I went to the privy and filled up his bucket. I ain't going to lie to you neither, I always peeked down that hole, just wondering if I might see something—a shoe, a speck of dress, that little baby-doll she used to carry, something. It was always too dark, but I looked anyway. Well, I come out of there and was making to get back on the wagon when I heard a noise. Sounded like a boar hog rutting with a sow, but not nearly as loud. Just a soft grunt, really.
I turned my head toward the house, trying to see if I might hear it again. And then I did. I started creeping up real slow, like a cat on a bird, waiting to see if I'd hear it again, trying to pinpoint exactly where it come from. And then I saw him, Wendell Burroughs, down at the bottom of those steep, rickety stairs, his body all twisted up like a stubborn yew root, his legs in the bushes. His head rested on a slate steppingstone and there was a stream of dried blood on it, running off into the yard. I stood over him as the sun got a little higher, just coming up over the trees. Glass glistened all around him, same as that morning dew had done just a few minutes before. Then I saw the broken handle from a jug of whiskey on the bottom step of the stairs, and a few more pieces higher up on other steps, like a little trail left behind as he'd fallen.
"You all right, Mr. Burroughs?” I said. “You need some help?"
His head stayed on that stone and his eyes looked up at me. His neck was turned all crooked and uncomfortable like. He didn't move at all, except for his mouth. He was trying to say something, but nothing come out but another one of those grunts. His lips just twitched a little. Reminded me of a banked catfish that had swallowed a hook deep. And this part I'll never forget. His tongue was whiter than a cottonmouth's, his eyes all bloodshot and swollen. A real sight, he was. Looked like to me he'd probably been out there for a couple of days already, baking in the sun like an autumn fox grape left on the vine.
"I sure am sorry, Mr. Burroughs,” I said, “but I can't understand you. And I know better'n to fool in a white man's business."
And you see, Rita, that's when I got on my wagon and left. Now, I hope to God you won't look down on me for what I done, because I'll tell you right now, I've always felt guilty about it. Ashamed to no end. Not one day's gone by since then that I didn't think about Wendell Burroughs.
There ain't no good that comes from letting something suffer, whether it's an animal, a man, or even Wendell Burroughs, I reckon. There ain't nothing good about keeping something locked up inside you for that long, neither. So that's why I had to tell somebody, because I wanted to get everything straight down here before I headed on up to the next place. I reckon Jesus would want it that way. And I'll be honest with you, the way I see it, Wendell Burroughs got what was coming to him. That ain't the way of Jesus, I know, but somehow I hope He'll forgive me. I've prayed every morning and every evening that He will, at least. I figure we'll probably have a long talk about it before He lets me through the gates for good.
So that's what I did that day. Only God knows if I did the right thing or not. But I left him, spread out in his yard with that sun coming up, and I could tell it was going to be another hot one. A real scorcher. And it was, too.
Copyright © 2011 by Scott Loring Sanders
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Department of First Stories: A STUDY IN DETAIL by Michael Guillebeau
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Michael Guillebeau, author of several e-zine stories, primarily in the science fiction and fantasy fields, makes his debut in print here; this is his first paid professional publication. The Huntsville, Alabama, author has been used to making his living at a different kind of “writing": He writes software for the crew of the International Space Station. He tells EQMM that his daughter, a talented artist, is to be thanked for the many technical details about art needed for this story.
She loved us both, and that was a big part of what made me love her. Other people didn't understand: They just saw me alone at parties where she was supposed to be, apologizing again because Marta was caught up in a painting and couldn't be torn away. Like most vicious things, their comments were phrased as sympathy: “Too bad she doesn't see what this does to people like you who love her,” or “All this, and nobody wants to buy her paintings.” But I just smiled and imagined her home at her easel, humming away while she worked on something new rather than being here enduring small conversations with small minds and trying hard to keep a smile on her face. Her paintings mattered to her, and I mattered to her, and not much else mattered to her. I figured that anyone who had that kind of intensity had plenty for me. And I was right. At least, I had been until lately.
