Every year Beth Castlemaine took two weeks in the spring to get away from
the stress of her job. This year she had packed her painting gear and was
wandering through the back roads of the Southwest, setting up wherever a vista
or arrangement caught her eye. When she found something, she might check into a
local motel and spend two or three days trying to get a likeness. If she
couldn't, she snapped a Polaroid and put the bungle in her trunk to examine
later. If she was satisfied that she had at least made a beginning, she would
pack up and move on.
On the first day of May she had
started a half-hour before dawn, driving out from the town she had stayed in
for the night and turning down a lonely country road. As the first rays of the
morning sun rose, she was arrested by a passing landscape revealed in its
sudden glory.
A stand of straight slim trees
rose like an invading army, creeping into the new-mown fields all around it. In
its shade, crowding thickly, the stalks of some tall blue flower nodded in the
uneasy wind. Behind it all, off-center, the gigantic top of an ancient live oak
tree reared its head, newly filled out with spring green, gilded with the early
light. It seemed to call to her.
Beth stopped when she found a
gate and pulled the car over, crunching slowly through the gravel. She took her
easel and case out of the trunk, draping the flowery old housecoat she used as
a smock over one elbow. She paused at the sign on the five-railed galvanized
metal: No Trespassing. She looked at the tempting copse of trees. A ray
breaking out from a passing cloud for a few seconds made it gleam all the
brighter.
"Oh, well," she
murmured. "Always easier to get forgiveness than permission." She put
her hand on the latch, went in, and carefully clicked it back in place behind
her.
It was quite a hike back to the
trees, first down the stony ruts of a truck trail, and then through a couple of
recently mowed fields. But she was wearing her comfortable old walking boots
and felt the eagerness of the morning air. If anything she was invigorated as
she drew near the shadowy woods, blood pumping in her veins and the cool wind
in her hair.
She slowed down as she came
closer. The shade under the trees was enticing and secretive, almost like a
closed room, though she could see open air and sunlight on the other side. For
a moment she considered running into the shadows, but here, she knew, was the
right distance for her picture, and felt there was no time to waste. The
morning was passing, and the enchantment could break at any time.
"Promises to keep," she said out loud, almost defiantly. She stopped,
and set up her easel.
She penciled in a rough outline
to guide her, then slipped into the smock to mix her paints. She laid in the
background color and brushed on the broad details of grass and leaves. She was
concentrating on dabbing in the light trunks of the trees with a palette knife
when a voice said behind her, "That's pretty good."
To her credit, she didn't jump or
startle. Her training let her know that appearing vulnerable often led to an
attack. At forty-two, she realized that she was no longer the most provoking of
targets, but she also knew that simply being female was sometimes the only
necessity, and not even always that. She turned nonchalantly, the sharp palette
knife held firmly in her hand. It would do until and unless she could get to
the something stronger stashed in the bottom of her case.
He seemed to be in his early
twenties, if she was any judge of horseflesh, and in her estimation looked
sadder than anybody ought to be at that age. His brown plastic leather jacket,
bell-bottoms, and soft shoes declared him to be no farm-boy. Slightly long black hair feathered over his
collar and ears, and looking at it made her itch to trim it. He flinched under
her direct gaze, and her heart unbent a little in motherly response. She
glanced aside at the fledgling composition.
"It's just a daub, really," she said, unable to keep
the hint of pride out of her voice. "With a little luck I might be able to
work it up into something worth looking at." She examined his expression a
little closer. "I'm sorry," she said. "Am I on your land? I can
always move on."
"No, no; it belongs to a friend of the family, I guess: old
Mr. Auburn. Don't worry." He gestured off into the distance past the
trees, beyond the point of sight. "He lives on the other side of the creek
over there and doesn't get around much anymore, I heard. He won't mind if
you're out here with me." The boy came no closer, but stared at the
canvas. He seemed reluctant to disturb her.
"Well, thank you," Beth said. "That's very
kind." His shy deference reassured her. She edged in a few more trees
between canopy and floor, then scraped the knife clean and picked up a delicate
brush. She stirred the blue paint she had mixed to keep it fresh, and with the
lightest and tiniest of touches began to tip and waver in the suggestion of
blue flowers.
