The Painter: A Novel

  Oh fuck. The intake manifolds were clear, barely, the engine would run until they swallowed water. But the creek was rising and if I didn’t break free of this now the motor would sputter and die, and just then I heard a slide and the blast of horn and the lights flooded the creek, me, and then cut. I craned around. The headlights cut off and so did his engine. I could hear it. Could hear it don’t know how, over the sliding of the surging current and my own motor. Heard his car door slam and craned further and saw his car at the very edge of the water, saw him standing on the sandy gravel of the track beneath the outcrop, then lean back against the black car. He wanted me to see him. See him leaning there arms folded while I drowned, that’s why he cut the lights, that’s what I understood. Fuck, I would move. I was moving. Oh, Jesus, I was slipping sideways. The pressure of the current. If I floated free the truck would tip and roll and the current was swollen and swifter than I could handle and I would probably drown. Oh fuck, fuck, not like this! That was the final blast of thought, loud as a car horn: I don’t want to die, not like this. Oh shit.

  I pressed the gas and heard the tires spinning underwater, an unreal whining sound, and felt them grab and slip, and the truck was, it was sliding little by little downstream, and I craned around again to look back, for what? At him, desperate I guess, and saw the figure leaning, him thinking, Hah! Let God, let God take care of it, sonofabitch, and as I did there was a crack, a crack loud now of thunder right overhead, and on top of it a crash a loud fork of lightning zagging onto the ridge above us, behind it the boom. Then the sound no one ever ever forgets. Like a jet engine. More than roar, like the earth cracked open and howled without voice.

  That roar. A gust of wind hit me, from straight upstream and I turned my head and saw a billow of torn leaves and dust erupt from the canyon and blow through the mist of rain. Maybe fifty yards above me. Or thirty. In that instant the image burned like a shadow on old film: the mouth of the little gorge filled with a wall of water. Or mud.

  In the flash, seeing it all, not the lightning, maybe it was, or just the acuity of terror: it was clear in the dusk as if etched: a mudwall of water and in it as if frozen: a tree, yellow leaves, a sheep, the white sheet metal of an old stove. Why did I do the next thing? Never know. I leaned far out the window as if ducking my head into the flood and yelled. He was behind, beneath the outcrop—he couldn’t see it, he was a sitting duck. In five seconds the wall would bury him.

  FLASH FLOOD! I screamed it, as loud as I could, and saw him startle, bolt for the door handle and jump into his car.

  That was all. Reflex. I slammed the accelerator and the truck roared, bellowed I remember just like a beast. The rear end fish-tailed and we must have slid into a shallower shelf of rock because the whole thing grabbed and tore into the bottom and gunned as if shot out of the water, tearing into the gravel of the far bank and lurching, almost like an animate—an animal—up the ramp of the far side, slamming up onto the bench as the roar swallowed the entire world and I felt it whomp the rear end, the wind and spray of it, and the hard rain hit at the same moment. A fierce wind rank of rot and death and mingled with clean mud and water tore through the cab and pummeled my face and I felt the ground shudder and the flood pass behind us.

  I was shaking, just like a poplar, uncontrolled. Pulled the emergency brake hard and shoved the door and stood on the mud, and shook, and turned, and searched the near dark now of the far bank as if I could conjure him out of it. Why did I think: Please, oh God, let him be there?

  He was. The car was on its own bench on the far side. Oh, man, lights still off but it was there, up at the lip of the sand ramp that had descended to the creek. Where he had been seconds ago was now subsumed in foam and clotted wood, sticks and logs circling there in an angry vortex, in the eddy formed by the rock, what would have been his own mudwater grave. I shook. I winced down my eyes to see more but didn’t. Didn’t see him, couldn’t, his shape anywhere, he must’ve been in the driver’s seat watching also.

  Then the headlights flicked on, I could hear over the wash and tear of current against the new-ripped bank the uptake of the engine and the lights swung back into the turnaround, lit the piñons and pushed forward in a tight arc and then nothing but taillights rising slowly up into the black backdrop of the trees. He was gone.

