The Painter: A Novel
“No, please. It’ll be fine. He’s not coming back. Talk, talk to them, now!”
Her tearstained face, nodding.
I half stood. The line of fire from the window could not touch them here in the corner. Plus the counter. Okay for the moment, they were safe. Fuck. I moved fast, as fast as I could, through the swing door and down the runnered hall and out to the main entrance and pressed into the jamb of the front door and shoved it open. Nothing. I could see the flower garden at the corner of the house outside the kitchen, all golds and yellows and flecks of blue, and a stretch of buffalo grass lawn gently sloping away from the house to the pines, he had been shooting upward, barely, he had missed because of the angle probably and the hard reflections of flowers and sky off the window.
From where I stood to my truck in the drive, from where he must have been, there was no angle. Except the first ten feet across the gravel. I took a breath and ran. CRAACK! Thud into stucco behind me. You fucker. You’re getting old and slow goddamn you. Goddamn you for hurting those little girls. Trying to.
I pulled open the door and clawed out the .41 under the seat and grasped the grip and shook off the rag and moved back to the rear of the bed and gripped the pistol in both hands, edged to the corner of the tailgate and looked around it. Flash in the trees, off glass his scope just at the expected spot. Forty yards. I jerked back, took a breath, visualized the target and then swung around the tailgate and pulled off two shots. Silence. A lazy shirr in the pines like distant water. Could smell the tang of them, the warm-bark afternoon peace of them. Silence.
The fucker maybe didn’t expect me to be armed. Why not? I waited, put one eye around the back of the truck. He would have to cross open space to do more harm, to get to anyone in the kitchen. He would be counting down, he would know there was a call to 911. Silence. The fucker. Three ways off the mountain from below the gate. I counted to two hundred, more, and then I heard the cough of a starter, rev, the rattle of a truck through wind and trees. And then I saw the dust rising through the pines down at the end of the driveway. Diesel. It was diesel, the growl. It was him. Not an El Camino but a big diesel pickup. Barn burner, assassin. I looked down at my hand, the hand holding the gun, and it was shaking like an aspen leaf and my heart was pounding in my ears like a bongo and I could feel a trickle of blood running off my cheek into my collar.
Cold rage. Cold and dry and sharp, a honed and frozen blade, unstained by pity, by any sentiment at all.
The cops came. I heard them three minutes before they arrived, in a snaking convoy. My gun was a revolver so there was no brass in the driveway. I wrapped the gun and tucked it back under the seat. Five cars, an ambulance, a fire truck. Wheezy got out of his own unmarked cruiser. He still had the air of a man who can’t get over the antics of the species, but now he had an edge of real worry, the first crack in his impeccable jocularity. He went straight to Julia and when they were done talking he came to me where I was leaning against my truck. I told him everything in four minutes except—Some instinct. Didn’t want him to know I had a gun. So I didn’t mention the part about me shooting back and he wrote it all down and licked his lips and glanced up at me and said,
“Why did you run to your truck? To get something?”
That got my attention. He saw it.
“Nope. To draw him away from the girls.”
He nodded, studied me.
“You in possession of a firearm?”
“You mean, like my .41 magnum?”
I thought: Might as well, they would know I had it anyway, bought and registered in Portland, Oregon. My other guns were back at the house, which they surely also knew.
“That one, yeah.”
“I got rid of it. A while ago.”
He moved his lips around, seemed disappointed. In me. That hurt, ow.
“Happen to remember when and where?”
“Nope. Must’ve been one of my drunks. I lost it.”
He nodded. He mustered a smile, seemed sad.
“Wherever it is, maybe it should stay there. I don’t want any more killing in my town. I have too many other fun things to do.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Mrs. Pantela says the first thing you did after shots were fired was cover the girls.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. Other stuff doesn’t add up. Know what I mean?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Okay,” he blew out at last. “You want to go, huh?”
I nodded.
“You want security? No? I knew the answer. That self-sufficient streak. I’d like to lock you up right now, Mr. Stegner, for your own good. For everyone’s.”
That stung.
“I wish you’d call me Jim.”
“You can go whenever you want.”
I went back into the kitchen. The girls, thank God, and Julia, had not been hit by any shards of the pots, at least not anywhere exposed, and when the twins saw me I had a moment of panic, I thought they would reject me, the horrible cause of everything, but kids’ minds don’t work like that, they tore themselves from the ministrations of two women paramedics and ran to me and hugged my legs.
“You guys okay?”
The nods in unison.
“That will never ever happen again. That thing is gone forever.”
I didn’t say That Man is gone, I didn’t want them to attach a specter to the things that had happened.
“I’m going away for a couple of days, I’ll see you after that, okay?”
Nods okay, still clutching. I lifted them up one at a time and squeezed them, and kissed them on the tops of their heads, the places where the happy birds should have been.
Julia was shaking. When she met my eyes her own welled with tears and she hugged me so hard, and I whispered into her ear, “Don’t be grateful. That was because of me.”
“I know I know,” she said. “But.”
“He’s gone, he’s not coming back. He wanted me, not you all.”
She kept saying I know I know. I got in my truck and drove off the mountain onto the paved road and onto the pavement of the Old Santa Fe Trail and I didn’t stop. Fuck. Fuck Jim. You will kill everything good in your life. Kill it always. You always do. You pull the storms after you like hellhounds on a leash. What the fuck is the matter with you? You should maybe shoot yourself and end it before someone else you love dies.
I thought that. Knew I would never do it, never stand in that pond. Or freeze to death. Ever. Knew my curse was that I had to see whatever havoc I wreaked, always, everywhere. Goddamn.
I drove the black two-lane straight through the outskirts of town, straight into the juniper hills, straight north through Española and into the ranch country of Rio Arriba County. Already late afternoon, maybe an hour to dusk. I didn’t call Sofia, I didn’t call anyone. Didn’t even know what the fuck I was doing really, except getting away, getting the blackness and threat away from everyone else. I’d stay away for a couple of days. I’d hit 285 and drive back to the Rio de los Pinos and fish it. Far enough away. Everything was in the back of the truck as it always was. I’d sleep out.
Julia wouldn’t have counted the shots, wouldn’t have known who fired them if she had. Nobody had to know I had a gun. I pulled over and felt under the seat. Beside the pistol in its rag was a box of ammo. I pulled it out, heavy with fifty bullets minus the six, and I tugged out the gun and thumbed open the cylinder and ejected the brass of the two I’d fired and threw them off into the weeds. I thumbed in two fresh bullets and put everything back. Drove.
Already late. I drove up into the open country south of the San Luis Valley, back toward Antonito and the los Pinos gorge. The instinct to go someplace I loved, someplace of peace, someplace where there would be no one. Especially no one I cared about.
Vast grass and sage plains, wooded hills. Something about the wide openness of it, the nothingness of it, the sun touching the hills off to my left. I breathed, felt the piano wires in my limbs relax. The windows were rolled down a
nd poured warm air and the tangy scents of Mormon tea and sage. I breathed. Settled.
Everyone was okay. They were okay, no one was hurt, he wouldn’t bother them again, not his game. Right? Right.
And you have all your limbs, your legs, your arms, they all work, right? Right. There are bad things in the world, bad people, not you. Okay? Okay.
You are All Right. Lighten up. You have made mistakes but getting rid of a very bad man may not have been one of them. If his brother is bad, too, well. Cross that bridge. Whew. Tomorrow you will go fishing. Fish one of the prettiest canyons in the world.
The sun was gone and the country ahead had more trees and the air coming through the window was suddenly chill and smelled of pines. The trees and the asters scattered along the shoulder of the road and the boulders sitting on the slopes all rested in that moment when every line is sharp and things seem to radiate color from within themselves. That perfect balanced moment between day and night. My absolute favorite time.