"So what brings you here so early in the morning," she
asked, attention on the brush strokes, "alone and palely loitering?
Bringing in the May?"
"The what?"
"Never mind. An old custom." She finished the flowers
and stepped back to judge the effect. The boy leaned in squinting but stood
rooted where he stood, as if wary of invading her personal space. Beth stepped
aside and nodded her head, inviting him closer. "Go on," she said.
"Get a good look. Give me your opinion. It helps to have another pair of
eyes."
He took two stiff steps forward and tilted his head in, peering
closely. She saw his expression clearly. It was sick, helpless fascination.
"Yes," he said weakly. "That's how it looks.
You're a good painter." He stood back, his focus never moving, but split
now on the picture and its original beyond.
"That's sweet of you to say, but I can see all the flaws in
it already," Beth said. She picked up the fan brush, loaded it with bright
green, and started whisking in the live oak's spread. "Still, I go
on." As she built up the ancient tree like a tumbling cloud, she started
to declaim.
"'There was a time when you and I were all very close to
God, so that even now the color of a pebble or a paint, the smell of flower or
firework, comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if
they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face. To
pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of
education. It is the towering
levity, the uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we
felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, or as soon paint as run. To smatter in the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful
sciences, to juggle with pillars, and pyramids, and toss up
the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the
human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. I here maintain the prime truth of woman, the universal mother:
that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.'"
She stood back to gauge the results on the canvas critically.
"Sorry to quote at you," she said absently. "My
old mentor made me memorize quite a lot. It seemed like torture at the time,
but now I find it an unfailing resource." She turned cheerfully, and was
shocked to see the young man was crying, tears runneling down his face, wan and
glinting in the morning light.
"I'm sorry," he said, glancing at her, voice thick.
"It's just that I remembered ... I've been coming out here most every
spring since I was nine ... when our family went camping ... that's how it used
to be ... and since ... " His face squeezed shut, his pallid cheeks
reddened.
"Here." Beth pulled a handkerchief out of her back
pocket and handed it to him. It was a big, blue-squared, no-nonsense cloth, not
a frilly scented show. He accepted it, looking ashamed, wiped his face, and
blew his nose. He stood, eyes cleared, scrunching the handkerchief in one hand,
glaring at the picture.
"Yes, it really looks like the woods," he said.
"Like the woods." He looked up at the clump of trees, the tall
flowers dancing on the breeze, the shaded copse pierced here and there with
slanting rays. He frowned. His voice hardened, trembling. "How I hate
them!"
She raised an eyebrow. She took her brush and started casually
dabbling some highlights onto the tree-trunks. Keeping her voice carefully
neutral, she asked, "Did something bad happen there?" She seemed
absorbed in the effects of her strokes.
"I wish I knew. Something happened. I wish to God I knew
what it was."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
He laughed, a short, bitter snort.
"You sound like my shrink," he said. "You a
psychologist or something?"
She smiled to herself, and continued working.
"Something like that," she admitted wryly, cleaning
the fan brush, then touching it to the white. "Though I'm no doctor. More
like a counselor. I've had a few classes, for my job." She began patting
in some clouds to frame and echo the live oak.
"So," she said. "Do you want to talk about
it?"
He tossed his head. "I been going to Dr. Chaney for two
years, and it hasn't done me any good so far."
"Ah, but as you can see, I have strange talents and hidden
knowledge," she said, eyes twinkling. Then she was serious, sympathetic.
"There's probably nothing I can do about it, but you might feel better
after you've told me. 'This poor frame of thine is wrenched with a woeful
agony; now begin to tell thy tale, that it may leave thee free.' Sorry. Another
quote, if slightly adapted."
"Strange knowledge," he sniffed, He wiped his nose
again. He looked uncertainly from her to the woods then back. He made up his
mind.
"Yeah, sure, why not?" he said, drawing in a juddering
breath. "You're just a nice crazy lady I met in a field, who I'll probably
never see again. What do I care if I seem just as crazy to you?" He looked
around, then let himself down to sit in the dewy grass, plastic coat creaking.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"Begin at the beginning," Beth said. "Go on till
you come to the end. Then stop.” She settled herself back to her work, giving
him space to unfold, but enough attention to feel he wasn't speaking into a
vacuum.
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