When I woke up she was already out on her bike doing her penance or meditation or whatever it was. She had started running errands around town a couple of years ago on an old thirty-dollar beach cruiser, then found she thought best and felt most alive on her bike. After a lot of prodding from me, she graduated to a red Felt FW25, light as the wind and twice as fast. She would fly along a ten-mile loop around the lake all day, stopping for coffee and food at a little convenience store where the Nigerian owner always asked about her mileage, and flesh out details in her head of something she was working on, or maybe figure out why something wasn't working.
The rides were magic for her, ideas for paintings spinning as fast and smooth as her pedals. But her paintings weren't selling, and she took it personally. The world was rejecting her children and she didn't know what to do about it. So the bike miles were turning into miles looking for blame, and the blame was coming home more and more to me. Sometimes, if you can't kick the world, you kick your dog. If you don't have a dog, you kick your spouse. Counterproductive, I know, but we all do it sometime.
I told her to make a change, any change. She said she wanted a new life. Didn't know what that meant or what kind of life she wanted, but it had to be a whole new life. I told her to find a way, any way. With my help, without it. With me, without me. She suffered for her children; I suffered for her. We were all suffering, and we were all tired of it.
I went for a run and came back into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and see if she was back. In my empty cup was a note: “Enjoy your new baby and your new life.” Cryptic, but typical Marta. She had locked me out of the studio for the last week, didn't want me to see what was in there until it was done, but she sometimes did that, and then, when it was done, she didn't want to be around when I first saw it, couldn't bear to see my reaction firsthand. So I knew where she was: out on her bike, flying around and around the ten-mile lake loop until she was sure I was awake and had seen her new baby. I took my coffee and went up the stairs to the studio we'd made by gutting the whole floor into one open room with big windows on every side and a couple of skylights in the roof. There was a big, bright new painting in the middle, waiting. It was a portrait of me, full-length, but I had to laugh: She had painted me in electric-blue workman's overalls, with tools coming out of every pocket. I got it. Once we had gotten into a terrible fight: one in a series of fights that we seemed to have over and over with no way out. She was ranting about something, anything, it never seemed to matter what as long as she had something to rant about. I was trying to come up with solutions. But every solution I came up with just made her madder until she screamed, “Paul, the Practical Man. Paul, Who Finds a Way.” Somehow, that caught her, and she started giggling at her own joke. “That's just who you are,” she said. “That's just who you are. You live in the real world; I have to live in my own imagination. That's who you are. Paul, the Practical Man.” The fight was over, it never came back, and that was her nickname for me from then on.
So there I was, Paul the Sweaty Runner with a Cup of Coffee in His Hand admiring Paul the Practical Man. She had found a new technique. Somehow, Paul the Practical Man seemed to float a couple of feet out from the rest of the painting, glowing. I was trying to figure out how she had done that when I noticed the title painted in a scroll across the bottom: “For Paul, Who Understands.” I looked at the face. It had a big s
mile, bigger than any I'd ever smiled, but it also had a tear. That was one of Marta's trademarks: contradiction. Every painting had to have two meanings, or it never made it out of her studio. I stepped closer. The background appeared dark from fifteen feet away, but up close I could see that there was much more. There was a cabin where we had spent our first weekend together. The beach where we spent our honeymoon. Or where I spent it; she spent it in a back room, lost in a watercolor that she got an idea for on the flight down, and just had to finish it, just had to or the idea would run away. There was more: There I was with a sledgehammer, smashing our first kitchen table. I had spent hours putting the damned thing together with the damned Ikea directions, and she burst into tears and said, “I hate it, I just hate it, I'm sorry, but I just hate it.” So I took a sledge that I was using to remodel the upstairs and smashed the thing that I hated building and she hated looking at. Didn't solve the problem, of course, but it sure felt good.
