Pentimento by Noah Goldsher

Noah Goldzer

Pentimento

My terrific husband left alone up I-15 north leaving Salt Lake City at six in the morning on November the 26th. It hadn’t snowed but an unseemly chill condensed his breath and fogged up the windshield of his paradise blue Toyota Tacoma. He rubbed the glass with his hands, cozy and warm in the burgundy gloves my mother had knit from a double skein of Bernet’s baby blanket tiny. As the cab of his truck warmed in the light of the rising sun, he began to shed his winter clothes; overcoat, hat, scarf—also gifts from my mother—onto the passenger seat. He’d decided in haste to cut his distinct long hair and shave his familiar goatee, the absence of which let his boyish cheeks and playful green eyes shine like I hadn’t seen since before we were married. As he checked the lane behind him in his rear-view mirror, he spotted a blotch of red on his otherwise uniform teal collar, which could not be lifted with saliva alone. The Tacoma’s right-side brake light was busted—he already knew that—with a crack down the face of its transparent protector. The lights looked funny that way; like two narrow, angry eyes on the opposite ends of a wide face staring backwards, one flared red and the other shut for good. But my husband couldn’t stop: he had a long drive ahead of him, little time and, after all, it was Thanksgiving.

The first cop to pull him over was an Ogden City officer on his way home, having finished the nightshift. He flashed his cruiser’s lights but let the siren sleep and the two cars drifted a mile or so down the road until a wide enough shoulder presented itself to lean on. No doubt longing for the scents of sweet yams and a stuffed turkey in his oven, the officer, an older, rather portly gentlemen, scampered toward the Tacoma to conclude his duty.

“Good morning officer, and Happy Thanksgiving,” my husband announced, looking back at the policeman’s approach.

“Good morning,” said the officer, arriving at the driver’s-side window. “A Happy Thanksgivin’ to you, too. ‘Try not to hold you up too long. Can I have your license and registration, please?” The documents were already resting between my husband’s fingers, ready to hand over. The officer flipped through them quickly, noted the driver was a Utahn—like himself—and not much else. “Son, do you know why I stopped you?” “Oh, I’m guessing it’s the taillight, ain’t it?” said my husband. “That’s right.” The officer walked down, peered over for a quick glance at the problem and determined it simply. “Looks like you took on some damage there.” “Yup, that’s right,” my husband repeated. “A rock or somethin’ kicked up from my driveway this mornin’. I wanna get it fixed as soon as I can but, well-” “It’s the holiday,” said the officer, anticipating the end of his motorist’s sentence. “Not much you can do about it today.” “Exactly. Not much I can do about it today.” “Well,” said the officer, handing back my husband’s identifications, “bring it in to a shop first thing tomorrow, ya hear?” “I’ll tell you what officer: got the tools and a bulb at home, I’ll fix it myself after the big meal.” “Ha!” the officer laughed and shook his head. “I’m not good for nothin’ after Thanksgivin’ dinner. Just see to that taillight when you can, son.”

“Yes sir,” answered my terrific husband. We don’t have car parts at home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him fix something before.

After the officer let him on his way, my husband drove for another half hour before pulling off I-15 to get a coffee in Tremonton. A friendly, eager voice greeted him through the speaker of the drive-through’s plastic billboard menu. “Welcome to McDonald’s, Happy Thanksgiving, how may I help you?” “Two sausage McMuffins, two hash-browns and a coffee—large, black, with two sugars.” “You want two sausage McMuffins, two hash-browns and a large black coffee with two sugars,” repeated the voice. “Anything else?” “No, just that.” “Okay, that’ll be $6.69. Drive around please.”

At the window, a slender young redhead planted the Styrofoam safety top on his coffee and looked into his cab with wide, green eyes. Her name was Harper. “Large black coffee, two sugars,” she said, holding out her hand for payment. “Uh, that’s four sugars honey,” said my husband. “Four?” Harper looked down at her notepad which, in her fine penmanship, clearly read two. “That’s right, four. I have a lot of cooking to do tonight. Gonna need all the energy I can get.” Harper scratched her chin with the butt of her pen for a moment. She looked at her customer—his youthful features paired with a confident, mature man’s smile tilting back at her—before deciding to scratch out the end of the order and re-write, four sugars. “You do the cooking, huh?” she asked, ripping off the tops of the extra packets. “Every year. I’m a family man, you know. God bless my wife, I love her, but if she could fit the turkey in the microwave, she would nuke it instead.” Harper giggled. The sugar drifted from its paper pouch and dissolved into roasted darkness. “Well, that’s very sweet. I bet most men think it’s beneath them, a woman’s work, you know?” “Oh, that’s just silly. I like to make my wife happy is all,” said my terrific husband. “She’s at home in bed the poor thing. Sick, like usual.” Those are lies too. Lies? Yes, he knows they aren’t true. I cook Thanksgiving every year—he invites his friends but not my family. And I’m at home but not in bed. In the garage. For once, I am sick, but not that way. I’m hurt. Lying on the floor. There’s blood behind my head. I can feel myself breathing but I can’t hear it. My eyes are closed and yet, I see a clean canvas, painted with visions of him in my mind. I hear him speak, I see him move, I feel his intentions through brush strokes as they form him into reality.

My husband took off his knitted baby blanket gloves and handed Harper a ten-dollar bill. Their fingertips touched briefly at first, then again for longer as she dropped the change into his cupped palm. His hands were wide and firm—maybe like her daddy’s—and he only needed one to clutch both his coffee and the big, white paper bag his order came in.

Harper tossed in a few extra napkins and ketchup packets, just in case he needed them. She’s a watercolor—bright, unfinished, childlike. He’s oil. “Have a good Thanksgiving,” she said. “You too... Harper,” my husband replied, staring a little too long at the plastic name tag above her left breast. “Say, I hate to pry but, why are you working today? Shouldn’t you be at home?” “Oh, my shift ends in a couple hours. My boyfriend’s coming to pick me up after.” “Ah. A boyfriend.” “Yup. Say, I hope your wife feels better. Tell her I think she’s a lucky woman.” “What? Oh, right, sure.”

My head throbs with pain. Strange, thinking makes it feel better. Who am I? My name is Marjorie. I was nineteen when I met my husband. He was twenty-eight. We had a shotgun marriage. I took a terrible fever in the third month and lost the baby. Perhaps that was God telling me what I needed to hear. Or maybe it was just my body. Instead, I listened to my husband. He convinced me, like he did of so many things, that it was better if no one knew, since they would surely think me a tramp—even my own mother, who had her suspicions but never raised them aloud. I was LDS, and he said he was too, though he mumbled his way through every hymn. It didn’t matter. On Saturdays, he took the bishop golfing and he coached youth baseball. He was a hit. I gaze deeply at it now; the history of my life, like a kind of vivid mural, filling in from the corners, grim but sincere, like a Courbet or a Millet. I am the nude woman gawked at. I am the peasant in the field with the sheep. There are no embracing lovers. That isn’t this story—young love and how it all went wrong. Things went wrong the instant he noticed me. The moment he spots anyone, anything, it becomes wrong. No, this is the story of a liar, a monster that everybody likes—Manet’s Absinthe Drinker, a parasite posing as a knight and painted larger-than-life.

From Tremonton, he took I-84 going west until he crossed the Idaho border around a quarter after eight in the morning. The sun cleared the last bit of frost still sticking to the grassy plains on either side of the highway and its orange rays poured through the rear windshield behind my husband, pleasant and warm on the back of his head.

