Dawn of a New Day (16 page)

Mark had come to Las Vegas to see Bobby Stuart's opening at the Sands. He wasn't disappointed; it was a smash, as he had thought. The crowd had been standing and begging for more, and Bobby gave them encore after encore. He used some of the hit tunes, including, “You Can't Hurry Love,” made popular by the Supremes, and James Brown's “I Got You.” Then he did “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds and the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black.”

After the performance Mark went backstage and was finally permitted into the huge dressing room. As usual, Bobby was surrounded by his group: D. J. Heinzman, a tall, lanky man who played rhythm guitar; Ossie Peabody, black and militant, the drummer; and Jimmy Franz, small and eager with blond hair and blue eyes. He took a lot of abuse as the gofer.

Faye Harlow, a pretty young woman with reddish blond hair and gray eyes, looked as if she was high on drugs, and the rest weren't far behind.

Bobby appeared to be on something too. His eyes were bright and glassy, and his laugh was high and artificial. Finally Mark got him off to one side, and the two had a talk, of sorts, although it was hard to talk with anyone as stoned as Bobby Stuart.

“I like your writing. I read all I can get a hold of, Mark,” Bobby said, his speech slurred.

“Thanks, Bobby. I really came down here to do a piece on you.”

“Is that right? Well, go ahead. What are you going to call it?”

“Just ‘Bobby Stuart.' Thought I might give the fans an inside view of what it's like to be the acquaintance of a famous star.”

Bobby talked for some time, but much of it was disjointed, and finally Mark understood that he would get nothing out of Bobby Stuart when he was in this condition. He suggested that the two have breakfast.

“Breakfast? Man, I don't get up in time for breakfast! Maybe at noon. Come around, and we'll see.”

A sadness filled Mark as he saw the wreckage in Bobby's eyes. He got up and left, and nobody paid any attention. They were all busy with their drugs and their liquor.

“I liked the story you did on Las Vegas, Mark.” Jake Taylor was thumbing through the pages that Mark had left with him the previous day. They were sitting in Taylor's office, and now Taylor looked up and said, “I think you've got some good stuff. Not too happy with the one on Bobby Stuart though.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Mark shook his head. “I guess I'm too close to it, Jake. I talked to him twice, but I couldn't think of anything very good to write. He's changed a lot, I think, since he hit the big time.”

“It happens to most of them, especially in the rock business. How many
old
rock music stars do you know? Most of them off themselves or wind up in a nuthouse OD'd, their brains fried from drugs. Stephanie hates it. She really loves her brother.”

“Deep down he's got something good in him, but it's like he's caught in a whirlpool that's sucking him down, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

They talked for a while about Bobby Stuart, and then Jake said abruptly, “This Vietnam thing gets worse all the time. I see where U.S. jets bombed Hanoi for the first time yesterday.”

“The protests are getting stronger. I don't see how the president can take much more of it.”

“It looks like he's determined to win over there. Did you see where Muhammad Ali got indicted for draft evasion? Gonna lose his title.”

“Yeah, I saw it.” Mark shifted uncomfortably, then said, “I may get caught up in the draft, Jake.”

Taylor's eyes turned careful. “What would you think about that? Would you go, or would you run off to Canada like so many have?”

Indignantly Mark shook his head. “I'd never do that. I don't want to go, but if I get the call I'll have to.”

The two men sat there, each of them thinking about the 125,000 young American men who were already putting their lives on the line in Vietnam. They also thought of the college students who had never heard a shot fired in anger, who were burning their draft cards and protesting vociferously at every opportunity.

Finally Jake shook his head. “It's a bad time for America. It looks to me like a no-win situation.” Then he moved around and slapped Mark on the shoulder. “But I'm glad you feel like you do. I'd go myself if I wasn't an old man and didn't have a family.”

S
tanding stiffly before the easel, a brush clutched in one hand so tightly that her fingers ached, Prue stiffened her back and blinked back the tears that burned in her eyes. She was intensely aware of Kent Maxwell standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at the painting, and she was even more aware of the harshness of his voice as he continued to speak of the flaws of the painting. Despite herself, tears escaped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, then fell on the paint-smudged smock that she wore. Desperately she tried to think of something else, but Kent's voice penetrated her thoughts, and she could not shut it out.

“And don't you see that you have the colors all wrong in the hair? Look at it! It looks like a smudge where you've cleaned your brush out! The woman's hair is auburn, for heaven's sake, and you've made it a cross between a carrot red and a dull maroon. Have you learned nothing at all in all these months about mixing color?”

“I'm sorry,” Prue whispered. “I did the best I could.”

“No, you didn't do your best! You've got more in you than this, Prue, and I'm not going to put up with your slipshod ways any longer!” Reaching out over her shoulder, Maxwell snatched the brush, reached down to the palette, smeared it in the dabs of paint there, then with a rough gesture swept the brush across the hair of the woman that Prue had put on the canvas. “There,” he said, “that's the way it is! Get your highlights just here—and here. She's not wearing a wig!”

