“Holy …,” she managed to say.
William, the least philosophical and imaginative of the three, was equally bedazzled. This little girl he had barely acknowledged or given any thought to, who had by her arrival thrown a wrench into his afternoon activities, had somehow created something that timid little girls shouldn’t be able to create. The style and the way she brought it to life didn’t just overshadow what he had contributed to the Everything Wall earlier, it practically destroyed it. It wasn’t fair. And yet it almost seemed like the Horse was looking at him, staring him down, mocking his effort. Regardless of who had drawn it, the Horse was definitely cool. Cooler than it should be. William couldn’t deny that. Dangerous, too. He should have drawn it. That should be William’s Horse. But it wasn’t. Danielle had brought it into this kitchen, into this world. It taunted him.
“Shit,” he managed to say, his voice quiet, full of wonder and envy. Normally that would have earned him a slap on his ten-year-old shoulder from Shelley, but it was unlikely she even heard it.
The three of them did not notice the gradual slowing of Danielle’s hand and the return to normal of Danielle’s countenance. With a few final touches added to the Horse’s tail and right hoof, she put the chalk down. She was finished. She looked it over one last time, visibly pleased at what she had created. Smiling, she got to her feet, gathered up all the pieces of chalk, and neatly presented them to Shelley with a grateful nod. The older girl put her hand out to accept them, not really conscious of what she was doing.
“Thank you,” said the little girl, smiling again. She gathered up her still-damp coat, put it on, and walked across the rooms to her equally damp boots and put them on too. Then she turned and opened the door to the outside, far cheerier than the level of moisture in her clothing warranted.
“Wait …,” whispered Ralph.
Danielle stopped and turned around.
“How … how did you do that?”
Danielle looked again at the Horse, her interest obviously fading. “I dunno.” Then, almost as an afterthought, she nodded towards the image on the Wall. “Ask him,” she answered, with complete sincerity. Then, just as suddenly as she had arrived, Danielle Gaadaw was out the door.
William was the first to break the silence that permeated the kitchen after the little girl’s departure. “I’m not going to win the prize, am I?”
Both Shelley and Ralph slowly shook their heads in agreement.
ALMOST TWO HOURS later, the trio were still admiring Danielle’s contribution to the Everything Wall. Used plates, cups, and empty pop cans littered the floor and table, evidence that a few of their baser instincts had kicked in. All three were still in awe of the Horse.
“It’s almost like it’s alive,” said William.
“Where’d she learn how to do that?” asked Shelley.
“Not from our art teacher,” added Ralph.
More silence followed.
“What do you think Mom will say when she sees this?”
Ralph thought for a moment. “She will love it. How could she not? She’ll want to frame it.”
William leaned forward from his seat on the floor to the right of the chalk drawing and hesitantly reached out, touching the tail of the creature. The action instantly caused cries of concern from the other two. His index finger left a small smear of dark brown chalk leading away from the Horse. “I’m sorry. I just had to touch it. Make sure … something.”
Instantly, Shelley was trying to repair the smudge. “Make sure what?!”
“Make sure it was real,” answered Ralph for William.
“Yeah,” the other boy acknowledged.
“Well,” said Shelley protectively, “it’s real.”
Some twenty minutes later, Liz Thomas came home, car laden with groceries. Time, as it usually did, had foiled her original plans. The scalloped potatoes she had made earlier were still in the refrigerator, waiting to be popped in the oven. But coffee with Janine Magneen had eaten up more time than expected, and the restocking of the pantry for her husband’s return had consumed what precious few minutes were left. Impatiently, she honked the car horn twice, inviting her children to assist her in transporting the food from her vehicle to the kitchen counter. She knew from long experience that after that, she was on her own in distributing the staples and produce to their proper locations. She honked a third and final time, and Ralph and Shelley, along with William, came out of the house to help her. But something was wrong. Liz could see that. They weren’t running down the stairs and to the car with excitement. And Shelley and William weren’t fighting. William wasn’t wrestling with Ralph. Instead, they seemed quite placid, almost reflective. Instantly, Liz hoped this wasn’t a portent of something horrible.