He ate as he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other dripping grease from his breakfast. On the pile of hand-made winter wear beside him he tossed a great mess of crumpled napkins, sticky wrappers and squished, red ketchup packets. The nylon of his safety belt pinched him below the chin as he leaned over to sip his coffee, so he unstrapped it. About an hour later, after his meal was well digested, my terrific husband got pulled over yet again, this time by an Idaho State Patrolman, on the long stretch of road leaving the tiny pioneer town of Glenns Ferry. This officer, a fit, clean-cut kid, yet untethered by a wife and children, and still fresh at the start of his day, took his time with the procedure. He punched the Tacoma’s plates into his machine and eye’d the DMV photo that popped up, complete with goatee and shoulder-length hair. He wrote down the place of address in his little notepad along with the registration date and my husband’s name. Then, with his stoic hand resting on his holster, as training dictated, he stepped to, closed his driver’s side door and tread cautiously toward my husband’s cab. “Good morning officer and Happy Thanksgiving,” my husband called out as the officer approached. The brush stroke of his eyebrow flurried unfavorably—it had worked the first time, why not try it again? But the young man didn’t reply in kind. He waited until he was at the window, one hand still at his side, before he calmly said, “sir, it’s not a good idea to shout at a police officer.” “But I was only wishing you a Happy Thanks-” “Even then. It’s best to be safe. Now, take your keys out of the ignition and slowly hand me your license and registration.” “Of course,” said my husband. His saturation dimmed and his sharp edges rounded on the canvas in my mind, as if he were hiding himself in a guiltless gray. The young officer studied the ID’s carefully, matching them without issue to those from his car’s computer. The hair was different, and the beard too. He looked rather more ordinary in person than on his license, but it was definitely his. The officer handed back the ID’s and took out his pen and notepad. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” My husband straightened up in his seat. “Is it my taillight, sir? I do apologize for that.” “That and you’re not wearing your seat belt.” The officer took a roundabout approach toward the brake light on the off-chance my husband, thinking himself a cop-killer, turned his ignition and put his foot down.

“What happened?” the officer asked. “Oh, I imagine some unmonitored children did that, perhaps with a baseball bat or some other ‘misa-appropriate’ toy. They’ve been at it for some time, defiling all the mailboxes in the neighborhood.” The officer scribbled something down. “Did you report it?” “No sir, not yet, not with the holiday and all. I figured it best not to bother my local constabulary until tomorrow. Besides, I have no shortage of quandaries to solve today.” “Care to expand?” “It’s my wife—she’s bedridden with a fever. I’m trying to hurry back to take care of her.” More scribbling. “Utah’s back that way,” said the officer, pointing in the opposite direction. “Yes sir. She’s with her mother up in Portland.” The officer tilted his neck to get a better view inside the cab. “And you stopped for breakfast?” He pointed his pen at the McMess in the passenger’s seat. “I’m afraid that’s my big Thanksgiving feast. Family comes first, you know—had no choice but to cancel dinner on account of my wife’s illness.”

I’m back in Salt Lake, at our house in Sugar House. I think the bleeding has stopped but still, I cannot move. He thinks I’m dead, or otherwise I’d be sitting in a room at St. Marks, listening to him spin some yarn for the doctors. Someone will rescue me soon, one of our neighbors or my mother, coming over with a pumpkin pie in hand. They have to. But where is he going? The painting does not tell me, not yet. I can see what he wants me to see but there is more. He can hide his hues, but I know this model, I know his face. And this style, it’s clear, unidealized, truthful. It’s mine. And the fever, it’s back too. The canvas expands. I can see the thankful customers down at the Walmart Photo Center in Millcreek where I used to work. I can see myself at parties with my old college friends, having too much to drink, getting naked and and painting on each other’s backs. I was an undergrad at the College of Fine Arts, University of Utah, with a 3.7 GPA. No one in my family had ever graduated better than high school. I loved art history—its politics and waves of revolution, giving way to new modes of viewing the world.