The painting had all of our history somewhere in the background, and that was Marta's other trademark—the one that killed her commercial appeal: She worked in careful layers, letting each layer dry so the backgrounds of her paintings had fantastic details. If you would spend an hour with anything of hers, you would spend two, and then three, and more, until you could follow the whole fantastic story she told with tiny brush strokes in giant paintings. But of course, if you just spent thirty seconds in a gallery, you walked away unimpressed with “that red thing” or “that blue thing.” I went downstairs to call work and tell them I'd be late. This one would take all morning. I made myself a Nutella sandwich to take upstairs and heard someone at the door.
I thought it was Marta, forgetting her keys again and sure I'd be there to let her in. I was going to tell her to get back on her bike for the rest of the morning while I finished adopting the new baby, but I saw Newton through the glass. Newton owned the gallery where Marta's work usually opened, and was the closest thing to an agent Marta had.
"Come on in, Newt,” I said. “You missed Marta. She's out on her bike again and she may be gone a long, long time."
Newton knew about Marta and her bike and didn't like it. Newton was all business and dealt with everything right now. Marta would disappear on her bike for hours and refuse to be interrupted by carrying a cell phone. Newton looked at me.
"Yeah, I know.” He pushed past me into the house. “Come on in and sit down, Paul.
"The police just left the gallery, Paul. They found Marta's bike on the bridge. It's been run over, and there's no sign of Marta. There's blood on the rail, too, but at this point, they're not sure if it's hers.” He took a breath. “I'm sorry. I didn't know any way to tell you but to just tell you. I didn't want you to hear it from the police. Or the radio.
"Maybe she's okay, Paul. The police are searching the area, and we can get down there and help. Maybe she's sitting in somebody's house right now, waiting for you."
"Maybe,” I said, starting to plan what to do. I knew the bridge, and it was a high one, so high that there was usually a suicide from it every couple of years. This is a pretty bike-friendly area, but the bridge had become a battleground between bikers and traffic. There was a footbridge half a mile away that bikers could use, if they walked their bikes across. Bikers asserted their right to the traffic bridge; some drivers, particularly some truckers, went out of their way to intimidate the bikers. There had been a couple of incidents in the last couple of years, one conviction of a driver, and one death from a hit-and-run that nobody saw.
"I know the river as well as anybody around here. I'm going to get my rafting clothes on and take a kayak down there,” I said.
Newton stopped me. “There's something we need to talk about first, Paul.” He took a breath. “You remember Jonathon Crowley? Worked in acrylics, did little pieces with odd shapes?"
I nodded. “Yes,” I said, and then, “No, that's not what happened."
Newton hesitated. “Probably not. But it's something you need to consider. Nobody loved their paintings more than Marta loved hers. She didn't care that much about the money or fame, but it tore her up that her paintings didn't find the homes she thought they deserved. Every time I had to move one of her paintings into storage, I knew I had a big fight coming, like I had just locked one of her kids in a closet and wasn't going to let him out.
"You know what happened with Crowley. Big success after he commit— . . . died. Off of the same bridge. Marta talked about it all the time, maybe he had done the right thing, that kind of talk. Another thing: You know how Marta likes to make a statement and how she loves that bike. This will get something done on that bridge, maybe bike lanes or barriers or something.
"I'm not saying she did anything overt. Maybe just a swerve before the sun came up.” He looked at me and shrugged. “Maybe not. You know, I don't know why I brought it up. I'm sure she's okay."
"You don't know Marta,” I said, though we both knew he knew Marta better than anyone but me. But he was wrong about this.
We'd left the door open. There was a man in jeans and a brown sport coat standing in the door.
"Excuse me, sir,” said the man. “I'm Detective Alswan. I take it you've been told what happened.” He glared at Newton.
"Yeah, but not details. Any sign of her in the river? She's a good swimmer. She can make it to shore."
