The Impressionist

by Tim Clinton

  10

  “It was in nineteen hundred fifty-four,” Jim Ed said looking up to the sky in another effort to recall the past. “And—” His Blackberry dinged again and he paused to pick it up. “Here, it’s for you,” he said. “Looks like it’s from Paige again.”

  I took the phone in my hand and silently read her text. “What friend? Words mean nothing to me anymore, Adam. I’ve lost trust.” I stared down at the phone and reread it, her words ripping my guts out. I didn’t even respond.

  “You look like you just bit into a rotten apple and found yourself a worm,” said Jim Ed.

  “Oh, I found a worm all right—me,” I said. As I uttered those words, a wave of self-loathing pounded me. “I totally blew it with her this morning. We had an argument and I cut her up pretty bad. It seems cutting people up is one of my gifts.”

  Jim Ed nodded his head indicating he was listening while never stopping the flow of painting.

  “Actually, we cut each other up,” I continued. “She’s pretty gifted too. Said she was sorry she married me…that she wants out.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Truthfully, Jim Ed, I don’t know what to believe.” I sighed deeply for about the tenth time that morning. “We’ve been drifting apart for a while now, but have been too busy to deal with it. We just go about our business, ignoring the elephant in the room. Now, suddenly, it’s like all hell is breaking loose and we’re being ripped apart at the seams. The situation with Josh isn’t helping matters either.”

  “That tends to happen when we let things build up over time—don’t deal with issues when they are just small, like pebbles in a stream. You keep piling them up one by one and eventually the flow of water is cut off.”

  “Paige and I used to be best friends, Jim Ed. I mean best friends. We did everything together. These days it’s more like we’re two irritated roommates, invading each other’s space, stepping on one another’s toes. She’s annoyed with me all the time, and she’s built these walls around herself, determined to keep me out. She checks out on me. Drives me crazy! It’s like I’m talking to a blank wall most of the time. She never listens to me or opens up anymore.”

  “Why would she?” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Pardon me?” I asked, again startled by Jim Ed’s bluntness.

  “Maybe her checking out is a way of protecting herself? I mean, why would she open up to you if everything you’ve been saying about yourself is true? How can she trust someone who’s cheated on her time and time again?”

  “Now wait just a doggone minute! We may not have the happiest marriage right now, but I have never cheated on her! Never!”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure! I think that’s something I’d remember. Look, I may not like myself, but I love my wife!”

  “Did you know, Adam, there are adulteries of the heart? She trusted you emotionally, and you dishonored that trust. She gave you her heart and needed to feel significant, but instead felt betrayed. Your wife has put up walls and doesn’t open up to you anymore because you have crushed her spirit. After being wounded time and time again, she doesn’t feel safe around you any longer. Nobody in their right mind will continue to allow themselves to be hurt over and over again like that. It’s only natural that she would put up walls.”

  “You talk like everything’s my fault,” I declared. “She’s got issues too! She can be vicious!”

  “You ever saw a caged possum?” asked Jim Ed.

  “What?”

  “Have you ever seen a caged possum?”

  “Only in the movies,” I replied with an edge.

  “They’re sweet little things until they’re backed into a corner and feel threatened.” Jim Ed formed his fingers into a claw. “That’s when the fangs come out.”

  “Well the fangs are definitely out!”

  Jim Ed stopped painting yet again and that familiar sternness came upon him. “I’m absolutely aware that it’s not all your fault,” he said. “But right now we’re talking about you, aren’t we? What’s done is done. There’s no changing it. It’s in the past. If there’s any hope of healing your relationship, it’s got to start with you.”

  The old man’s words were penetrating. This time I understood all too well what he was saying.

  “If you want your wife to start opening up to you again, you have to start creating a safe place for her and begin valuing her. Give her your time and attention. You’ve got to prize her. You understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded.

  “Outside of His own Son, that woman is God’s greatest gift to you,” he continued. “That is a fact. Your most valuable asset. You want her to feel like the safest place emotionally in the whole world is with you. You gotta make her feel it. To do that you have to start seeing her as God sees her— with priceless value—like God sees you. Over time, when her spirit senses that you truly cherish and value her, she’ll start to feel safe again. But it’s going take some time. You can’t fix in a weekend what took years to break. Then she’s got a free will of her own.”

  “It may be too late,” I said feeling sick to my stomach.

  “I know this is a ridiculous question to ask, but do you really love Paige?”

  “Of course I do. That’s not an issue.”

  “I mean love her enough to do whatever it takes?”

  “Jim Ed, I’m terrified. I can’t imagine my life without her.”

  “Then you are going to have to fight, but not like in the past. You have to change your tactics. Everything your flesh screams at you to do, you gotta do the opposite.”

  “Huh?”

  “You have to give up control,” said Jim Ed. “Stop trying to control her. Let her go. If you love her, you honor her wishes. Even if that means she walks away. She’s free. The more you try to control, the more it drives her away.”

  I swallowed hard and my legs jiggled up and down nervously.

  “After you change your eyes, your heart has to change— get the heart of a warrior. Paige needs to change the way she sees you too. She needs to see the warrior in you—the David in you. If she does, she’ll maybe begin to feel safe with you again.”