Most of my friends did nudes or landscapes—the Wasatch Mountains, Bridal Veil, Mirror Lake—an easy excuse to see tits or get out of class. I sat on the porch and painted the mailman in short bursts every day as he went on his routine. I painted the crowds that gathered outside Temple Square in the winter, impatiently pushing to see the giant Christus replica. I painted my mother, sitting in her beige, cushioned recliner, crocheting a granny square afghan for no one in particular. Painting, school, my friends and partying were my life. I was happy. I was thoughtful. I was aware. It was never love—he didn’t even like me. My job paid poorly, so why not quit? Wouldn’t you be happier at home? My paintings were pretentious, outdated. No one goes for that kind of stuff anymore. My grades were good, but it was art school, not real school. They’ll give anyone an A so long as they pay tuition. He kept trying to get me pregnant and was quick to anger at my excuses. Your mother wants you to have one, you know that. Why don’t you want to make her happy? I hated guns so he bought six of them—put two in his truck, three in the bedroom closet beside my shoes and one on his person, concealed as the good law allows. I couldn’t stand country music or westerns, so we watched them all the time and the radio was always set to KSOP-FM, “Utah’s #1 Country Station”. He knew none of the words, never hunted, didn’t have a single pair of cowboy boots before he knew I couldn’t stand the sound their spurs made. And he always wanted mt to paint him. That was impossible. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, keep his shape the same, couldn’t stop changing shifting in the shade, altering his inner self. I’m just sitting here, he’d say, but that was never the case—he was always doing something else, emitting some illusion, reflecting from some imitation of real life. He was already a painting; a cheap replica. How does one make genuine a forgery? He hated my friends, too. So full of themselves. Mostly queers, except of course the ones that just want to screw you. They don’t really like you anyway. You said it yourself, they just want to see tits. He used me against me. His lot were the type our bishop would have run out from his pews—bikers, truckers, guys from those anti-government “patriot” groups. My husband had an unemployed cousin who he claimed was the boss of one, the Oregon Militia something. It never bothered him that all his friends hit on me. He had a hot, young wife. Good for the ego. We were “invited” to a gangbang. He dragged me there and after, bought me a single pink carnation with an unsigned card. I was too ashamed to see my friends after that, to finish school, to show my face.

He might have told them. He might have told everyone. I dropped out and put my easels in storage. My mother’s phone calls grew infrequent. Instead, she sent stuff: shopping bags, potholders, Afghan throws and winter clothes—pleasantly-colored cushions to pad the walls I might have otherwise broken through. I’d become a housewife, in need of housewife things. Outside of that, she didn’t know who I was anymore. Neither did I. He had the job so the house, the car and the truck were his. He was the husband, so my hobbies were his, our friends were his, my protection was his, all our money was his, my body was his and so was my name. I had no income, no education and no life. What else is left of a person? The inside? Instinct? That little voice in the back of your head that says, ‘get out of there? That voice is wrong, he told me. Your forehead’s hot or you’re not feeling good. That’s just the fever talking. The fever, talking. I was always sick with it, he said, a kind of mental sick—and had best stop thinking and go lie down. But it was my body that told the truth. Fever isn’t sickness—it’s conservation, it’s how your system fights infection, destroys intruders and heals itself. A fever is an alarm, the billowing flame of a lighthouse in a storm.

“I’m sorry to hear all that,” said the young officer, betraying his own instinct to heap sympathy upon my husband. “I hope your wife feels better soon.”

“Thank you, officer. That’s very kind of you,” said my husband. “I’ll still have to write you a ticket though.” “Yes sir, I understand. I’ll have that light fixed as soon as I get to where I’m going. Believe me.” “See that you buckle up too. It’s best to be safe.” With that, the patrolman ripped a citation from his pad, tucked away his pen and returned to his vehicle. My husband furrowed his brow and let loose a fuck you from under his breath. His hues darkened once again. He read the fine. It was for $25.00.

It’s all on the canvas; a thousand little details, each awry in some way. I can see his superfluous lies—where I left my keys or when I did the laundry last, the stories about my friends who were trash talking behind your back, my taste, at once somehow both trashy and pretentious, and my quirks which were all objectively annoying, and no one liked. There were so many moments that didn’t happen like that and so many unique parts of myself I was proud of that actually, you got from me.