I slowed. Backed off the accelerator and took a left turn down a dirt track that ran through an open park of sage and grass beneath a ridge of pines. In that moment the sky also does something wonderful. It shines too from within, on its own, without help, a radiant blue sea, as clear and dark as the clearest water. Up there, ahead, sitting over the furthest purple ridge, sat a single star. Faint but irrepressibly alive.
Alce.
It blurted out of me. It was good to be alive and I was okay inside myself, for once I seemed to fit inside this quiet dusk, seemed okay, seemed okay to be alive and. She wasn’t. But in my heart.
She lived. Lived as irrepressibly as that star. I slowed almost to a stop because I could barely see through the blur of my memories, and then I did stop, I pulled over into the grass, not sure why, nobody would drive by all night probably, and I turned off the engine and sat, and when my eyes cleared I saw a herd of five elk in the meadow feeding heads down just below the trees.
It was a bull, with a rack like a tree, and two cows and two calves. A family of sorts, and the strange alloyed happiness welled up again.
They fed, they ignored me, they were in the middle of their reprieve. Bow season not here yet on this side of the New Mexico border, the calves in their first autumn, before the beginning of the hunting season that would bring who knew what terror. I felt the terrible vulnerability of everything, and the depthless peace of the evening, and I wondered that God could have made such a doubleness, allowed it all to exist together so that we might feel so helpless. I swallowed the grief this time. Took a deep breath, wiped my face with my sleeve, and thought, It’s just how the universe is, one big food chain, from galaxies eating other galaxies down to the tiniest shrimp, and it is a wonder we get to be here at all, in the middle of it.
I was certainly in the middle of it. Fuck Grant, fuck his brother, fuck their posse.
I shoved open the door and got out, stretched. The elk lifted their heads, turned them my way, lowered them again. I listened for the sound of water. I wanted to sleep out under the stars, now I could count two then three. Seven. Ten. More the more I looked, faint but burgeoning in the waveless blue. Like a perfectly calm sea, like minnows, who knew how deep.
I listened for the sound of water because it would be nice to sleep beside a creek and to have water to wash with. Dunking my head in a cold current now would be good. I held my breath, listened. The barest of breezes in the pines. The faintest rush. Nothing. Oh well. I had two milk jugs of water for drinking, and I had an old Therm-a-Rest foam pad and a light sleeping bag all stuffed into a milk crate in the back. I’d walk up to the pines and unroll them beneath a big tree. I’d bring a jug, a jacket for a pillow, the gun.
I stretched, my whole body stiff. I hitched myself along the side of the truck to the back and lifted the topper door and jerked open the tailgate. The bull glanced up, but barely, the rest kept feeding, they were used to me now and I was grateful for that, don’t know why.
I leaned in and pulled the milk crate back. Beneath the light sleeping bag was an old rucksack. I opened it and stuffed in my bed, a water jug, a fleece jacket. I went back to the front seat and fetched a packet of little smokes and the gun, locked the truck. The engine was still ticking and a cricket was chirping out of the grass close by. The hopeful end-of-summer chirp when the nights are cooling—he was still singing for a mate maybe.
I walked up the hill. The long grass brushed my legs. The elk had spread out, and once in a while one of the calves lifted its head and cried. It cracked me in two. It was a birdlike cry, something between a chirp and the keen of a hawk. And one of the moms answered, tilting up her chin, louder, hollower, more resonant, a call that must have carried miles down the valley. They were close enough to see each other clearly, I was sure. They were conversing, a kind of call and response, an affirmation that rang against the hill.
Are you there?
I am here.
Will you be there now? Next?
I will be here always.
That’s what it sounded like. To me.
There would be no moon tonight until almost dawn. What light would come from the stars. They were already asserting themselves. I walked up into the deeper shadow of the trees. My breath huffed and the grass swished against my khakis. I picked a spot beneath a huge old pine with a view of the valley. Sat. I’d unfold and blow up the pad in a minute. It felt good to just sit and listen and let the cool air slip around me. I took a swig from the jug and unrolled the foil pouch, dug out a cheroot, lit it.
Then I put it out.
A car engine. Just a vibration at first, the lowest growl, but insistent. It grew slowly, more and more distinct. Jerky faint wash of headlights sliding up the meadow a mile off. Coming around a curve. Then the two headlights themselves, high beams, not shy of the dark. Second gear probably, a truck taking its time, picking its way toward a known destination.
Unlike me. When I came up this road an hour ago I had no place in my mind. And if you listen you can hear the difference in the sound of the two engines.
The headlights jounced, the motor revved then dropped, a rising and falling in cadence with the rising and falling of the road.
Never labored, patient, coming on. I glanced down to my right but the elk had vanished. Maybe they could hear the difference too.
The truck came over a slight swell and then my own truck was caught in the glare. It looked old. As stranded as a boat on a mud-flat, throwing a bulky shadow ahead of it.
The pickup stopped, idled. Spotlight flicked on, one of those lights cops and poachers use. The beam jerked over to the truck then moved back and forth along the shoulders, then twenty feet or so on either side. Looking for someone, looking for me. Maybe a tent, a figure on the ground.
Without thinking I pushed the rucksack flat back against the trunk of the tree behind me and rolled to the side of it myself. Pulled the brim of my cap low and pressed myself to the bark. The .41 mag was in the pack. I pulled it back to me and slid loose the drawstring and stuck my arm in the opening and fished the gun out from under the sleeping bag. The steel was colder than the nylon. I thumbed open the cylinder out of habit and ran the pad of my finger over each chamber, feeling with growing relief again the stamped brass of each bullet. Onetwothreefourfivesix. Had the box of forty-two more, but not here, they were still in the truck. Probably paranoid. Probably it was the rancher who lived on up the road just checking out what new visitor was in his territory.
Then I knew I was wrong. Because the lights went out and I heard his door chunk open and a few seconds later I heard glass breaking.
Windshield glass, that’s a sound like nothing else, an ugly, buffered crunching that is too soft, a fractured thudding that doesn’t even have the tinkle of breaking ice. Without thinking again I shoved the pack forward and raised the revolver in two hands and braced my fists on the taut pack like a sandbag and thumbed back the hammer because it’s more accurate that way than pulling it back with the trigger, and I waited three seconds for my eye
s to find the shapes again in the sudden total darkness and then I put two shots into the body of his truck.
The gun jumped. Concussions wiped the night clean of sound. Flame shot from the barrel.
It felt good. To blast away.
At two hundred yards I knew I’d be lucky to even hit the truck. Fuck it. I shifted over to my right and muttered Fuck off and aimed about where my windshield would be, where he would be, then raised it higher so the bullet could drop, somewhere over the back of the hood, just to let him know I was serious. Should scare the shit out of him. I thumbed back the hammer and pulled the trigger.
The thudding and breaking ceased. Silence. I waited.
He’d be crouched. I couldn’t make out the shadow of any figure in the dark. This could take a while. He would be patient this time. Grant. Brother, barn burner, anonymous threatener and killer.
I didn’t wonder what the fuck he was doing here, it seemed like a natural conclusion. Not conclusion, better hope not—development. If I’d thought the shots at the house might be a warning, a scare tactic, now I knew they weren’t. He had missed, period. Jason had called him of course. Or he’d followed me from the house. They’d been keeping track. I’d been so lost in my musing while driving I’d never noticed the now and then glimpse of Grant’s pickup a few curves back. And there, with a couple of hundred yards of cool country night between us, I could feel he had the meanness of a true coward.
He would be crouched now, behind one of the trucks, and I also knew without considering that he would be armed perfectly for the job. He would have a handgun as I had, and he would also have a rifle, or several, and I had an idea what they would be: an AR-15 .223 for the middle distance flat shot, one of the best setups for killing a man, and a .30-06 or a .308, bolt action, his elk gun, and if I knew the man and I didn’t but could feel his malevolence like a smell even at this distance, if I knew him he had night vision scopes on one or both rifles. Because that’s where he and his brother really made their money: poaching, and there was no better time to do that than at night.