2 Landscape in Scarlet

by Melanie Jackson

  Landscape in Scarlet

  by

  Melanie Jackson

  Version 1.1 – July, 2012

  Published by Brian Jackson at KDP

  Copyright © 2012 by Melanie Jackson

  Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at www.melaniejackson.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Chapter 1

  It all started with the balloon man. Until the old bag of skin and bones slouched by, Juliet would have rated the upcoming White Oaks Autumn Art Festival and Wine Tasting a fairly average event. But this guy was creepy and raised the psyche’s hackles. Even without the subtle skeleton face paint, patchy hair, dusty frock coat, and collection of monstrous balloons clutched by his freakishly long fingers, his gauntness would have been painful to look upon. With it, he was the Grim Reaper made flesh. Morbid children would love him. The rest would have nightmares.

  “It’s Halloween walking,” Juliet muttered, wondering if he had been ill or if it was some genetic quirk that made him look that way.

  “His name is Michael Comstock,” Rose whispered after he passed. “He’s new in town. I hear he used to be a teacher or something to do with kids.”

  Juliet nodded, though the man did not seem to fit in with the local fauna, and wondered if he would stay long.

  She was sipping a scalding hot café mocha and pretending to care about the arrangement of her merchandise. There wasn’t much to care about. Practicality said to sort the shirts by size and color so people could easily find what they wanted, but for appearance’s sake she showed up with Rose and went through the motions of arranging her wares. After all, she was supposed to be an artist and the fall festival was a big deal. Her grand gesture toward merchandising was stuffing her hand-painted trick-or-treat bags with tissue paper and pinning them to the front of the table with clothespins. Rose had suggested hanging them up high since they looked like Chinese lanterns, but Juliet pointed out that pinning them to the table put them at children’s eye level.

  Rose looked at her admiringly for having such business sense. Unfortunately, the stuffing and pinning had taken only five minutes and now she needed to not look bored.

  “Your coffee smells good. Is it a mocha? I may have to get one—do they use organic beans and soy milk? And I hope they have water-processed decaf. The other is so bitter.”

  “I’m sure they do.” This close to Santa Cruz, it was an obligation to have whatever kind of coffee variants that people wanted.

  The fully caffeinated, fully fatted mocha was a rare treat for Juliet. She had mostly given up on coffee and worrying about the future. Or much of anything else. Juliet knew from bitter experience that caffeine and nerves were not a good way of life. It had taken patience to wean herself off the java, but finally a day arrived when she wasn’t cranky and headachy from the moment of wakening. And that was good because it had to be done. The metabolic joke that was middle age was already doing its best to ruin her face and figure. She was damned if she would help it by cultivating worry lines, but some mornings one simply had to smack the brain with coffee products and damn the consequences.

  But only once in a while, now that there were some interesting men hanging around the periphery of her life that might care at least a little about how she looked.

  Not that she understood their attention. She looked in the mirror each morning and night and knew her middle-aged face was nice but nothing to launch a ship—let alone thousands of them. The very idea that she could be Helen of Troy brought a sudden grin which she could not see and therefore did not know that it gave her an intriguing animation. And if it wasn’t her looks then it had to be her personality. This thought almost made her laugh aloud.

  “It looks like rain,” Rose said, interrupting her rude staring and inappropriate chuckling at the retreating figure of the skeletal Comstock.

  Rose Campion was still busily decorating her booth. She worked in woven textiles and the fair organizers figured that her sweaters and ponchos went well with Juliet’s sweatshirts and baseball caps—the sublime and the ridiculous perhaps. Comedy and tragedy. Fussy Rose was actually trying for an artistic layout and was experimenting with creative draping of her more exotic sweaters that looked like they had been knitted by someone on drugs. Since she was very short and Juliet was bored, she sometimes assisted by hanging weaving from the strategically strung wires. Juliet didn’t say anything discouraging about the wraps and scarves festooned with fringe staying neat in the wind.

  At Rose’s pessimistic words, Juliet leaned over and peered upward. The heavens did have the weighty look that threatened rain before nightfall. It wasn’t a great time for rain, however badly needed. But no other time would be better now that the straw-bale maze was up and the smaller pumpkins were arranged in their patch. The festival was the last tourist event of the year. After that the town put up its feet and relaxed for the winter. And they needed these tourists after the summer fire season and the disaster the media called the Hoodsville Burn had chased so many visitors away.

  The town still had air in its lungs, but it was getting stale. The place needed a fresh supply of dollar-rich oxygen. White Oaks was the last stop on the artistic pipeline that ran through the Santa Cruz Mountains. Pressure was a little weak at their end and would have run out completely except for two things—two men, Asher Temple and Raphael James, the most famous of the residents at Bartholomew’s Wood. Without the art colony and these two artistic giants, the town would have little purpose for existing and been the object of amiable contempt by its more prosperous neighbors. As it was, things had been decidedly grim for the town folk after Santa Claus and the Lone Ranger had left them in the last economic downturn, and people remembered it. They needed their artists and they needed the fall festival and had waited for it with the steadfastness of an old dog all through the Indian summer, until the trees turned and began to glow with death’s last inner light.