If another man looked at me, clearly, I was being a whore. If they looked away, it was because I needed to lose a few pounds. Once he had his stamp at the end of my name, I was no good at anything he didn’t want me doing and the best at anything he could take credit for. My job was to stay at home, avoid eye contact with the mailman, have dinner ready, and wear whatever pink piece of string or spiky leather garbage he was into that week. And he hid it all, safe and secure, right here where no one would find it: in my head. There’s a gash in that head now, paint pouring out, and my body’s alight with rage. The canvas is showing me my life and the fever’s keeping me from death. What happened to the brake light on that truck? He’d probably say it was just an accident but for once, he isn’t telling the story.

After that, my terrific husband passed by Boise and through Nampa, Idaho around noon, looking for any car dealership or auto-body shop he could find with the lights on. There were none. An hour later he crossed the Oregon border at Ontario. His stomach started aching, and that other thing too. The sign for Exit 335 to Huntington designated itself as a rest stop so he pulled in, gathered up all the garbage from the passenger seat and made for the bathroom. As he left, he noticed an old payphone dug into a wooden booth nearby. The charge was fifty cents. He tossed his waste into a bin, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his wallet and dialed. “Hey. Yeah, it’s me, your cousin. And to you too. No, actually, I’m heading to you. No, I can’t say more. That’s good. About four hours. No problem. See you soon.” The son of a bitch. He actually said something true. The future sketches itself in an outline of chalk: he plans to come back here with his crazy-ass cousin, a bunch of good ol’ boys, a tarp, some shovels, bleach, and who knows what else, before midnight. They’ll get rid of me before sun-up, before the mailman comes, before my mother has a chance to stop by with Thanksgiving leftovers. Well I can see you, do you know that, you asshole? I know what you’re planning! An elderly couple shrugged their shoulders and recoiled as they walked by, as if shaken by my outburst. They’re traveling for the holiday and I’ve disturbed them somehow. The wife turns to her husband, just another family man late for dinner, what else is new? Everything my husband says is innocent. Everything is a suggestion or a half-compliment or not really what he meant. You old people, you be fooled if you like but I won’t be, not anymore. That glass is shattered.

Eyes closed, body prone on the concrete floor of my garage, I scream. A drop of blood escapes my mouth to the canvas and lands on my husband’s forehead. He doesn’t notice it, but it’s there, a tiny speck of red acrylic, as if it were dabbed from the tip of a rigger brush. I scream again but he can’t hear me. He never could and he never wanted to. It doesn’t matter. I know just what he would say. You’re just imagining things. Unconscious people can’t talk and they sure as shit can’t see what anyone else is doing. Your forehead is hot. Your face is red. You’ve got fever again. Lay down and I’ll take care of you. But it can’t go that way this time. I’m dead if it does. If I could only show that old couple, or better yet, the police, the details of this canvas. I see the danger that awaits me but I cannot move to help myself. Why haven’t they stopped him? They need to stop him, maybe kill him, that terrific husband of mine.

From the rest stop, he continued north-west on I-84 through Pleasant Valley, Baker City, North Powder, and La Grande. I see all the signs, the road, the other drivers. In Oregon, the prairie broke upon rising hills and dense coniferous forests which encroached above and all around, shielding my husband’s cab from the eye of the sun. Cars passed by or he passed them—a cable truck with its bucket crane folded in front, a semi carrying Utahn computer parts to Seattle, a white campervan hauling a singing family of five. None of them had any idea who he was, where he was going or what he planned to do to me. Again I shouted to them through the canvas. The semi seemed to swerve for a moment, and the camper driver wiped my hot perspiration from his face, but my husband’s wave and smile drew far more attention. The semi blew its horn. The campervan honked a little tune. My husband seemed nice to them. A good driver, pleasant looking too. Oh, and the poor guy had a busted brake light on Thanksgiving. 84 split in two and he took the left half, Route 244, into Oregon’s mountainous interior. There were fewer cars out there; more trees. The time was ten after three in the afternoon. Families were setting their tables for the big meal or stretching out and watching the NFL pre-game. They were happy or miserable, arguing about the last election or next year’s primaries, complaining about work, complimenting the canned cranberry sauce or introducing their boyfriends, girlfriends and themfriends to mom, dad and their stink-eyed grandpas. They had at least one thing in common. They were all alive, all warm in their homes, off the road, safe, and oblivious of my husband.