  I stood and shook and it rained on my bare head, somewhere in there I had lost my hat, and I cried like a baby. Bawled. Not sure for what. For everything. Shook and howled and the rain came down hard and the lightning exploded right on top of the thunder and rolled away, shook me to the roots, and I knew.

  I knew: that whatever I was, my soul was no more substantial than a tattered leaf, one of those torn off a streamside tree in the flood. That I was nothing, that whatever I had done in my life amounted to just that, shreds no heavier than leaves, and that also whatever I had done, I had done it like a blind storm-ripped thing, or like a blind animal nosing from scent to scent and was whomped and carried most of my life by the wrath and high spirits of a power without malice, and that I had done my best and loved my daughter. I had loved her. I had loved Alce the best I could, the best I knew which was nothing to brag about, but I had loved her hard, as hard as a heart could, as hard as this flood tonight. I loved you.

  I wept and I said it over and over, I loved you. I loved you.

  The storm might have lasted two hours. I stood in the downpour and filled with cold water like a cracked shell. I shook apart. And then I could no longer feel anything except that I was freezing, to the bone, and that whatever pieces of me were left were shivering now with hypothermia. I thought of what Mitchell my doc friend had told me about dying that way, and I would not. I would pull into the partial shelter of some big juniper and pull out my sleeping bag that might or not be soaked, and unroll it in the truck bed under the topper and try to sleep. Sleep till morning and let the creek subside and cross it again and go home. To the hotel. To a meal and a hot bath.

  I did pull in under a big old cedar, to buffer the impact of the rain on the topper’s roof, if nothing else, and crawled around in the back and found the milk crate in which I kept the sleeping pad and bag and they weren’t there. And remembered: they are in my rucksack, still stuffed in there from my last brush with Grant. Okay. I felt around for the pack, felt up in the front corner where it often ended up and nothing. Where the fuck? I was kneeling, shivering on all fours in the back of the truck, the rain whipping against the camper shell, knees hard on the corrugated bedliner, thinking back, tracing. And then it hit me: I left the pack. That night. I left it behind the boulder, the big rock I had dived behind when I thought Grant would plug me. I left it.

  I froze there on my knees and went over it again: remembered that I had taken it with me out of the trees, and down the grass hill as I ran zigzag, expecting to be torn apart by a bullet any second, and dived for the boulder, and taunted Grant, what I thought would be him and was instead an already cold corpse, and then I charged him, charged my truck and I left the pack. Oh my frigging God. Left it behind the rock like a calling card at the scene of a murder. And then I laughed. Like a maniac. I laughed so that it rebounded in that tight dark space and shook me harder than the cold. I laughed because I had thought I was such a wise guy, covering up all the signs with the little shovel and dirt, washing the truck the next morning, replacing the windshield, felt almost like a pro, which had creeped me out. Well, I need not have been so proud of myself nor so creeped out. I was a stone cold amateur. I had left a sleeping bag right there like a DNA-covered flag. I was an idiot. No different than I ever was. God.

  Something about that realization warmed me. The return to my old dumbass self. I found the tattered wool sweater I sometimes wore fishing in the crate with my gear, and I stripped my sopping shirt and tugged it on and it was wet but it warmed me instantly. In my wet vest I found a fruit and nut bar and tore open the cellophane with my teeth and devoured it. Better. And then I curled up and the shivering subsided and I went dark. Don’t even remember falling
asleep, just went blank and woke with the loud chortling sound of water and the scream of a robber jay and the descending six note call of a canyon wren. I crawled out of the covered back of the truck and blinked. The sun streamed through the heavy branches of the juniper, already warm. The creek ran low in its bed and clear. Like nothing had happened, except that there was a pile of dead wood wracked against the bank on the far side, dropped there in the eddy that had formed where Jason might have died.

  I didn’t give him a second thought, don’t know why, he didn’t seem right now my biggest worry. What was? I felt lighter, the way I had last night after burying the gun. Was that just yesterday? Already seemed like another life. Except that this time the relief wasn’t from getting rid of some hardware, some incriminating thing, this time I felt washed clean somehow and unburdened of something bigger.

  I waded across and spent a few hours dismantling the tangle of driftwood blocking the ramp, enough to get through. I was thirsty and drank straight from the creek, fuck it, I was sure I’d already had giardia, then I started the truck and turned around and nosed into the stream which ran easy and clear, and crossed it on the old ford. And the rough road out of the canyon was mostly already dry, amazing, and I chugged and churned up it like any happy hunter. I was starving.

  They were waiting for me as Irmina said. Three squad cars. Two were Jeeps. I saw the bar lights reflecting red and blue in the hotel windows before I turned in to Don Gaspar and I thought they looked festive. Perpetrator’s holiday. Wheezy leaned against one of the SUVs drinking coffee and talking to Sofia. Sofia. Huh. Steve was there, too, in conversation with a uniformed officer, high ranking by the look of the stripes. It was like homecoming. Only ones missing were Sport, Willy.

  I pulled up behind the cop cars, double tapped the horn, stepped out, waved. Sofia jumped forward and a deputy caught her. Steve squeaked like a groupie. They were on me. Two big local cops, I knew their families most likely. Hands on your head, turn around please. Okay hands on the hood. Please spread your legs. Fast frisk, hard against the junk. Wheezy wheezed,

  “Okay, good, thanks, step back.” This to his boys.

  “No arrest?” I said.

  Wheezy’s sad smile. “Not today.”

  He looked me up and down, glanced over the truck. I followed his eyes. My knees and shins were skinned, there was mud all over my shorts, and there were leaves stuck in the gap between the camper shell and the truck cab.

  “Rough night?”

  “No arrest?” I said. “What then? You wanna come up to the room and have a Coke? I made a new painting, think you’d like it.”

  His smile.

  “We already tossed the room. Nothing violent. I saw the boat painting. Nice. The brothers again?”

  “Probably. Art is weird.”

  “That’s a fact.” His smile widening. “You made two. Steve here has already hung the horse and the crow. I’d buy it if I could afford it. Couldn’t get to him before he put the sticker on it.”

  “I can tell him to give it to you. Seriously.”

  Shake of his big head. “Conflict of interest.”

  “You wanna toss the truck?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re wondering about that gun again?”

  No reason to cat and mouse him. They either had enough to put me away or they didn’t. He wasn’t smiling now. Tipped back the last of his Starbucks, held out his hand and one of the cops took the cup. Wheezy nodded.

  “Yep, the gun again.”

  I said: “If I did the things you think I did, be pretty dumb to keep the gun, wouldn’t it?”

  “Criminals can be really dumb. Not saying you are, don’t sue me. Okay, you’re gonna have to sit in the car while we do this, if you don’t mind. Not detaining you, just creating a little space. Also, I figured you may not be ready to talk to your posse yet.” He tipped his head toward Steve and Sofia.

  I nodded. Note to self: when you are in the pen serving twenty to life make sure you make him some killer pictures.

  “You got some new information I guess?”

  He held up a hand, held the cops off.

  “Yup, found somebody you might know. The shooting up at the Pantelas’ was an escalation that frankly didn’t please anybody in the department. And then both your trucks dropped off the map. Got a warrant from a sympathetic judge and tracked your phone until we lost the signal. Tracked it back the next morning. That left only three ranch roads that were real roads, that a man might head down to camp if he were tired. After that it was a cinch. Three miles up the northernmost road was a lot of beaten down grass and sage off the shoulder and fresh tracks headed straight into the mesquite. Straight for a gully. Arroyo I guess you’d call it. If we had missed the tracks we wouldn’t have missed the buzzards.”

  Buzzards. Hadn’t thought of that. I wanted to tell Wheezy that criminals weren’t really dumb, they just sometimes didn’t think of everything.

  “Guess what was down there?”

  “A bunch of crows.”

  “That, too.”

  Now he looked at me really serious.