  Red sky at morning, tourist take warning.

  Unlike many of the locals, the tourists still had money. These quasi-adults with charge cards and spoiled kids who were looking for a good time, grisly entertainment for the whole family, were a coveted prize. And what could be more fun than a fall festival with wine tasting and ubiquitous pumpkin comestibles and a chance to look at record-breaking squash? For the lowbrow there was a punkin chunkin—Sheriff Garret had a trebuchet he was dying to try out at this event. For the higher-minded there was an art show with “good” art. And everyone knew it was good because of the prices.

  Asher Temple and Raphael James had paintings in the show which was being held in the old stables that doubled as the church for every religious denomination in town. But far and away, the most popular items to be seen on the last day before the festival officially opened were Esteban Rodriguez’s bone puppets. Even the glassblowers—who were hard to impress—commented on them. The marionettes made of reworked sheep bones both fascinated and repelled Juliet. Advance sales were tremendous and he was taking orders for Christmas.

  They wanted the Halloween crowds, but they were pushing their luck, waiting until late in October to hold the fair. Weather in the coastal hills was unpredictable.

  “I hate when we have a storm at night,” Rose said nervously. This did not mean that she was unusually upset. Rose always sounded troubled. She was afraid of large animals, insects, people, and vitamins. The vitamins were a new thing. It seemed likely that Rose would eventually end up living i
n a panic room.

  “Rain tomorrow would be worse though.” Who wanted to choose pumpkins, ride ponies, or sip wine in a downpour? If it rained during the day then they might just as well pack up and go home while the town went on life support.

  Juliet’s metal folding chair wobbled and she tried again to find a level spot for it. The town had weed-whacked the old parking lot where the fair booths were set up. The pavement had been violated all summer by thistle which grew where and when it pleased, apparently feasting on the tarry gravel and getting bigger, stronger, and meaner every day in spite of being driven over and parked on every Sunday. Repaving was the only long-term solution, but there was never enough money in the budget for that or for replacing the burned-out streetlights, only one of which still worked, coming on at sunset and staring at the cracked tarmac like a meditative Cyclops. The parking lot and the dead lights said a lot about the town, but it was all things that they would rather strangers not know.

  Most of the residents of Bartholomew’s Wood were participating in the event, so Juliet recognized many of the other booths and wares. Two tents down, under the green awning, was Hans Dillmeyer. He carved crèches and pipes. He had done a few of what he called goblin pipes for the occasion. They were made of burl wood and had leering faces worked into the grain.

  Right next to Hans was Carrie Simmons. She made rubber stamps of amazing detail and elegance. The lady herself was also amazing, but not in such a good way. Fifty was too old to dress like a Spice Girl and her behavior toward attractive men was not always clothed in good taste. Sometimes not even a fig leaf. Her front and rear elevations were equally impressive and augmented. Juliet stared in disapproval and tried to imagine wearing that many foundation garments.

  Perhaps Carrie was trying for Halloween chic, but her bright orange corset made her look like an inverted traffic cone. Filled with breasts. The stupid woman would wear a bikini in the arctic and fur in the Sahara if she saw it in some magazine.

  Carrie laughed with one of the fair organizers, laying a hand on his arm. It was her practiced, sexy laugh that released brain-fogging pheromones that clocked the males of the species. Her real laugh was more like a parrot having hysterics so she only used it in private or with people (i.e. women) who didn’t matter.

  Rose sighed and dropped her eyes. She was too nice to say anything about Carrie, who she hung around with, but she didn’t approve of her either. It had to be a strange kind of friendship. Carrie was full of unwarranted enthusiasm and self-confidence and Rose’s spirits were usually about as buoyant as a brick.

  After Carrie Simmons, in the corner booth, was a glassblower who did delicate, fairytale pumpkins. Juliet hadn’t introduced herself yet. Everyone said that Lulu Weston was very shy and always had an assistant deal with the public at street fairs.

  After the elusive Lulu was Darby O’Hara. The retired veterinarian did large sculptures in both wood and stone. She was being assisted by her composer boyfriend, Harrison Peters, who had a few CDs for sale.

  Beside her was the potter from Santa Cruz. Samuel Levy of the shining bald pate did whimsical animal cookie jars, though he had added a few orange squash vessels with elfin faces just for the autumn event. He was there as a replacement for Mickey Shaw who had gotten an offer to go on some kind of all expenses paid fishing trip and decided that he needed a trip more than he needed money.

  The south side of the square was populated with food tents that sold things that no one would consider eating at any other time and place. Like deep-fried Twinkies and funnel cakes. The food concessions would do well. People, who seemed to slide out of the womb needing sugar and fat, would gobble up the reasonably priced yummies that their doctors and digestions warned them against. Because everyone knew that calories consumed on weekends while wandering around a fair just didn’t count.

  Theoretically this was repellant to the health-conscious Juliet, but in reality it all smelled delicious.

  The west side of the parking lot housed an ironmonger who did lawn ornaments and metal sculptures. She hadn’t met Xander Lawson, but she knew he was the artist because his giant banner said so.