Only one state trooper was watching that stretch of highway on Thanksgiving. She was a thirty-nine-year old sergeant and two-time divorcee. Her kids were spending the holiday with their dad’s family, and her mother—whom she visited that morning—was asleep with her electric blanket and a dollop of mashed potato on her chin at the Timber Valley Care Center in Pendleton. Her name was Noreen Fenster-Welch, she had three misuse-of-force complaints in her file and an ounce of cheap whiskey in her coffee. Noreen spotted my husband coming around the corner near Pilot Rock at twenty above the speed limit and punched both her siren and her red and blues. She never even noticed his brake light. The shoulders were shallow, so he drifted down the road for a couple miles, looking back at her in his rear-view mirror, ignoring her commotion as much as he was able. A woman cop, he muttered, reaching a third time for his ID’s. When the embankment dropped, my husband pulled over, half his tires on the pavement, the other half in the dirt. He looked back to spot the cop’s figure as she exited her car and didn’t notice he was pushing aside the snub-nosed revolver in his glove compartment until it fell with a clunk on the floor. Darting forward to grab it, he was caught in the neck by his safety belt, which yanked him backward. Motherfucker. He unbuckled, gathered the IDs, reached for the gun and“Sir, drop the pistol.” Noreen stood beside his window with her gun pointed at his neck. “Sorry officer, I was just-” “Drop the pistol!” she repeated. I scream into the canvas again. Shoot him, Noreen! He’s got a gun. He’s gonna kill somebody. But my husband, always knowing what’s best for him, quickly let

go.

“Now slowly step out of the vehicle.” Without making a peep, he opened the latch and stepped out of the cab, raising his hands high into the air. Blessed, as always, he’d only seen these things in the movies. Shoot him anyway, Noreen. The painting shows me what David and your father did to you. They got away with it too. This is your chance for revenge. Put a bullet in him. Noreen stood four feet away with her Smith and Wesson trained on my terrific husband.

She twitched; a kink in her neck, a squint in her eyelid, an itch behind her ear. She can hear me. She can hear something. Noreen, help me, he’s trying to kill me. If you let him go, he’ll drive up to see his dead-beat cousin, explain everything, and drive back here to Salt Lake to finish and bury me. No one would know. It would he him telling the story again, like it always was. He’d just say I took off, that I was crazy, sick, that I’d threatened to leave him for years. Of course I threatened it. It was him who drove me crazy, him who gave me this blazing fever. Noreen, this is our chance. It’s Thanksgiving. There’s no one around for fifty miles. It would be your word against no one’s. No he-said, she-said bullshit, not this time. You have the final word. Make it goodbye, asshole. “Officer, I have a legal permit for that weapon,” said my husband. “It just fell out of the glove box while I was looking for my license.” Oh sure, tell the truth when it suits you, you bastard. “I’m just a family man trying to make it home for Thanksgiving. I was hoping to make it by five...” he slowly turned his wrist and glanced at his watch. “Still could.” His lips dipped into his jowls and his eyes widened, bright colors filled his form, soft flourishes swirled the brush across his face; a big, furry puppy dog, noble and kind. No. Fuck that. This is my canvas. I grab the brush and slash at his face with crimson and brown. The colors seem to hurt him—he winced and growled. This canvas; this style, unidealized and true, it’s mine. I have been painting it all along. The pistol in Noreen’s hand started to shake. I take the brush to her and draw out the barrel of her gun. There, now it’s certain to blow him away. With a long dab and two sets of new lines, I spread her stance to withstand the recoil. Then I dip the bristles in yellow and swirl it with orange and red—a muzzle flash, the last thing my husband should see in this world. But Noreen’s hand is still shaking. She’s afraid, afraid to kill. I could take that away from her, draw her conscience clean and her aim steady. But what would happen to Noreen afterward, after I’ve stopped painting her, stopped making her my subject? Would she be able to live with what I made her do? If I change her, will she be like me, trapped in a still life forever? This is a terrific power. A terrible power. If it was his, he would gladly use it against her. He did far more to me with less. She does not deserve that. Noreen, I’m sorry. I put down my brush. In a heartbeat, Sergeant Fenster-Welch shook off her daze, eased back the trigger of her weapon and holstered it in her belt. She took in a deep breath.

