I clicked back to my list and checked off dormitories as the real deal. Which freaked me out a little, because that meant at least part of my visions or dreams or whatever . . . were real.
Searching for prisoners or a prison in connection with Eisenmann’s company was a big zero. So was the White Lady.
Plugging in Winter, Wisconsin, murder, and 1945 got me a single useful hit, the first paragraph of an archived item on “National News” from the New York Times:
Milwaukee, WI, October 23: Residents of the tiny rural hamlet of Winter continue to grapple with the aftermath of what appears to have been a particularly vicious and senseless murder. Walter Brotz, 45, was found slain in a horse barn on October 20. He had been stabbed repeatedly with a pitchfork, which was found at the scene, smeared with the victim’s blood. Mr. Brotz, an employee in the brass plant at the Eisenmann Manufacturing Company, was reported missing by his wife, Gertrude, on the evening of October 19, when he was last seen leaving work with several companions.
When I read that word—pitchfork—my stomach clenched. There’d been a pitchfork in my very first nightmare.
Unfortunately, that was all I got. If I wanted to read the rest of the article, I would have to pay and since a) I didn’t have a credit card and b) I didn’t have any money—that was kind of a nonstarter.
I searched for Walter Brotz but came up empty. Still, I put his name on my list. At least now I had the name of the murder victim. Maybe there was more at the town library or at the Historical Society. Sarah would know. I checked the time: almost eleven, too late to call, though I had her e-mail address from way back. Hopefully it was still good. So I wrote:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: research
Hey, Sarah:
Sorry to bug you, but I’m getting started on my history project, and I’m drawing a big zero. I think what I need might be at the Historical Society, or maybe the library, but I’m not sure. Since you know who to talk to there, would you mind if I came with you? When are you going next? I have to work on Saturday, but I could go on Friday after school.
Thanks.
Christian
I hit Send, hoping she might check her e-mail tomorrow morning, and then maybe we could talk at school. Then I sat back and studied my list. Without more details, it seemed to me that searching for a 1945 fire was a waste of time. Here there’d been a murder in the same year, and I’d only found one news story about it. Maybe the Historical Society people would have more.
That left only one item: Mr. Witek. It hit me then that I didn’t know his first name, which made me feel stupid. But I plugged in Witek, Winter and Wisconsin. I paused, thought about it, and added painter then hit Enter.
The next second, my mouth dropped open. I clicked on the first result, and a short entry from Wikipedia opened on my screen:
Mordecai Mendel Witek (b. April 3, 1905–?) was a self-educated realist painter. Dubbed the “Andrew Wyeth” of Wisconsin regional art, Witek immigrated to the United States from the tiny Polish town of Oswiecem (later renamed Auschwitz) in 1935. Initially settling in Milwaukee, he found employment as a painter of fine ceramics and porcelains at the Eisenmann Manufacturing Company in the small northern town of Winter and moved there in 1940. He continued to paint watercolors and oils, predominantly landscapes, but garnered both praise and censure after his painting, Katarina at Sunset, won Grand Prize at the Milwaukee Lake-side Arts Festival in 1943. A critic at the time described the painter’s style as “subversively sexual.” The painting caused a minor scandal when it was revealed that the young woman in question was the fiancée of a local businessman. Witek continued to reside in Winter, where he divided his time between his factory work and various commissions, and he was active in Winter’s small but vibrant Jewish community.
Later events would cast a cloud over his short-lived artistic success. Today, Witek is remembered chiefly as the prime suspect in a gruesome murder of a fellow factory worker that occurred in October 1945. Local residents believed the murder was motivated by a love triangle, a claim substantiated by the factory’s owner, Charles Randall Eisenmann, who was also injured and horribly disfigured in the same incident. The murder remains unsolved, however, as Witek disappeared. The artist’s subsequent whereabouts and presumptive date of death are unknown, though reporters of the time believed that Witek fled the country, possibly to Canada or Israel.
Wow.
I must’ve read that entry six times. An artist? And Jewish? As far as I knew, there were no Jews in Winter. But that last name was too unusual. This had to be my Witek’s father.
I did a quick calculation. Sixty-five years had passed since the murder. Mordecai Witek had been forty then, so he was dead for sure. Mr. Witek was, what? In his seventies? So, in 1945, he’d have been a boy....
“Papa,” I whispered. Yes, Mordecai Witek’s son. David.
And another mystery was solved: Mordecai Witek was the man who’d scarred up Mr. Eisenmann all those years ago.
Holy crap. No wonder Mrs. Krauss hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
I clicked on the hypertext link for Katarina at Sunset.
The painting that flashed onto my screen was breathtakingly beautiful, and I could see why Witek might be compared to Wyeth right away. The woman, Katarina, sprawled on a slope of forest green meadow, and I even recognized the spot becaus
e of the barn perched on a rise in the far distance to the right. To the left was a two-story farmhouse: white, with black shutters and a weather vane and two brick chimneys. The painting had been done at Eisenmann’s barn, at a point in time when the house still stood.
As with Wyeth’s Christine’s World, Witek’s Katarina faced away from the viewer, but that’s where the similarities ended. Instead of gazing at a house, Katarina looked up the hill toward an absent sun, its memory sketched in a sky dyed in vivid swaths of iridescent blue and a bright pink that seemed almost alien. The colors roiled across the sky in luminous bolts and splashed over the meadow and the woman lying there like unearthly water.
Katarina was also completely naked.
It’s hard to describe, even now, what the picture really looked like. You couldn’t see Katarina’s face, but maybe it was the languid line of her back and the way her golden hair whipped around her head that made me think: Bernini. There’s his famous statue of St. Theresa in St. Peter’s, the one where the angel is stabbing her through the heart and Theresa’s in ecstasy, and I remembered that several critics had suggested that Bernini had studied the faces of women in . . . well, orgasm to get just the right expression.
That’s what popped into my head when I looked at that painting of Katarina. She was having sex—and she’d reached that moment—only we were supposed to imagine it. I could see why people at that time would’ve thought it was racy, especially with all that lurid color. It was a little like Rubens that way, only he splashed red against his women’s thighs instead of pink.