  Wheezy said: “Grant had a loaded and racked .223 ranch rifle in his front seat. With a night scope. He had a spotlight out his window. He was wearing a .45 with a tac light and red dot sight. He had a .41 magnum slug in the side of his truck, shot from long range. Very long. He was hunting somebody, somebody he may have shot at a couple of days ago, we’re still waiting on ballistics. Somebody whose life he may have threatened on the phone. As he had threatened this somebody’s neighbor just minutes before as the neighbor tells it in a sworn statement. It is my understanding that his killing was most likely an act of self-defense. You with me?”

  “I think I understand.”

  “It is also my understanding that whatever happened on that creek in Delta County in the middle of the night could also be reasonably construed as self-defense. Bad blood, a fight the day before, signs of a scuffle. Dellwood much bigger and stronger than even, say, you. And armed, by the way: both a .44 and a Bowie knife on his belt. Actually, just the sheath, clear that Dellwood had already drawn the knife first on whoever hit him with, say, a rock. It is my further understanding that whoever might have killed the Siminoe brothers might come clean and make a very compelling case of self-defense in both deaths. I have had long chats with the lead investigator in Colorado and the DAs both here and in Colorado—”

  “Sport.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. You talked to Sport.”

  Wheezy winced at me, wheezed a few breaths and refound his thread.

  “And”—wheeze—“and furthermore, the longer whoever it is killed these men delays in coming forward with the truth, the less compelling the case for self-defense becomes. It would behoove this individual to come back with me to the station and write out a formal statement just as soon as we toss this gentle soul’s truck and probably not find the handgun that would, if we could find it, probably exactly match the slug buried in Grant Siminoe’s truck.”

  He wheezed hard, licked his lips, and locked eyes. “Think about it,” he said. He put out his pudgy hand and touched my elbow.

  “It’s not a betting proposition, Jim. I’m not joking. There’s a clear path here. You own what you’ve done and what you never did”—he paused, let that burn into my viscera—“you do your time or not. Whatever happens at trial”—wheeze—“and that’s not up to you. Remember what I said about secrets eating away at us. They do. I mean it. Can eat a man’s life away like a cancer. I’ve seen it more than a few times.”

  I nodded. Christ, he almost had me jumping to confess. He was either a really good man or a really good cop. Maybe both.

  “You get a lawyer yet?” he said. I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  He nodded. “Get one. Okay, go sit in the car.” He nodded at the cops and I followed them back. I couldn’t look at Sofia and Steve just then. I had a lot on my mind.

 
Didn’t take them long. They knew all the places to hide a pistol in a pickup. Good for me that I thought to bury the box of shells as well. No incriminating notes, no pools of dried blood. They did come up with a few crumbs of broken windshield glass which they took out with tweezers and put in a Visqueen envelope. Wheezy held it up to the light of midday and looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. He glanced at me, back at the glass, worked the scenarios in his mind, I could tell. That tightened my guts. He would be back up the highway maybe this afternoon, looking for matching crumbs at the site of Grant’s shooting. Does window glass match up like bullets? When they were done with the inside of the truck they took imprints of the tires.

  Huh. They could place me there, I was sure, already had put me nearby with the phone. Proximity. Probably not enough to convict. A lot might depend on how close they could put me to Grant’s body. And what he’d said about self-defense. Would a DA really want to get into a complex murder trial and then have the suspect turn around and claim a clear case of self-defense?

  Can you please explain to the court why you didn’t come forward before?

  Because I just can’t stand courtrooms, no offense. Jails aren’t much fun either.

  But. But. Always the but. Would the but haunt me? Like Wheezy said?

  Wheezy pocketed the envelope, stepped over to the squad car, motioned me out, held up the truck keys.

  “Want me to have them valet park it?”

  “I think I better change hotels.”

  “Nah. The guests love this stuff. Think of the stories they can tell.”

  “Newspaper?”

  “Nope. Not protocol to report executed search warrants. Think how that would mess up investigations. Go upstairs, take a hot bath. We left the bathroom nice and clean.”

  I got out of the car, stretched, took a long draught of cool, high altitude autumn air.

  “Nice place to paint, that roof room,” he said. “We were up there, of course.”