"The rescue squad's down there, sir. We've got men going to every house in every neighborhood downstream.” He looked at both of us. “Sounded like you two were trying to get your stories straight when I walked in. Anything either one of you wants to say?"
Newton shook his head. “We're going to find her,” I said.
"No.” He stepped toward me. “We—the police—are going to find her. You and your pal are coming down to the center, separately, for questioning. I don't like what I heard, and I want to hear more."
"I'm going to the river. We'll talk later. You can talk to Marta, then, too."
"I'll ask her why she was on that bridge before dawn,” he said, pushing his nose almost into mine. “Like why she wasn't on the walkway instead of playing in traffic."
I looked at him a slow second and realized he was trying to make me lose my temper and do something stupid.
"The walkway's for pedestrians,” I said. “The bridge is for vehicles, including bikes. You need to read the law, and you need to enforce it. What about the driver? What did he say?"
He looked back with a long, emotionless stare. “No sign of him. Just a crunched-up bike found in the middle of the road, and some blood on the rail that we're testing now. And I will enforce the law."
"You should have traffic cameras. Marta may be able to help identify him, when we find her. Someone needs to pay for what's happening to bikers on that bridge. If you had done your job before, Marta would be standing here safe now."
Same dead-eyed stare. “We do our job, sir. Even if it means harassing truck drivers trying to earn an honest living while dodging big kids playing in the road."
"Enough of this crap. I'm getting my stuff and getting out on the river. Call me on my cell if you get anything. Or arrest me, if you think you can."
The detective started to say something, but Newton put his hand on his arm. “Detective, Mr. Beschloss owns the rafting franchise just below the bridge. He knows the river better than anyone around. If Marta's on the river, he'll find her."
Detective Alswan thought about that. “So you own the landing below the bridge? Convenient. Tell you what. I'll give you a choice. I know the river, too. I'll take your friend down to the center, change clothes, and meet you at the landing. You've got a two-man kayak there, right? I'll go with you, and we can talk while we look.” I hesitated and he continued. “Either that, or you come with me now."
"Deal,” I said. “Don't get in the way."
They left and I ran into the bedroom and pulled on waterproof pants and a Gore-Tex jacket. I'd get a kayak and a pack with food and water from the store while I was waiting on Alswan. On the way out I looked
at the new painting one more time.
There was something wrong. The cabin where we spent our first weekend was a small detail, something no one but me would notice. The gravel road leading to the cabin was just a few swipes of grey paint. But there was a bridge just before the cabin, and the bridge was missing. There was a gap where the bridge should be, a blue swatch where the water cut the road in two. It wasn't right. I stared at it. I got a light, and a magnifier. There was another layer behind the road, and the paint on the top layer was still wet. I picked up a can of turpentine and a rag and started carefully removing paint, as fast as I could without disturbing the lower layer. There was writing. After a few minutes, I could read it.
"If you come for me, they will hurt my children."
I knew then that we wouldn't find Marta, and I knew that she was right. We treat tragedy with admiration, failure with contempt. The paintings of a dead artist would get attention and find homes. The paintings of an artist who had faked her death, and been caught, would be laughed at. Marta's palette was still here from painting the road to the cabin. I picked it up, disguised the writing, and quickly painted the road back, adding the bridge.
Detective Alswan and I searched the river together for a week. I gave interviews, and demanded that the bridge be fixed. Marta's paintings got the attention they deserved.
Now I lecture and travel, or just travel. There is an obligation and a price in loving someone, and an obligation and a price in loving what they love. I will not search for Marta. But I will accept every offer to travel anywhere, anytime to lecture about her paintings. Perhaps, someday, when no one is watching, there will be a woman in the back of the room. She won't look like Marta, but I'll know her just the same. We'll smile but not speak. Perhaps, someday, we'll find a way. For now, I go to openings and say a few words about how much this painting or that painting meant to Marta. And when people stare in wonder at her paintings and say, “She lives on,” I smile and say, “Yes, she does."
EQMM, May 2011 Page 13