Samuel blinked. The next few seconds became forever etched in his mind; nightmare haunted his nights and invaded his days, sometimes at the most inopportune moments. The saber came down at an angle, hacking the objecting painter' neck. A quick thunder of hooves and naught remained but a broken easel and near headless artist. The final work of "the finest painter ever to leave Iberia" lay on a hillside, a dripping, crimson waterfall.
January 15th, 1635
A shivering Samuel said to his bride, "I told you I was troubled by bad memories and worse dreams. Well, in this dream the cavalryman doesn't ride over the crest of the hill. He rides across the canvas, growing in size as he comes. Then he leaps out of the painting to hack Rodrigo down and trample him into the sod."
"Safwyl, darlin', it's just a dream."
"It's one of three. And I thought I was through with this one," Samuel said. "When they come, they don't change. They are exactly the same every time."
Samuel's pause lingered. When it was clear he was through talking, his wife realized she needed to change the topic of conversation. "What did you do after Rodrigo was killed?"
"With Rodrigo gone, the captain gave me an arbalest and handed me over to a sergeant with the words, 'Look after the lad. I want him to do a painting for my mother.'
"I'd left everything on the hillside. I wasn't about to go back to salvage anything. So I had to make paints and brushes and an easel, and stretch a canvas all from scratch. The captain died in the next battle before I could even begin to get started. The sergeant found us another captain and then another after that and then, I thank God every day, we were beaten by Grantville and they put me on a harvesting crew. There were wonders and impossibilities everywhere. Everytime I turned around, my crew was insisting on knowing the English words for something else." Samuel laughed. "As if simply knowing the right sounds would grant comprehension."
Melle smiled and rolled her eyes at the familiar topic. The benefits of having a smart man made up for the occasional repeat lecture.
Oblivious in the dark to his bride's exasperation, he continued. "Remember the second time they had a TV broadcast? They showed Fantasia. The audience reaction was . . ."
His wife nuzzled his ear and her hand went south. Samuel's thoughts followed her hand and shortly there was no room in his head to contemplate dreams, the past, or philosophical conundrums. When they finished she snuggled down tight and dozed off to sleep. Samuel's mind returned to where he had left off with the night four years ago when he first saw a Disney animation.
Grantville, 1631
Along with the ones already in various classrooms as part of the in-house broadcasting system, there were half a dozen more TVs scattered around the high school cafeteria for anyone who did not have access to one elsewhere. All the plastic chairs were in use and still more people were standing behind the chairs. Sam Franklin was seated with most of the members of his harvesting crew. Since he spoke English well, the powers that be had made Sam a gang boss. To avoid the conflict of older people resenting an eighteen-year-old kid telling them what to do, they gave Sam a crew his own age or younger. When it came to harvesting, he didn't know what to do or how to do it. He was raised a landlord's son, not a farmer. His family's holdings were just on the wrong side of the Welsh border, (which is why his father called him Samuel and his mother, Safwyl.) But he had plenty of farm kids on the crew. So, what he didn't know didn't matter, as long as he was willing to pitch in and help them get it done. It worked. They were a good crew.
On screen, Becky finished the news and said, "Next I am told we have a special treat tonight. The name of tonight's movie is Fantasia. It is a Walt Disney animation. I have not seen it yet, so we will see it together."
Sam watched the screen. Suddenly he leaned forward in his seat. His body froze. His mouth opened slightly. His eyes grew larger as he realized what he was seeing was clearly a painting and the painting had come alive; the painting was moving. His first thoughts harkened to the nightmare where the horseman rode across the painting on Rodrigo's easel and then out of the frame to hack the Spaniard down and trample him under the horse's hooves. But he knew how Rodrigo died. Rodrigo was killed in a perfectly ordinary way by a perfectly ordinary cavalryman. That was a horror. The other was only a nightmare. There was no way this could possibly leave the TV screen.
He watched enthralled through "Toccata and Fugue" then through "The Nutcracker," all the while wondering how it was done.
Somehow the machines could make a painting come alive and move. Why was that so much harder to believe than the moving picture of the first broadcast? But it was. Those were ordinary men staging an ordinary play out of doors and having it saved by a special machine called a camera, to be played out later. Yet somehow, while the movie actors seemed miraculous, this was different. This was a contradiction of what it meant to be a painting. It was what every painter wanted and could never do, capture life as it is.
Samuel Franklin had not touched a paintbrush since the day his master became a bloody mess trampled into the sod. Any thought of painting was drowned out in the fears and demands of the harrowing life he found himself living. After some time and much thought and contemplation, Samuel understood where the dreams were coming from. Rodrigo had been killed by his painting. The man had been so absorbed in his work he failed to notice what was going on around him until it was too late. Realizing this helped. But it did not completely lay the nightmares to rest.
For four years he had not painted. His days were full of things best forgotten. His nights were full of horrors; of a cavalryman stamping Rodrigo into the sod, of death on a pale horse followed by hell, loose upon the earth and, worst of all, the dream of being in the line of battle and looking down to see his right hand being blown away. Oddly there was no pain and no blood, in the dream. He knew he would not bleed to death, yet he knew he would never paint again. And while Samuel had no time to paint, the fear of never painting again was nearly paralyzing.