Suddenly Prue could stand it no longer. She turned and walked stiffly away, headed blindly for the door of the studio. It was late, and there were no other students, and she was exhausted not only from this day's long arduous work, but from the days, and weeks, and even months that she had thrown herself into learning the art of painting. Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she bumped into an easel containing an enormous painting, knocked it down, and as it fell with a crash she turned and attempted to catch it. She struggled to pick up the canvas and free the easel and felt Kent's hand on her arm pulling her up. She turned her face away, but he held her tightly by her forearms. “What's this?” he said with surprise. “You're not crying?”

“No! I'm not!”

But Kent had seen the tears on her cheeks, and he stood there for a moment silently. His mind flashed back over the history of her stay in Chicago. He had not been wrong, he knew, in his estimate of Prudence Deforge's talent. It was enormous, and he had come to feel that the greatest thing he could do for the world of art was to see that she developed it. This had not been an entirely happy fixation, for he had rushed her through training that would have been difficult for most students to complete in years. Every day he stood beside her, laying out her work, and at night when she wearily left the studio to go to her small apartment, he had loaded her down with books and sketch work to bring back the following morning. To him it had been a delight to see her blossom, for she was not a lazy girl.

Now, however, as she stood before him, her eyes shut, he saw the lines of strain and the dark shadows that fatigue had put under her eyes, and his conscience smote him.

“I'm sorry, Prue,” he said quietly, not releasing her arms. “Come and sit down.”

“No. I want to go home.”

“You can go home in a moment, but I need to talk to you.” He pulled her to the couch, limping heavily, then sat down. It was an old couch, three cushions badly in need of repair, and the black and gold coloring had long since faded into a general leprous gray. The studio itself was large, and all the lights were out except over Prue's easel, so that the two sat in a half darkness over beside the wall. The sound of traffic came through to them, the honking of taxis and the muffled roar of the engines that was always present in Chicago. From outside the huge windows on the north end of the studio, the lights of Chicago winked on and lit the skyline with a myriad of lights that sent a glow up to the ebony sky.

Kent fumbled in his pocket, came out with a handkerchief, and said, “Here.” She took the handkerchief, wiped the tears away, and then handed it back without a word. She was as miserable as she had ever been in her life, and at last she said, “Nothing I do ever pleases you. I just can't do it, Kent. I can't!”

Her words and the pathetic expression in her eyes as she looked at him troubled Kent, and he said quickly, “That's not true, Prue. You do many things that please me. I don't always tell you—which I should. You see, I've had so many students who don't have anything in them to give. I have to try to find something nice to say about their work, and sometimes it's a job. But with you, I see so much in you that has to come out, and I just, well—well, I forget myself. I know I'm a slave driver. I know I've asked more of you than any teacher ever ought to ask of any student, but don't you see it's because of the great desire I have to see you become all that you can.”

Prue sat there listening quietly, and she tried to think of the hours that he had given to her since she had arrived in Chicago. It was June now, 1967, and she remembered that it was almost exactly a year ago that she had left the farm and come to live in Chicago. She had been frightened by the big city, but Stephanie and Jake had been very kind to her, and she had grown closer, also, to Christie Castellano and her husband, Mario. Both these families—her relatives—had encouraged her and taken her in, and it had been Christie who found her an apartment close to the Institute. She thought, also, of how Kent had been at her side constantly, not just giving lessons, but showing her around the city through the myriad of museums and taking her to some of the shows.

“I know I'm ungrateful,” she said, “but I try so hard, and it never seems to come out right. I just can't do what you want me to do.”

Looking at her for a moment in silence, Maxwell said, “This is going to sound trite, but I'll say it anyway. Artists—most of them—have to suffer, Prue. Art, for most of us, doesn't come easy. It's like—well, it's a little bit, I think, like having a baby.” When she looked up at him in surprise, he laughed shortly. “Not that I've ever had any babies, of course, but I know the theory.”

“I don't understand what you mean.”

“Well, a baby comes in a miraculous fashion. There's nothing there, and then suddenly in the body of a woman, there's life. But that life is so small and tiny no one would even know it's there.” Kent leaned back, and his face grew intent as he tried to express himself. He had given lectures many times, but now he wanted this young woman before him to understand herself, and so he continued by saying, “That life has to grow, Prudence. The mother has to see that it stays alive, and finally after months it's born. There it is. She's holding it in her arms, nursing it, caring for it, bathing it. But it was only after nine months of waiting and after, sometimes, tremendous agony that she has that child.” Waving toward the painting that Prue had been working on, he said, “When did you get the idea for that painting?”

Prudence glanced across the room at the canvas. It was a picture of a young woman she had seen at the canning factory near Cedarville. The woman had just come from work, and her garments were stained with the juices from the berries that she had been working with, as were her hands. Prudence had taken one look at her and seen the fatigue in her face, but when the young girl saw a young man her face lit up with excitement, her eyes glowing. Prue had tried to catch that in the painting, and now she shook her head. “Why, it must have been two or three years ago, I suppose.”

“So, it's been in you all the time, and now you're trying to bring it to birth, and it's not easy. You got the hair wrong. That means you have to go back and do the hair again. It may not work.” Kent made a gesture of despair. “And I know enough about that. I've had enough malformed paintings to know that sometimes it just doesn't work, but you know what, Prudence? You paint a bad painting the same way you paint a good painting. You give it all that you have.”

Prue sat listening to him, from time to time glancing up at his face. As he talked about art he grew excited, she observed, and now she said, “Maybe I don't have whatever it is that makes a great artist. I just can't seem to get the fundamentals right, Kent.”

Maxwell considered this for a moment, then without a word rose and limped across the room. He reached the bookshelf that was cluttered with books and pamphlets of all kinds, searched for a moment, then came back with a volume in his hand. He sat down, switched on the light, and said, “Did you ever read any Robert Browning?”

“No.”

“You ought to. He speaks of art better than any man I ever saw. Let me read you this.”

He thumbed through the well-worn volume and said, “This is a poem called ‘Andrea del Sarto.' It's a poem about a real artist. One they call the faultless painter. It's a long poem and I won't read all of it. It's what's known as a dramatic monologue. That means del Sarto himself is doing the talking. He's talking to his mistress, who is not really in love with him, and he tries to explain his art. He tells her this:

“Do you understand that, Prue? What the artist is saying?”

“It sounds like he's saying he can paint whatever he wants to.”

“Exactly right! And del Sarto was called the faultless painter. When he painted something, it looked almost like a photograph of it.”

“That would be wonderful. I've seen some paintings like that.”

“But great paintings are never like a photograph.”

“They're not?”

“Why, no. They're something else. There's something in them that, despite the flaws, makes them great paintings, and the people who paint like that, I don't even call them artists. I call them photographers.” Kent turned to her, looking up from the book. “You see. There's such a thing as genius. Nobody knows what it is. How could Beethoven write a symphony when he was nine years old? Someone asked him how he did it, and he couldn't tell them. That's genius! But del Sarto knew that something was lacking in him. Oh, he was a fine craftsman. Show him a dog, and he could paint that dog to the eyelash. Show him a bowl of fruit, he could recapture it. But there was no fire, no genius in his paintings.” Looking back he said, “He goes on to say of these men that do have genius:

“Why, I think I know what that means!” Prue exclaimed. “It means he didn't have a heart!”

“Exactly! That's close enough! He goes on throughout the poem to tell how he admires these men. Even though their paintings are not technically as good as his, there's something great in them. A light and a vitality that he cannot emulate—and finally he says a line that has become sort of a motto with me, Prue. Right here. See, I've got it underlined. Read it out loud for me.”

Prue leaned over, and as she did so her loose hair brushed against Kent's cheek, and underneath the smell of paints he detected a faint fragrance that she always wore. Her arm was pressed against his, and he took a deep breath, forcing himself to listen as she spoke.

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for.” Prue turned and her eyes were wide. “What does that mean to you, Kent?”

“It means that no matter how hard I try, I'll never really get it. The best painting I ever painted wasn't as good as it should have been.” He reached over and put his arm around her shoulders. “Do you understand what I'm talking about at all, Prue?”

Prue was conscious of his arm around her. He had never, in all the months she had been under his tutelage, touched her or shown any sign of romantic notion. Now, however, her breath came somewhat shorter, for she did not know how to handle this. “I–I think I do. You drive me so hard because you want me to be the best painter I can be.”

“That's right,” Kent said quickly. He squeezed her and said, “You're the finest woman I've ever known, Prudence. Not just the talent you have, but you're the sweetest, most understanding, and most gentle young woman it's ever been my privilege to know.”

Prudence did not know how to respond to this. She felt her cheeks growing warm under his praise, and his hand tightened on her shoulder. Quickly she forced a laugh, saying, “Well, I'm sorry to be such a crybaby.” She rose suddenly. “You won't see me breaking down again. I hate weepy women.”

Maxwell stood, his face bearing some sort of emotion that he seemed to keep bottled up. “Well,” he said, “I'm glad that you don't think I'm a Simon Legree.”

“No. I'm grateful every day of my life for all you've done for me, Kent.”

“Gratitude. I
hate
that word!”

“You hate gratitude?”

“Yes. Not that I hate to give it to someone, but somehow I hate to receive it from you. I'd rather think of us in a different light.”

This seemed to Prudence to be dangerous ground, and she said, “Well, of course, we're more than teacher and student. We're good friends too.”

“You understand then that I'm just trying to bring out what God has put in you.”

This surprised Prue, for he was not a man who spoke of God often. “Do you really believe that? That God puts things in us?”

“Why, of course, I do! I'm not a pagan, Prue! I'm not a Christian either, but I've seen enough to know that men couldn't be what they are without God. Why did he choose you to put this talent into? Why did he choose me?” He shrugged his trim shoulders, saying, “I don't know the answer to these things.” Then as if the conversation troubled him, he said, “I'll take you out to dinner. It's late.”