  “I want to be that guy, Jim Ed,” I said.

  “One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in First Samuel chapter 22. Let me read it to you.” He picked up the old, faded Bible again, skimmed through the pages, stopped, and started reading. “David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them.” Chew on that. David was a mighty warrior and he was a refuge for hurting people. They felt safe with him, and therefore they let him lead. When Paige feels safe with you, she’ll let you lead too.”

  “Just like you,” I said. “You’ve created a safe place for me right here. Maybe you were sent.”

  “Just exercising my gift.”

  “How do you have so much insight?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say I’ve been around the block a few times in my day.”

  As Jim Ed was placing his Bible back on the cart, a black and white photograph slipped out from the pages and fell to the ground.

  “Is that a picture of you and Christina?” I asked as he bent over to pick it up.

  “Our wedding day,” he said handing it to me.

  “Wow,” I said, slowly examining the photograph. “She was stunning.” Christina was in her wedding dress, her hair twisted above her head, soft and elegant with a much thinner Jim Ed standing tall and proud by her side in a black tuxedo, a grin bigger than the one on Eric’s face when he showed me his pix earlier that day in the store. “I’m sure she still is,” I added. “You look as handsome now as you did then. More distinguished now.”

  “Thank you. Yes, she was beautiful.”

  “Hey, that reminds me,” I said handing the old photo back to him. “You’re not off the hook. I still want to hear
all about her.”

  “All right,” he replied. “But remember, you asked for it.”

  11

  It was 1954 and Jim Ed was home on leave in Pine Grove, Mississippi. He and two of his Army buddies, Willie Taylor and Bo Harris, were all decked out in their uniforms strutting around downtown like they were really something. After downing a bottle of RC Cola in nearly one gulp, Jim Ed looked up—stunned at what he saw across the street.

  “Hey man, you see what I see?” he said, wiping his mouth with his forearm.

  “I sure do!” said Willie. Bo simply nodded in agreement; he was the quiet one.

  “You ever seen anything so fine?” asked Jim Ed. “Where’ d she come from?”

  “You got me,” said Willie. “Never sees her around here before.”

  “How’ d we miss that?” Bo spoke up.

  “I don’t know,” said Jim Ed, “but I gotta meets her.”

  “Now you know she be way too much woman for you, man,” laughed Willie while slapping Jim Ed on the back.

  “You think so? You juss watch me and see.”

  Without saying another word or checking for cars, Jim Ed shot across the street to make his debut. About the same time, an old rusty green and tan ’ Studebaker truck rounded the corner. It didn’t run into Jim Ed, Jim Ed ran into it! The crash knocked him backward onto the street with a hard thud. Thankfully he didn’t hit his head, as the truck was just creeping along. The impact did more damage to his ego than his body. He wasn’t knocked unconscious, but was shaken up a bit. His uniform got torn from sliding along the asphalt, one elbow was scuffed and bleeding. Though it cost him a few bumps and bruises, all in all, Jim Ed figured it was worth the price. He couldn’t have planned a better meeting with Christina.

  Laying on the street, Jim Ed had closed his eyes waiting for the dizziness to stop; and when he opened them, Christina was looking straight down on him with eyes filled with kindness and concern— eyes that were a shade of gold that seemed to blaze against the richness of her smooth, brown skin—the color of coffee with a bit of cream. She was tall and slender, wearing a yellow cotton sundress. Others had gathered around as well, Bo, Willie, and a couple of bystanders, but all Jim Ed could focus on was Christina. And for the first time in his life, he was real glad to be a black man.

  “You poor thing, that was terrible,” said Christina. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Ah, it’s nothing,” said Jim Ed, brushing dirt off his shirt and pants as Bo and Willie helped him up. She fished a handkerchief from her purse and handed it to him. “I’ve had closer calls than that in the army” he said dabbing his elbow. “I’m just a little shaken up is all.”

  “What was you thinking shooting off across the street like that?” teased Willie. “Now I know you is crazy. Done made it home from Korea only to be run over by a truck!”

  “I was running across the street to meet her,” Jim Ed said cracking a silly grin while holding out his hand toward Christina. “Hi, I’m James Edward Porter, friends call me Jim Ed.”

  At first she was reserved, didn’t quite know how to take him, but then lifted her hand in return. “Hello, I’m Christina Kenyon, nice to meet you, Jim Ed. You know you are blessed to be alive?”

  “I reckon so,” he said. When their eyes met something magical happened. It made Jim Ed queasy in his stomach and no other girl had ever done that to him before. “I know you don’t know me,” he said, “but would you minds if I walked you home?”

  Her lips forming into a tender curve, she planted her hands on her hips and sassed back. “Now how could I possibly say no to someone who almost died to meet me? And the word is ‘mind’ not ‘minds’.”

  “Yes ma’am!” said Jim Ed, trying his best to stay calm on the outside when his heart was doing flips on the inside.

  “We have to go to Woolworth’s first to pick up a few things for my Papa and Mama. Okay?”

  “Whatever you say,” said Jim Ed looking over at Bo and Willie and giving them a wink. “Sees, I mean, ‘see’ you guys later.”

