Stony River (54 page)

“Not where I come from.” Willy spooned in more sugar. “As I was saying—before I discovered I was drinking a hayfield…and quite possibly some little tiny cows—” he gave a polite cough, “your painting can take you as far as you want to go. But you need education and experience, and you need to know the right people. There are people you should meet—make your name familiar to—if you want to get your career off to the right start. I know a lot of artists. If you have a desire to be successful, I can help you.”

The great William C. Calihan offering his services! Sevana was exceedingly touched. “I
do
want to be successful, Willy—as successful as you.”

“Then it’s agreed. I’ll tuck you under my wing…my protégée, you know,” he said airily. “I’ll introduce you to the art world—get your career off to the right start. You’ll see things better after you’ve started getting around.”

“It sounds very gratifying, I’ll admit.”

“It will be, I guarantee.” He took his cup to the kitchen sink. “Thanks for the lawn clippings.” On his way out, he startled her by bending to kiss her lightly on the cheek.

“One more thing, Sevana—” he turned in the open doorway as she followed to see him out. “You obviously have no regard for the prairie, and I can’t let that go by. Believe me, there are many beautiful places here to appreciate. You must allow me to show you some of them.”

She smiled at him as he stood framed by all the stars lavished across the incalculably wide night sky. Maybe he was right. There were never such extravagant celestial displays within the confines of the mountains. “It would be a pleasure, Willy,” she said, shutting the door behind him.

CHAPTER 36

Willy was not long in carrying out his intention to show Sevana the countryside. The very next day after work he took her on a drive to an acre-size lake close to town. They strolled around it on a path under a row of stately cottonwoods. No one else was there. Sevana tried to skip a rock from the grassy shore—but either she had lost the knack or else the stone wasn’t the right shape. Willy hooted at her efforts, but she noticed he didn’t try it himself. From there they drove to a waterfront park down in the riverbreaks. They walked along the rocky shoreline in the setting sun and spotted a great blue heron out on a gravel-and-driftwood bar.

At the same time, Willy launched a campaign to broaden her association with art on every level. He passed on to her all the literature he received in the business mail, and continually challenged her by including her in every decision around the shop. He privately analyzed the pictures that came into the store—acquainting her with not only the technical strengths and weaknesses of the other artists, but also his personal sentiments of the like of Thad Helding’s prolific scenes, and how hard it was to sell pictures of barns and haystacks to a community who looked out daily on the same. He tried to help Sevana appreciate Jillian’s modernistic style and use of color, but in all the time Sevana worked at the shop, she could never reconcile herself to it: if the subject wasn’t recognizable, to her it wasn’t art—it was just an exercise in design. And when he received word of Chace Woirheye’s upcoming art show in Taber next month, he seized upon it as another opportunity to further her education. It wouldn’t be a large or spectacular show, he warned, but she needed to expand her horizons, and anything would help. He asked her to reserve that evening to attend it with him.

“Of course I will,” Sevana said immediately—at which response Willy went whistling into the back room to finish his painting.

Later in the day she was dusting picture frames in the quiet shop when she heard an exclamation, a string of swear words, and the thud of something hitting the wall. She put down the feather duster and went to look into the back room. Willy’s hair was raked by distraught fingers until it stood rampant, and his paints lay scattered where he’d hurled his art case against the wall.

“What’s the matter, Willy?” she asked, unable to conceal all her amusement.

“The riverbank is still not right,” he said with gritted teeth. “I’ve painted it
three times
, and it’s
still not right
.”

“Well, Willy,” she said brightly, “don’t give up. You’ve got the talent to be a great artist, you just need to persevere.”

But instead of taking the joke, he narrowed his eyes and stalked out of the room. She watched him depart in dismay. She had assumed he would see the humor of it, but apparently he’d been far more serious than she thought. She should have been more sensitive to him, she chided herself; she should have taken the scattered paints as a warning.

She was busy logging in Audree’s latest sand-rippled entry when he came back. She glanced at him timidly, but he didn’t look her way at all as he went to the back room. However, at closing he emerged cheerfully enough, announcing he had succeeded that time. He invited her back for her opinion.

Sevana followed him to the classroom ready to heap praise on anything she saw, but her commendation was genuine as she viewed the finished result. “It’s perfect, Willy! All those different shades of gold!”

“It is, isn’t it?” He tucked his paintbox under his arm with an appealing look. “Friday night. Let’s close the shop and head out to the Roadhouse. I need a diversion after a week of work.”

“No—thanks.” Sevana found it difficult to turn him down when he looked at her as if they shared something no one else knew about. “I—have a lot of work to do for class.”

“Even if the teacher gives you permission to take the evening off?” he persisted. But she wouldn’t change her mind, so he left alone in his car.

Next morning Willy fit his picture with a gold frame that brought out all its highlights, and hung it on the wall where it shone like a small luminary among the other works. “It’s beautiful.” Sevana admired it again. “It’s too pretty to sell.”

“If I kept every picture I liked, I’d never sell anything,” said Willy. “That’s the trouble with painting.”

By lunchtime it was gone. Sevana was a little sad, but Willy took it in stride. “River’s still there. I’ll have to paint me another sometime.” But at present he had something else in mind. He was going out into the country Sunday to paint an old shack he knew about, and asked her along. “You can watch me paint, maybe pick up a few pointers—see a few of the sights while you’re at it,” he posed the scenario.

Sevana agreed at once, even though it meant missing church. She didn’t want to turn down an offer of private instruction from such a fine artist—and besides, it sounded like fun.

Willy came for her late Sunday morning and drove into the prairie on a wide dirt road. He was in a high mood, pointing out scenes that caught his eye. And the unfiltered light of that October day did show off the plain to advantage—the dry grasses rippling in windy waves across the sun-cured fields, and an occasional leaf tree ablaze in yellow perfection against the endless blue of the sky.

“It’s fall all over again,” Sevana exulted. “I’ve seen the glory twice this year—once in the mountains and once here.”

“If you were in the mountains now, it would already be winter,” Willy was quick to point out. “The prairie has many advantages—short winters, clear skies, open views. Look at those far-reaching lines. Isn’t it peaceful?”

“It is nice.” Sevana could find a legitimate appeal in the spacious, windswept land.

Another five miles down the road Willy pulled over. Set beyond a post-and-wire fence, the hollow shell of a shed was visible among a group of aspen trees, their lemon-colored leaves fluttering like so many swallowtail butterflies. A rusty wagon tongue stood to one side. When Sevana looked closely, she could see traces of a long-lost road leading through the fieldgrass. “I can see why you wanted to paint it.” The wood of the dilapidated building had weathered into dramatic, contrasting streaks of charcoal, walnut, honey, and mahogany.

“It caught my eye while I was out here painting those wagonwheels.” Willy looked wide-awake. “And now’s the time to do it, while the trees are at their prime.”

He fetched the things from the back—Sevana taking his art case so he could manage the easel and canvas. Then, loaded down with the bulky equipment, they approached the fence.

“We have to go through it,” said Willy. “Technically we’re trespassing, but there’s so much land out here, nobody cares.”

Gingerly they wriggled under the barbed wire, gathered up all the supplies they’d sent through first, and trudged on through the field. “If anybody saw us, they’d say we were crazy,” Sevana said, laughing, a little worried they might get caught.

“I already have the reputation,” Willy said glibly. “You’re the only one who has to worry.”

When he’d set up his easel, he began to paint without any preliminary sketching. From her perch on the splintery wagon tongue, Sevana marveled at the magic of his strokes, the sweeping manner in which things appeared under his brush. After a while she opened her sketchbook and drew the outline of the shack. She’d never painted a building before, but watching Willy made her want to try.

The warmth of the sunshine was welcome, for there was a coolness in the breeze to remind them it was late in the year. At times it kicked up bits of grass and weed seeds into the paint, so that Willy had to flick them out. When the shack stood completed on the canvas, he stopped to rub his cold hands together. “I’d say the season for outdoor painting is almost over,” he muttered.

They improvised a picnic on the wagonwheels, eating the baguettes, smoked cheese, and dry salami Willy had conjured, shamanlike, from an inside pocket of his painting case. Then he pried the tops from two miniature bottles of wine, handed her one, and went back to work detailing the background.

By the time the sun was rolling down in the sky, he had finished most of the picture. He put in a few strokes to remind him where the foreground trees were to go, and dashed in a section of the grass so he could use the right color later. The rest, he said, he could finish at home.

“You paint so well,” Sevana murmured. “I’ve never known anyone who can paint such pictures, and in so short a time.”

“You are a picture yourself, Sevana.” Willy was concentrating on her face instead of the bottle of turpentine he was capping. “Your features are delicate, yet strong, and your hair is the same color as the wild wheat. I wish I could paint you as easily as I do this scene.”

Sevana smiled, but she was suddenly far away, thinking of another time when her hair had been compared to the golden grass.

When everything was repacked in the car, with the wet picture nestled carefully on top—for Willy was a purist, and insisted on oils even if it meant extra inconvenience—they drove back to town. Nearing the crossroad, where the church stood in the satin-yellow afterglow of a cloudless sunset, Willy looked her way. “What say we head out to the Roadhouse for dinner?”

“I—I was planning to go to church this evening,” Sevana said, caught off guard. She turned her head to see who was already parked there as they passed. “But why don’t you come with me? It’s kind of a social tonight—Mr. Stackpole’s 90th birthday, I think. David ordered a big cake.”

“Sounds like a good time,” Willy said, speeding on toward her house. “Thanks—but I think Len and Ralf are expecting me out at the Roadhouse.”

Sevana went to church and enjoyed the social, but ducked out early before David could find her a ride. He had dropped several hints that he was not entirely easy about her walking home from evening services—although that modest city with its small-town air felt quite tame to her in comparison to the hikes she had taken in the mountains with cougars and bears behind every tree. But it was not just to avoid a ride she left so soon. The idea of painting the shed was still with her, and she wanted to try it while it was fresh in her mind. It was merely an experiment, and she painted quickly, almost carelessly, to see how it would turn out. The resulting structure was so true-to-life it amazed her.

She was about to surround her weathered shack with grass and aspens when an idea swept her away. