The Painter: A Novel

  He was big into Pablo Neruda and Rilke. I read some of them. Seemed like very different guys, to me, what do I know. Neruda making little doves out of his lover’s hands and wheat fields out of her stomach and stretching out like a root in the dark, he made me horny he really did. Made me want to find a Latin lover, Spanish or Chilean, not too young, one with hips and eyelashes and a voice like dusk rubbing over a calm water. Read enough Neruda you can’t stop.

  Rilke on the other hand did not make me horny at all. He walked around like a man who had been skinned alive, didn’t know what to do with all those acute impressions and so made his poems. I can see why Pete Doerr was fascinated by him. I mean Rilke wrote the Duino Elegies in three weeks in the so named castle. I paint fast, but not that fast. Anyway, I admired Rilke as I read him and loved some of his poems, especially the part in the Elegies where he talks about animals, and the one poem about the panther in the cage which has to just slay you:

  As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

  the movement of his powerful soft strides is

  like a ritual dance around a center

  in which a mighty will stands paralyzed …

  The cell phone rings. The house has no phone line, it’s off the grid, all the electricity comes from four solar panels on a pole off the northeast corner. Doerr was probably some sort of an environmentalist with this solar power, the woodstove, these thick dirt walls that absorb the sun coming in from the big plate windows on the south side. No phone, no grid, a little propane, the poet was an idealist and an environmentalist and so probably mostly miserable.

  The phone rings. It’s Steve. He’s my dealer in Santa Fe. Has been for almost twenty years. The Stephen Lily Gallery. Very high end.

  “How’s my clean and sober genius?”

  I wince. How does a guy who has known me for twenty years talk to me like this? Hmp. Maybe exactly because he has known me that long, I think.

  “You are, aren’t you?” Edge of anxiety.

  That’s his big sweat. I am one of his top earners. The gambling addiction, the costly divorces, these things he can absorb with epic calm, without even a little pit stain on his immaculately pressed madras shirt. Those times, the chaos, they actually serve him because when I get hard up and desperate I paint faster. But when I binge, forget it. He might not see a canvas for three months. That makes him nervous. I suspect he has payments on things even his wife doesn’t know about.

  “Huh?” I say. All muffled and growly. “Who the fuck’s jis?” I slur it.

  I can almost hear the sharp intake of breath.

  “Jim? Jim?”

  Poor bastard. I relent.

  “Oh, Steve, it’s you. Christ. I thought it was the collection agency.”

  His relief is a cool wind through the airwaves. “You’re not in trouble with the car payments?” he says hopefully. “Or the rent?” His good cheer is truly obnoxious. How can I love a guy I want to strangle most of the time? I do love him, I don’t know why. Maybe because he knew I was good before anyone else.

  “I’ve got good news and better news,” he says.

  I notice that his attempts at fraternal concern have been forgotten, thank God. When he just acts like the ruthless predatory sonofabitch he is I can respect him.

  “You there?”

  “Barely.”

  “Effy Sidell bought your Fish Swallowing All Those Houses. What were we going to title it? The Continuing Housing Crisis? Well it was perfect. The timing. He came in and saw it just as we were hanging it. You have to dream about timing like that. I saw the gleam in his eye, how he pretended to move on, how his eye kept flitting back to it. He was rattling on about this and that, covering his excitement, then very casual he says, What is Jim working on these days?

  “Well, we didn’t want to pique his interest in anything else did we? So I said: A series of dung beetles I think. Whatever the shiny ones are. Jim says they are his best bug work yet. Definitely worth waiting for!

  “Sounds like it, Eff said drily. Then he gestured at the Fish House thing and says very offhand, That’s interesting.

  “Yes, we love that, I said. Several collectors have expressed interest already. But I told everyone we hadn’t even set a price yet.

  “Why haven’t you called me? he shot back angrily. I mean he tried to sound suave, but you know Eff.

  “Oh, well. I mean. Two regulars just dropped in this morning. It was leaning against the wall.

  “Pim Pantela, he almost snarled. Well? Have you priced it?

  “Yes, I said without thinking. Instinct, Jim, instinct. I tacked on two thousand plus the ten percent consideration I would take off because he was so decisive.

  “Twenty-two thousand, I said.

  “I’ll take it, he said. Have it sent up to the house today. Tomorrow is Margaret’s birthday.

  “Can you believe that? He told me he loves you like a brother.”

  “No shit.”

  “He said that if you have anything that isn’t a goddamn bug to call him first.”

  Pause while he catches his breath.

  “Don’t go out and get hammered to celebrate?” he says with sudden seriousness.

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  “Well, there’s better news,” Steve said.

  I was looking out the window. Heavy clouds were blowing in on the mountain ridges from the southwest. No wind here though. And the air had that darkening, heavy, pressure drop feel. If the wind didn’t pick up it would be a perfect afternoon for throwing some flies up on the Sulphur. We were in a gibbous moon if I was remembering right. They might be feeding at night, might not be too hungry, but if it spat a little rain so much the better. Hadn’t been fishing in maybe four days.

  I have to admit that the prospect of thousands of dollars pouring into my Paonia State Bank account via instantaneous electronic transfer right now was appealing. I would not bet on horses or even a baseball game, and I certainly wouldn’t play online Texas hold ’em. I mean only a stupid compulsive idiot would do that.

  “So?” I say into the phone. “And?”

  “The aforementioned Pim Pantela wants to fly you down here for a week. He is commissioning a large portrait of his daughters. We talked about size and came to fifty by eighty.”

  That woke me up.

  “What do you mean you ‘came to’? I don’t recall you asking me.”

  “Jim, your phone has been off for ten days.”

  He had a point. I just found the charger in my truck last night. It was down in a clutter of Backwoods cigar pouches and old tippet spools. Tippet is the thinner gauge fishing line you tie on the end of your leader. I had lost the charger that plugs into a house outlet. I only had the one for the cigarette lighter, so I had to charge it driving to the coffee shop and back.

  “A week? I’ve met his kids. They came in that one afternoon right? In matching polka dots?”

  “Right!”

  “I could paint them in two hours.”

  “He wants you to cut loose, Be Jim. Really be yourself. You know, throw in some chickens if you want. Or a coal train.”

  “For fuck’s sake. Be Jim? A coal train?”

  I was now officially steamed. Steve had already said yes.

  “I’m just getting to work here, Steve. I’m doing good work. Tell him another time. Anyway I need to get off now.”

  The silence now was stony. Slight clearing of the throat. “He has offered thirty-five grand. Since I made the commitment without asking you, I admit, I am willing to take a forty-sixty split.” His voice was cool the way it almost never is.

  “I’ll think about it. Gotta go.” I hung up before I could blow my top.

  I dug out a cigarillo from the foil pouch and stood out on the ramada. Cool wind now pouring down off the mountain, smelling of ozone and juniper. The way the clouds were. That’s how I felt. The mountain formed a long ridge, higher peak swooping to lower, left to right, east to west.

  The clouds massed in from the south, dark
bellied and brooding. They hung against the ridge like a herd of deer afraid to cross a fence. How I felt. I lit and sucked on the stogie. If the anger I felt now—if I let it cross some line, let it spill, I probably wouldn’t have a gallery.

  The cigars are little rough-ended cheroots, made to look hand rolled like the stubs Clint chewed in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Vanilla flavored and irresistible. Limit myself to two packs of eight a day. The wind tore away the smoke. Maybe too windy now to fish the creek, I didn’t care, I’d go up anyway and get the fly into the water. I could always fish a weighted wooly bugger, let it drift down on the current and strip it back up like a wounded minnow. The thing was to get in the water, feel the cold press against my knees, smell the current.

  Steve, the fucker. I hated this part. Just when I am moving on something good and true he throws out some bullshit like a commission for two panfaced little girls in polka dots. And makes it clear that unless I spend a full agonizing week on the thing the guy writing the check won’t feel he’s getting his thirty grand worth. Thinks it’s okay because I have full creative freedom to throw in a chicken. Fuck. Fuck that. If I finish in a day they can take it or leave it.

  The Ocean of Women painting was the first big piece I had made it halfway through since I’d come up here four months ago. I’d made a bunch of smaller paintings, but it took so much energy in just figuring out who to pay for the water bill, etc., where to buy the cigars, find a model. Sofia was a good one, a great one. She didn’t need much direction, she was creative, she knew what painting was and she allowed for departure, the kind we had this morning, where eventually she disappeared. I loved that.

  I smoked and breathed. I was standing there. The floor of the outdoor ramada was rough sandstone flags, inexpertly laid by the poet probably, with sand between. Basic. The stones were reddish, ruddy to ochre. The roof just shade, latilla poles covered with a rush of young willows, haphazardly piled, tied down with cord. The simplicity. Something about the sincerity of this partial shelter. I was standing there and I thought of Alce, my daughter. That she would be eighteen, that she would be a better fisherperson than me now. Very damn good at fifteen. When I could get her to go out, get her away from that crowd. That she could have come with me this afternoon, fished with me up into the night, the rain. Relax, Dad, she’d say. Steve is a pain but he loves you. I know, I know, she’d insist, the commercial part of your painting, what a pain in the ass, but relax. Everybody’s gotta serve somebody, right? Sometimes we just pay the piper. Get our meal ticket.

  She loved using a string of clichés, making them go where she wanted. Just one week, she’d tell me now. Finish this beautiful one you’re working on, then go down there. Go grateful. Grateful you have a job, doing what you love. Right, Pop? Uncanny wisdom for a fifteen year old who had been so tied to her own tugging needs.

  Right, Alce.

  Her flashing smile, dark eyed like her mom, Cristine—the high cheeks, my fine hair. Not too tall, no longer gangly, filled out, long legged. Always graceful. Moved like an animal I thought. Moving upstream away from me to fish ahead, the next bend. Moving upstream away, away. You went around the turn of the gravel bar looked back once, raised your chin. And gone. Gone. Alce.

  I have an iPhone and now Steve can get to me. I don’t text, don’t get email or sports news on the fucker. It is little, too small for my hands, I’m always pushing the wrong button, losing the call, calling the wrong person. Steve made me get it so I can take photos of my new paintings—he showed me how—and then I message him the image. That’s why he got it for me, he said.

  With the phone I get to talk to people I might not have talked to again before I died. Some upside. I don’t read the thing while I’m driving like I see so many do, even around here. Or teens, walking down the sidewalk together, each one on a phone, working their thumbs. Probably messaging each other, one foot away. Leads to an evolutionary loss of the vocal cords. Alce didn’t do that, she didn’t have a phone. I know she wanted one.

  The last time we spent together, just the two of us, was the summer before the fall she started getting into trouble. Cristine’s sister Danika was dying of lymphoma up in Mora County outside of Las Vegas, NM, and Cristine went up for two weeks to be with her. It was summer and Alce and I took a couple of flannel sleeping bags and some meat loaf sandwiches and cans of Hawaiian Punch and fished her favorite pool below the falls at dusk. We both caught a couple of browns, nothing big, and then she made a small twig fire on the gravel bar the way I had taught her and we unrolled the bags under the stars. We were happy, I think, I mean glad to be together fishing, and before we went to sleep we named all the constellations we knew, and then I said, “See that cluster over there, above the Bull?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s you.”

  “You are so corny!” Her fist came down on my shoulder. “That looks like a bunch of zits.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It’s alright, Pop, you are a dreamer. That’s why you paint.”

  “Huh. Okaaay.”

  “I’m a combination of you and Mom, a dreamer and a fighter.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yup.”

  “Hold on a frigging minute.”

  “Glad you didn’t say fucking. You always want to.”

  “Given my record, I kinda thought I was the fighter.”

  “Nope, you react. That’s why you’re in the ER all the time.”

  I laughed out loud. “No shit.”

  “Yup. Mom’s a fighter.”

  “You are so damned smart. I’ll be damned.”

  I watched the stars beside my daughter feeling as proud as if she’d done something great and ordinary, like won the state track meet. I remembered I had felt the same way when she came home from her first day of kindergarten and declared, high spirited, that the teacher couldn’t pronounce her name. “I told her: AL-say! AL-say! Al like Al, Say like say! Now she says it right.”

  Alce. “Don’t worry, Pop,” she had said that night. “We probably need dreamers more than we need fighters.”

  Four months later she was dead.

  I know. I stand out here now in the wind watching the clouds mass and I know. That Steve in his greed is feeding me and will kill my art if I let him. That my daughter died for nothing. That I better go fishing before my thoughts start to spiral.

  I drive into town. Down the hill, cross the tracks, no coal train, no seven minute wait as it clatters by. Good. I don’t have to pack the truck because it’s perma-packed for fishing. I keep vest, waders, rods, boots in the backseat or in the bed always. I turn at Brad’s Market, honk at Bob who is changing a tire in front of his station. Good guy. He runs the Sinclair gas and service station with his old father and his son. Three generations of Reids. I met Bob my second day in town. I pulled up to get gas and he saw the rods in the truck bed through the windows of the topper. Saw the unlit stogie in my jaw, the cap paint spattered and stuck with flies. I guess he was curious.

  “Going fishing?” He unspun the gas cap without looking, placed it on the roof of the topper over the truck bed while he reached for the pump handle, looking at me the whole time.

  “Thought I better get after it. Been in town two days.”

  He grinned.

  “You moved into Pete Doerr’s place.”

  “How—?”

  “Small town,” he said. “You know how it is. Can’t fart without it coming up at some church breakfast.”

  I liked him right away. The way I took to Pete on the phone. Bob watched the spinning clicking numbers on the pump, stopped dead at thirty-eight ninety-nine. Gave it an extra click. Recradled the handle, the metallic double cluck.

  “You have a spot you were thinking about?” he said. He turned, spat a stream of tobacco juice on the concrete apron. Pushed his cap back. He was a short man, strong, in a grease smudged t-shirt (North Fork Archery Club), about my age, with a lively humor in his eye.

  “I was going to go to the Pleasure Park down at the con
fluence. Everybody says how it’s Gold Medal and all.”

  He nodded. I’d read about the place in magazines, where the Gunnison meets its North Fork. A rock canyon hole, clear water, three pound browns not uncommon.

  I handed him two twenties. “Go upstream,” he said. “Go up the Sulphur. Gold Medal is good but what is it? Saturday? Be full of fuckwits from Aspen. But there won’t be a soul on the creek. One dirt road. The only person who goes up this time of year is Ellery who has the ranch above, and Brent the deputy who rents a trailer from him. Son Mark was up there Wednesday night, said it was hitting real good.”

  He snagged a dollar out of his breast pocket, handed it to me.

  “Let me know how it went. Never seen that dry fly you got on the front of your cap. The one with the orange body.”

  I grinned. “That’s a Stegner Killer. I just made it up. The orange is baling twine. Seems to be working.” I took off my cap and worked the hook free and dropped it into his palm. “I’ll make you some more,” I said.

  That was mid-April, before snowmelt. The creek was running low and clear. I liked it a lot. I liked it better than any place I had fished in years. The quiet of it. The nobody of it. The elk tracks in the silt and, lately, the piles of bear scat, full of the seeds of berries. That part of it.

  Now as I drive by, Bob looks up from the tire he is changing, waves. Sometimes I think that’s all you need. A good man with a fishing tip, a wave. A woman once in a while. Some work to do that might mean something. A truck that runs, that some faceless bastard two hundred miles away can’t turn off. It’s not much, but plenty when you don’t have any of it.