“It’s okay sir. Open carry is legal here in Oregon. I guess you spooked me is all. Seems it was just an honest mistake.” “Yes officer. I think it’s safe to say we spooked each other just then,” my husband said. “Do you have your license and registration?” “Sure do. They’re on the passenger seat.” What’s the use, Noreen? They won’t tell you anything. A driver’s license doesn’t say “wife-beater” or “gas-lighter” or “narcissistic sociopath”. The State of Utah, of any state, doesn’t care about those things. It doesn’t test for them like blood types. None of that is written in the bottom right hand corner. Instead, it says, “organ donor”. Noreen handed back his ID’s and wrote my husband a ticket for speeding. He volunteered the brake light. She, still shaken, pretended to care and let him go with another warning. Three police stops. His loses: $190.00 and one wife.

There was just seventy miles to go before he reached his cousin’s compound outside Lonestone, Oregon; population 22 people and 340 firearms. No police roamed the roads between them. It was four o’clock. My husband put away his IDs and his revolver, strapped his safety belt across his chest and drove on, carefully. Route 244 tightened and became NF Road 053 as he passed into Umatilla National Forest, the western woodland of the Blue Mountains. Lewis and Clark passed through there on their way to the Pacific. So did the travelers of the Oregon Trail. They found gold and silver in Umatilla, fresh water, strong lumber, elk, moose, big-horn sheep, wild turkeys, salmon and trout—a natural landscape. The forest’s colors appealed to me, so I played with them as my husband drove by; adding a flourish here, a dab of paint there, to form a brewing storm cloud, an aching old tree, and endless tangles of thorny vines stretching every which way. I threw a hungry vulture into the sky and watched it circle above his slow-moving Toyota. I made the pine branches wave goodbye as he passed. As he drove towards the setting sun, I engulfed it in a sanguine glow, waiting for him. Looking down, I see a quaint yellow stripe kept him in the right lane. There was no shoulder, so a knee-high railing stood guard to keep drivers from veering into the shallow ditch on the roadside. The pavement itself was smooth, having scarcely been touched and being far too small for large vehicles. I’ll have none of that.

A little turpentine and a palette knife, summoned in my mind, will do the trick. The road wasn’t smooth: no, it was rough, with many bumps and potholes, accounting for years of erosion and neglect. And there was no railing at all—not for such a desolate route—only an inch or two of gravel separating NFR 053 from a sudden, six foot drop on either side. Rickety firs towered over my husband’s cab, some longing to snap free and stretch their limbs cross the road. I don’t need Noreen for this. I don’t need anyone. I can flurry my brush over the sidewalls of his tires and suddenly, they’re sucking nails. Are they going to argue? Or maybe I’ll plunge that vulture through his windshield, splatter his face in claws, feathers and shards of glass. No one really likes them anyway. Or better yet, the mountain itself—such a tired old soul—it should really lie down and crush his truck under an abyss of granite and dirt. There’s no law against a mountain doing that. That’d be just an accident. None of this is my style, I know. This isn’t mundane, every day, perhaps not even truthful. An avalanche is a force majeure, and I am not God. But they do happen. The famous disasters, captured in ink, happened both in real life and an artist’s imagination. Vesuvius really did erupt and killed thousands. London really did burn, and half the city was destroyed. My husband really did all those things to me. And it’s Thanksgiving. He’s the only one on the road. The family man. There’s no way of knowing how long my fever will last. I may be dead in an hour or in a day. But first, I’m going to finish this painting.