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
Shelley answered for them all. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Hurry up. You gotta see this!” Each grabbed a bag of groceries and entered the house, quickly but orderly. All three stopped inside the doorway, patiently waiting for Liz to follow. This was unnatural. “You’re scaring me,” said Liz, locking up the car.
“Hurry,” said Ralph.
“Yeah, hurry,” added William with an eager nod.
Liz entered her house, puzzled and concerned. Still silent, all three kids put their grocery bags on the table, then stepped back, once again looking at the Wall, hidden from Liz’s view by the refrigerator.
Expecting a hole, or maybe a dead squirrel — it had happened before — Liz joined the children and met the Horse. She, too, said nothing as she gazed at what was on her Everything Wall. Immediately struck, bewildered by the image and by the ability and talent of the person who’d drawn it, Liz struggled to process the figure now located on her kitchen wall. She was uncomfortable. Frightened? She realized that the ice cream in one of the bags across the table was melting, but at this point it seemed an unimportant issue.
“Who did this? William?”
For a brief second, William’s innate nature almost made him claim ownership, but he knew it was a claim impossible for anybody to believe, including himself. He was already learning that reality frequently has a way of keeping people honest. “No. Not me.”
“Shelley? Ralph?”
“No,” replied Shelley.
“No,” replied Ralph.
“Then who?”
“Danielle Gaadaw.” Shelley spoke the name of the little girl she was coming to think of as an artist.
It took a moment for Liz to process her daughter’s statement of fact. “Albert and Hazel’s daughter? I haven’t seen her in ages. She did this?”
Ralph nodded. “I watched her do some of it.”
The girl definitely had talent, the mother thought. “What did she say? I mean, did she say anything about it?”
William answered. “No. She doesn’t talk a lot.”
“Yeah. Just said, ‘Thank you,’ then she pretty much left.” Ralph felt they should have thanked her instead.
“She’s really weird,” added William.
“This is quite an achievement for sure.” Liz walked around the children, looking at the Horse from a different angle. “Do any of you know her much? Do you play with her?”
Shelley shook her head. “She’s three grades below me and one below Ralph and William. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her play with anybody.”
Liz now knelt down, just a few inches away from the image. “Wow.”
Ralph agreed. “Yeah. Wow.”
“Do you know her?” asked Shelley.
Liz shook her head. “Not really. I see her walking around the village sometimes and think to myself, what a poor little girl. She always looks so small and cold. Even in summer. I always meant to ask somebody about her, but I always seemed to forget. I knew her father a bit. He dug our septic tank.”
“And what about her mother? Hazel, right?”
For
the first time since entering, Liz took her eyes off the chalk drawing and looked at her daughter. “That is a sad story. Poor Hazel. She really did love Albert. So sad.”
Shelley and Ralph looked at each other, not quite understanding.
Ralph expressed their confusion. “What do you mean?”
With barely a shrug of her shoulders, Liz tried to explain the impact tragedy can have on a person. “When somebody you know and love is suddenly gone, sometimes it can leave a vacuum. And sometimes what rushes in to fill that vacuum is not necessarily a good thing. Hazel looked for comfort in some pretty bad places.”
“My father always told me to stay away from their house. Says they’re bad people. Crazy, even. A lot of drinking, he says.” As always, William was nonchalant in relaying his father’s opinions.
“Yeah, William, I heard that too. I’m surprised nobody’s looked into their lives by now, I mean about Danielle’s welfare.”
“It can’t be all that bad. Look what she can do.”
“Yes, William, I am looking at what she can do. I wonder where” — Liz gestured to the Horse — “where this came from.”