  Next to him was the pumpkin patch and then the pony ride, which wasn’t much of a ride, just ponies yoked to a large cross of wood that kept them treading in circles. Last was the petting zoo, which consisted of two turkeys—kept in a separate area where they were impossible to pet—a miniature horse, and half a dozen pygmy goats.

  Rounding the corner and heading back toward Juliet was the tarot card reader and palmist, Madame Mimm. Her tent looked like something out of Hollywood’s version of Arabian Nights, though tackier and a little muddy along the bottom since the ground had been damp when they set up.

  Beside her was the smallest tent, a shabby affair that belonged to the local cat rescue group. It was battered and faded almost white because it saw work every weekend, rain or shine. They had first set up near the food tents but it was decided that other vendors needed to be near the electrical outlets and they had been moved. Juliet hoped they did well. Every cat deserved a good home.

  Lastly there was the wine tasting booth. There were only two local vintners and they both had either Halloween or Oktoberfest labels which sold well because the price was moderately low and the wine was moderately good, along with having cute holiday labels which people bought to give to their friends when they needed a nice but impersonal gift. A few cases of higher-end wines were sold, but the best money came from the commemorative wine glasses which were etched with a grinning pumpkin and the year.

  The wind kicked up, a swift and petulant breath of cold greased by frying cakes that was there and then gone before it could do more than pull down one of Rose’s scarves and make the nearby trees shiver.

  “I think I’ll see how Raphael and Asher are getting on,” Juliet said, unable to find a single thing to fold or arrange.

  “And Esteban. He’s there too.” There was nothing sly in Rose’s tone. She didn’t do innuendo, but like many of Juliet’s neighbors, she thought that there was something between Esteban and Juliet. And of course there was, but it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with Juliet saving his life.

  Not that there was anything wrong with Esteban that would make him an ineligible partner. He was a fine specimen of hard-bodied manhood. Hard-headed too.

  “And Esteban—though I don’t much like his puppets. They give me the shivers.”

  “He’s a visionary, I guess,” Rose said kindly. Then frowned. “You can’t catch mad cow disease from bones, can you?”

  “No.” Juliet had no idea if you could but figured it was best to head Rose off before she worked herself into a tizzy. “And he uses sheep and goat bone anyway.”

  Juliet scooped up her purse and wended her way past Madame Mimm’s colorful tent. She stared critically at the loud canvas, but the tent ignored her censure. She could hear the palmist inside. She spoke in a medium-range monotone, the voice completely uninflected, as though she were trying to hypnotize someone rather than tell their fortune. Maybe she was just ordering lunch.

  Juliet walked through the petting zoo of unfriendly and indifferent animals that hated people and especially children, and then entered the stables. She kept her mocha for warmth but was growing tired of the cloying sweetness. It was time for some protein.

  The stables looked suitably creepy. Of course, they always looked that way to a certain degree, especially when the windows were shuttered. There was also a certain dissonance, a mixed message with the eyes saying it was a gallery and the nose, catching the last whiffs of straw sealed inside decades ago, announcing that it was a barn.

  Juliet’s eyes were assaulted first thing by the life-size bone baby riding in an old-style wicker pram. It was surrounded by torn and dusty drapes of faded red velvet that must have come from some old theater. The puppet was dressed in a yellowed Christening gown and swaddled from the waist down in old flannel blankets. Juliet found this piece to be particularly gruesome, a baby plucked from t
he grave and strung up with wires, but then that was probably the point of ambushing people with it as they came through the door. It was almost Halloween. They wanted to be scared and horrified and maybe even disgusted.

  “Juliet,” Raphael said, and she warmed at the sound of his voice, seeking him in the dim light. The paintings on the battered wall were lit, but the floor was not. They were trying for a kind of haunted house motif and achieving it. “Have you come to see if I’ve accurately preserved your image for posterity?”

  Raphael sometimes used her as a model when he was doing matriarchs of the Bible.

  “I wouldn’t dare utter a word of protest even if you gave me a mustache,” she said, turning and walking toward him. He spun his wheelchair to face her.

  And she truly didn’t want to protest. Raphael always managed to paint her as if she were lit by divine fire and surrounded by the heavenly host singing paeans of joy. He never made her feel—on canvas or in the flesh—that she had been catalogued in his mind as middle aged, middle talent, or middling boring. Even if it was all probably true. She was sure that in real life she had never looked so luminous or wise.

  The painting on display on the withered wood wall wasn’t one of her favorites though, being it was of John the Baptist’s head being offered up to Salome. Juliet was painted in as the mother, Herodias, not the infamous dancing girl, and she looked great for being married to a tyrant—but it was still one of her least-liked Bible stories and canvases.

  The painting was for display, not sale, and had a small NFS card on it. Its new home would be in a church in San Francisco where it was headed on St. John’s feast day. Raphael had two others for sale though, smaller pieces, that flanked the canvas with the severed head. Juliet was in neither.

  Next to Raphael’s painting was a medium-size work that Juliet recognized as belonging to Asher Temple. It was a mass of angry reds that somehow suggested a stream at sunset. It was called “Landscape in Scarlet.” As usual, she liked the frame more than the canvas in it. Asher’s mother did wonderful work.