  “I hears ya,” said Willie, slapping him on the back. “I hears ya.”

  From the first moment Christina and Jim Ed began walking down that road, they both knew something was up. There was an ease between them, like they were meant to be. And they kept on walking together day after day, until a year and a half later, shortly after Jim Ed was honorably discharged from the Army, they were married.

  Jim Ed stopped painting for a moment and looked up at me. “Well, that’s how we met.” He became silent and an air of sadness fell upon him. The ends of his mouth turned down. “Would have been together sixty years come December,” he said, hoarseness creeping into his throat.

  I frowned back knowing what he was going to say next, feeling crappy that I’d pushed him to talk about her.

  “Christina passed on last year.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear that,” I said, my heart sinking. “Real sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. That cancer eventually got the best of her. Fought hard till the very end.” His eyes became watery and he coughed to clear his throat.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” I said.

  “Now how about you tell me about your Paige. How did ya’ll meet?”

  I paused, considering whether or not to respond, then closed my eyes and reached twenty-something years in my past. “The first time I really saw Paige was late in my junior year of high school,” I said, “it only took one look and I was smitten. I’d seen her before, but this time I really saw her, if you know what I mean. It was like a veil lifted from my face and I could see clearly.”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” said Jim Ed.

  “Paige was a year and a half younger than me and literally blossomed over the summer. Before then, I had never paid much attention to her. On that day, however, when she came sashaying down the north hall of our school and our eyes met for the first time that year, like I said, I really saw her. After that there was no one else, period. She was the one.” I tilted my head back and laughed.

  “You’re gonna love this, Jim Ed. At the time, I was a big jock on campus, and she was on the dance team that performed with the band at halftimes of the football games. In the huddle on the field during a game while the quarterback was trying to call the plays, I’d be gazing up in the stands watching her. Paige always had that kind of effect on me.”

  “Sounds like a special gal,” said Jim Ed smiling.

  “The night of the prom was quite an event. It was pouring down rain, and I was driving my  Chevy Nova Sport to pick up Paige when I took a curve just a little too fast, sending my car sliding through a ditch and into someone’s chain-link fence, eventually spinning to a stop in the front yard. No one was home and I was off the road, so undeterred from my goal, I wrote a note, stuck it in the window and left the car in the person’s front yard, then hitchhiked in the downpour to Paige’s house. You could imagine Paige’s face when I showed up at her front door soaking wet. Her father, bless his heart, let us borrow his station wagon to go to the dance. Later that night when Paige dropped me off at home, a cop and my dad were having coffee! My car had been impounded, and I got a ticket for leaving the scene of an accident. Dad was not a happy man, but for Paige, it was well worth it.

  For the next year we were inseparable until I graduated and received a football scholarship out of town. The separation was hard. Paige cried because she was sure I would meet someone else and forget her, but like I said, she was the one. As fate would have it, a year later she enrolled in the same college. We were married my junior year. When I blew out my knee, ending my career and dashing my pro-football dreams, it was Paige who kept me going. In fact, she’s kept me going many times through the years.”

  “Sounds like you need to see her again, with fresh eyes,” said Jim Ed.

  “Yep.”

  12

  After the first day they met, Christina and Jim Ed saw each other almost every day for the next two weeks until
he was shipped back overseas. For nearly a year the romance continued via letters. And the letters got spicy at times. They wrote about more than just their enduring love for one another, however. Christina kept Jim Ed up to date on family and happenings around Pine Grove. They shared their dreams and frustrations and wrote often about their racial struggles.

  Discrimination was becoming more and more pronounced at home as well as in the military. The more injustice Jim Ed saw in the army, the more bitter he became, until he was eaten alive, filled with hate for the world, for the white man, for the government, and for himself. It amazed him how he could put his life on the line for his country in the war, see so many of his brothers get shot up and blown to bits, yet he couldn’t exercise the very freedoms he’ d just fought for. To cope, he’ d spill out his anger to Christina in his letters, oftentimes ranting on God. Yet, no matter how great the injustice, Christina always responded in love, her letters written in nearly perfect calligraphy.

  September 27, 1954

  Dearest Jim Ed,

  I received your letter last night and was anxious to respond. I’m sorry to hear of your homesickness and of the discrimination you are dealing with. I know it must be a terribly difficult time for you, as it is for all of us. I’m speaking of the discrimination, not the war. I can’t imagine how hard that must be on you. If it’s any comfort, there are many people here in Pine Grove who love you dearly and miss you greatly, me being the foremost, though I’m sure your Mama would put up a good fight.

  I miss you so very much and long for the day of your return. To overcome the void your absence has created, I have filled my nights with study. It helps the time to pass quicker and takes my mind off of missing you.

  About our struggle as a people that you wrote about, I want to encourage you to hold on and stand strong in the midst of injustice. It was our brother Fredrick Douglas who said, “One and God make a majority…The soul that is within me no man can degrade…Without a struggle, there can be no progress.” Sojourner Truth said, “Truth burns up error.” I believe that God is on our side, Jim Ed, and truth will one day burn up error.