It was the dripping of melted ice cream on the floor that managed to drag Shelley back into the world of Thomas kitchen reality. “Mom! The ice cream!” Straightening up with a groan, Liz got a cloth from the sink while Shelley attacked the lost dessert. Ralph and William, barely tearing their attention away from the Everything Wall, put the rest of the groceries away, surprising Liz. This was a monumental day in more ways than one.
Once the disaster was dealt with, Liz looked over her shoulder at the Horse. “Well, gang, I guess we have a winner for this week. It is sure gonna be hard to top that. Does everybody agree? Danielle gets the prize?”
They all nodded, including a rather glum William.
Liz opened the refrigerator a foot before pausing. “It’s sure going to be a shame to wash that away. It’ll bring me to tears for sure.”
Ralph looked at his mother. “There’s no reason we have to.” They all glanced at him. “I say we leave it up. I got no problem with that. There’ll be lots of room left to draw. Shelley, William, Mom? What do you say?”
“That’s a nice thought, Ralph, but I’d hate to play favourites with all the kids participating, even you three, by favouring one kid’s drawing over another. It wouldn’t be right.”
In the silence that followed, Liz suddenly thought to herself, Those scalloped potatoes should have been in the oven twenty minutes ago. She looked at the drawing one more time. “It definitely is worth saving. You guys sure?”
One by one, they nodded their agreement with varying levels of enthusiasm.
“I wonder what she’ll draw next?” pondered Shelley.
“That,” admitted Liz, “is a very good question.”
THE LIBRARY WAS attached to the school the three kids attended, though it was kept as a separate institution. Usually, it was only open for ninety minutes after the school closed during the week, but it was hosting a meeting today — something to do with government attempts at increasing literacy rates in First Nation communities — so Ralph, Shelley and William raced along the frozen roads as fast as they could, knowing time was growing short. The library would be open but not for long.
“Why are we going there again?” asked William.
“You know why. But in case your sad little brain can’t figure it out, Ralph, tell It why.”
Once again forced to be the mediator, Ralph took a deep breath, partly because of the cardio experience resulting from the half-kilometre power walk and partly because of familial weariness. Sometimes being the bumper nation between two warring parties can be draining.
“Uh …”
Looking up to the sky in a uniquely teenage combination of frustration and annoyance, Shelley practically growled at the two younger boys. “Oh for — Boys. It’s absolutely amazing how you guys make thirty cents on the dollar more than we do.” As usual, both boys had no idea what Shelley was talking about. Unlike her, they did not, on occasion, watch the evening news with Tye and Liz.
Struggling to keep up with the girl’s longer legs, the stocky William shouted at her, “I don’t understand!”
Under normal circumstances, William’s statement would have been a prime opportunity for the girl to further eviscerate her brother’s best buddy. But even Shelley, despite her contempt for William, felt that under the circumstances it would be too easy. Besides, they were in a hurry.
“I just wanna see if maybe we can find a picture of that Horse somewhere. Maybe in one of those books. That was so amazing, maybe she copied it from something.”
William looked to Ralph, sharing the same unspoken thought. Actually, that was kind of smart. But neither dared to speak it aloud.
CHAPTER FIVE
TYE’S RETURN TO the bliss of his domestic life was a little different this time. Usually the kids would welcome him back with hugs and kisses. Presents, if any, would be handed out, and of course there would be a kiss from Liz with hints of more passion to follow. But this time, when Tye drove up the long driveway in his truck, there was a different feel to the house. Physicists say the universe vibrates at a certain recognizable resonance, and so, like all families, did the Thomas family. But for some reason, as the man exited the cab of his pickup, he could sense a different rhythm emanating from his home.
Entering, he smelled the welcoming aroma of the pork chops and scalloped potatoes he treasured, but even those, he would later argue, had a different taste to them that evening.
“Aaniin!” he announced, entering the kitchen. Usually the family could see and hear his vehicle pulling into the driveway, followed by the driver’s door slamming shut and the screen door opening. Today, however, everybody seemed to be running on a lower setting. There was Liz, manning the kitchen like a pro, smiling at the sight of her husband. Frequently they would take turns with the cooking, but it was their custom for her to go all-out on his return.