His time as a mercenary was a different world than the one he grew up in, or the one he lived in Grantville. It had been a world of extremes: of violence, and stress, of hunger, and gluttony, of drunkenness, exhaustion, boredom, and fear, of cruelty, of trying to fit in, of trying to stay alive and whole, of monstrous things seen and monstrous things done.
But, now, seeing a painting of a mouse carrying buckets of water move as if it was alive, Samuel's hand twitched as if to stroke a brush on a canvas. He wanted to paint the moving picture. He had to paint moving pictures. He would sell his soul if he had to, to paint pictures that moved.
****
In the TV studio the phone used for the call-in part of the evening's programming started ringing off the hook. The callers were all asking some variation of the same question. "How is it done?" A boy on the crew said, "Janet, when the movie is over, I think we'd better explain about animation and how it works."
Janet, the television teacher, handed him a pass key. "Go to the art room. I need a dozen pieces of card stock. If you can't find it quickly get a half dozen. Oh, never mind." She took the key back, then she opened a file cabinet and took out several files dumping the contents onto a table. "Anyone got a felt tip? Never mind. Here's one."
She slapped down a quarter and quickly traced it on the edge of the top folder. Shifting the manila folder over slightly exposed the next one down for another quick tracing, but this time the quarter was positioned lower. By the time Janet reached the bottom of the page she had the entire stack fanned out like a deck of cards. The spacing wasn't quite regular, part way down she realized she was going to run out of room and had to scrunch the outlines tighter towards the bottom. Janet chewed her lip and glared at her slightly wobbly circles then shrugged and swept them up into a neat stack. She showed it to the boy, flipping through the folders. "Hold it here and flip through the pages like this. It's a little awkward, try it." She shoved it in his hands. He flipped through it. "Good. Now get in front of the camera and tell me what you are going to tell the
m."
"And, three, two, one—" She pointed at him, but the light was off showing that the camera was not live.
"Good evening. Some people have asked how the previous show was done."
He held up the improvised flip book and the camera closed in on the picture of the ball. "As you can see this is a simple picture of a ball." Turning to the next page he showed the next ball a little lower and then he showed the page after that. "Now if you flip the pages quickly," he said, making his words fact as he spoke them, "you can watch the ball falling down." Next he grabbed it from the back, let it flip forward and the ball seemed to stutter as it rose. "So you see," he paused, "it is a simple mechanical effect."
"Okay. You're on as soon as the show is over."
****
Enthralled, Samuel sat on the edge of his chair, a man obsessed. When he first saw photographs, he had been very interested in the technique for painting pictures with such very fine details. But this was different! He had to learn to paint moving pictures. He had seen something called watercolor kits with paintbrushes and paints in one of the stores in town. It would be so much faster than making paints and brushes. Tomorrow he would take some of his savings and buy a set. Satisfied with his new plan, he carefully put it aside so he wouldn't miss a moment of the remaining movie.
****
Three days later, Samuel ground his brush into the ruined work on the table, loudly growling an obscene and blasphemous oath in Welsh. He picked his beer up, turned the bottom of the mug to the ceiling and slammed the mug down. His behavior drew annoyed attention from all over the tavern. Most especially from a French lass from Brittany whose native language closely resembled his own. The first time she took his order, Samuel had asked, "Where in Wales are you from?" After the affronted correction of her native land they had often talked, enjoying the rare chance to speak their mother tongues.
She called out in her native patois, "Safwyl, this may be Grantville, mister, but for decency's sake, watch your mouth. And for politeness sake, speak English or at least German. I know you have both." She didn't miss the irony—or even the hypocrisy—of her using Gaelic to tell him to be polite and speak German and it caused him to chuckle.
"Sorry, Melle," Samuel replied in English. "These f—" He started to use an obscenity and stopped himself. "paints won't stay where they're put." An ancient man drinking nearby stirred at the censored swear word, got up and walked over to Samuel's table to inspect his work.
"Of course they won't stay put. They're watercolors. You're trying to use them like latex or oils. That won't work. Like the name says, they're made of water. They run and they bleed and you have to work with that. Besides, serious watercolor work needs to be on watercolor painting paper, not a newsprint sketch pad. And what you've got there aren't real watercolors anyway. They're just cheap toys for kids. If you're going to use a sketch pad, get yourself a pencil. If you want colors, then get a box of crayons or colored pencils, if there's any left."
The ancient extended his hand. "My name's Lyman Seeley."
"Samuel Franklin."
"That's not what the lass called you."
"Oh, that? She called me 'Safwyl.' So did my mother. My father pronounced it Samuel, same thing. You're an artist?"
"Wanted to be once. Wanted to be Rembrandt or Michelangelo making a living painting a church ceiling flat on my back. But one evening about the time I was ready to graduate, I mentioned I'd like to think about going to art school. Well, my father got very solemn and ma got that worried sick look on her face. It was back in the Depression, and they objected. A lot.
"They were right. I got a job and saved up my money. Later I got married. She was older than me, but we were happy. We bought a house in town and I set up an easel in the room with the best northern light. We figured it would one day be the nursery since it was right next to the master bedroom and had a connecting door. We were expecting our first child when she died back in '39, just about six months after we got married."
The old man shook the past out of his head. "Say, would you like to see some of my stuff?"
****
As soon as he asked the question, Lyman found himself wondering why. He had shown his works to someone exactly three times over the last sixty years. Maybe, on the evidence of one glance at a failed watercolor, he saw Samuel was a serious artist. Maybe it was because Samuel's red hair and high cheekbones reminded him of someone he knew and trusted; but he couldn't, for the life of him, put a finger on whom. Maybe it was as simple as he just liked the boy.
"Sure," Samuel said.
Lyman led him to an old, post-and-beam framed house with a detached garage, which had once been a carriage house. They entered through the kitchen where everything was sixty or seventy years old, except for a fairly new refrigerator. The living room had a sixty-year-old couch and coffee table, a worn-out recliner pushed off to one side, and a newer recliner in front of the TV. What Samuel noticed first were the paintings. Every wall big enough to hold one had a painting and most walls had several. Samuel stopped to look at the first one inside the door.
"Good, ain't it?" Lyman said. "Once a year, I'd take a vacation and go to New York to go through the galleries. I could never afford the expensive ones. But I always managed to find something which caught my eye.
"Come on upstairs."
Samuel glanced in one room that was innocent of furniture. There wasn't a linear foot of wall space at eye level which did not hold at least part of a painting. There were more unframed works on the floor leaned against the wall in ranks. Some ranks were six and eight deep. One queue ran the whole length of the room against the far wall. Lyman led Samuel past an open hall closet. It was empty except for a few art supplies and then into a smaller room which was also mostly empty. There were two easels, both holding unfinished paintings. One painting, of a car, was obviously in progress. The easel tray holding the other was thick with dust. In the dust-covered painting you were looking through an open doorway at a bed where a woman reposed alluringly, calmly, tranquilly, (Samuel could not quite find the right word) reading a book. She wasn't just lying there. She was, somehow, too alive to be just lying there. She reposed! Her body, her pose, her essence, was screaming, "come here to me, join me, make love with me."
Lyman pointed to the one sitting on the dusty easel. "My wife. I was painting her when she died."
"Beautiful," Samuel whispered.
"Yes, she was."
"Oh, that too," Samuel replied in little more than a whisper. "But I meant the painting is quite good."
"Naw, just an amateur's attempt at capturing his lover."
"No, I mean it," Samuel said. "It's good."
"Well, maybe I was inspired." Lyman paused. "She was beautiful." He paused again. "We were in love." And yet again he paused. "I miss her."
Lyman glanced at the boy, then at the painting of his wife and figured out why he was showing the lad his most private thoughts. The young man looked enough like his wife that he could have been their son.
He turned to the work in progress. A snapshot of an auto was clipped above the painting. Lyman pointed. "That, my young friend is a 1937 Oldsmobile with a semi-automatic transmission. Marilyn saw one and fell in love with it before we started courting. She was disappointed I was driving an old rattle trap of a Ford. She wanted an Olds even if they did cost as much as a house new. But she married me anyway. When I got the money, after the war, I bought and started restoring one. It's out in the shed. I've made several tries over the years to paint one. I never have been happy with any of them. The chrome on the bumper might just be the hardest thing in the world to paint.
"Let me show you the last try," Lyman said taking Samuel to the empty room where he started tilting back paintings in the middle of the long line against the wall. "Here it is." He said, pulling it out and setting it on top of the queue. The painting was of a black car waiting quietly in tall grass near a stream while a young man and a red-headed lass picnicked in the background. To Samuel, knowi
ng nothing about cars in general and even less about old cars in particular, it looked very much like the photo he had just seen. But as a painting he could comment knowledgably.
"Even with all that black and silver—did you call it chrome?—you were still able to use the light and shadows for the illusion of depths. And the grass around the wheels, I can almost feel it with my toes."
"Young man," Lyman said, "that was kind of you to say so. I've got a painting over here which makes me feel the same way. Let me show you.
"Here it is. See? Look at the moss on the flagstone. It makes you want to take off your shoes, don't it? I sure do. I bought it 1960. I looked for more of the artist's work the next year, but couldn't find any. The gallery's owner said he'd died. I asked in another gallery they told me he ODed."
"O'deed?"
"Overdosed. He took too many drugs. Rather like drinking oneself to death, but you can do in minutes instead of years. They said they thought it was suicide. His girlfriend left him, he couldn't pay his rent, he was being evicted and his paintings weren't selling. Which was a shame, they sure were all gone a year later. He was good, but not good enough. He should have gotten a day job."
"You're good too."
"Maybe, but not good enough. I'm just an amateur. I do it to pass the time. I had enough sense to get a day job. Let me see if I can find the first '37 Olds I painted."
Samuel watched. Lyman didn't need to find it. He knew exactly where it was. It was more about the driver with the wind blowing through his hair, than it was about the car. The boy in the picture had the same high cheekbones and red hair of the woman in the unfinished canvas.