“Welcome home, my sweet.”
Off came his jacket, and Tye leaned over the counter to give his wife a polite but welcome kiss. Normally she would have come around the counter and given him something more appropriate to his being away for three weeks, but her hands were deep inside oven mitts. The scalloped potatoes required her attention, as they can be a harsh mistress to those who are not familiar with their secrets.
Standing a full six feet, Tye still looked as fit as he had when he’d played hockey a few decades back, despite the hours spent behind the wheel of his eighteen-wheeler. He tried to work out when he could on the road, but the anonymous motels he usually found refuge in seldom offered decent athletic facilities. Still, somewhere in his ancestry there was an individual who was thin despite all the moose and fish he ate, and somehow that gene had ended up in Tye’s DNA.
Tye surveyed his domestic kingdom, looking for problems, or some new purchase his wife had made, or clues to some adventure she had embarked on. Returning home was frequently an act of gambling. So far nothing nearly as tragic or dangerous as that Greek guy who spent ten years trying to get home. But frequently, what awaited him on his return was uncomfortably surprising.
“Hey, honey. Is everything all right?” Despite spending three-quarters of his time on the roads of North America, the man still swam through the ocean of the English language with a fairly strong Otter Lake accent.
“Yes. Why?”
He looked around the kitchen. “I don’t know. Something feels off. Usually the potatoes are done. Are you just taking them out? And where are the kids? Are they hiding?”
Opening the oven door, Liz Thomas did her best to briefly explain the current situation. “Well, Tye, it’s been an interesting afternoon.” She closed the oven door, a steaming tray of potatoes and other carbs held in her oven-mitted hands, and navigated her way around the kitchen island to her husband.
Inst
antly, Tye narrowed his eyes, suspicion making them squint. “What did you do?”
Smiling, she embraced her husband after putting the tray down. “I did nothing.”
“My nothing or your nothing?” Though still guarded, Tye returned her hug, relishing the feel of her warm body in his arms. Though not overtly sexual — that would come later — the warmth of her body, the chemistry of their scents, forgave a lot of misadventures. When Tye held Liz in his arms, spooned with her in bed, and held her hand in the movie theatre even after sixteen years, he could forgive her anything short of a homicidal rampage in the local Tim Hortons.
The hug held comfortably for a time, then, without saying a word, Liz took a step back and turned Tye around to face the Everything Wall. Hidden by the refrigerator, he had missed it when he’d walked in. “What the hell?”
Liz watched her husband’s eyes take in the Horse.
“I call it the Everything Wall. I came up with the idea last week. You know how parents are always punishing kids for drawing on walls and things like that. I thought, why do we do that? I mean, kids should have the right to draw where they want, right? So this is where they had to tear out a part of the wall to get at the water pipes last spring when the leak happened. And we had never gotten around to fixing it proper and painting it to match. So I painted it black and told the kids they could go nuts there, you know, hoping to encourage their artistic selves. It was a hard sell. Harder than I expected, ’cause you know kids today. William took to it instantly, but the others had to be coaxed. But, of course, the real amazing thing, that one, the Horse, was done by Danielle Gaadaw. Remember her? Albert and Hazel’s daughter. Poor thing. I wasn’t here, but she just showed up this afternoon and did that. Have you ever seen anything like it? It just took our breaths away. That’s kinda why everything is late. We sort of lost track of time, looking at it, talking about it. Sorry, my sweetie. The kids should be back any moment. Actually, they should have been back about half an hour ago. They went to the school library to find books on horses. Hey, did you hear, the reserve may be getting the internet? Anyway, there’s some sort of meeting happening tonight, so it’s open. Well, that’s sort of been what we’ve been talking about today. What do you think?”
Chasing Painted Horses Page 7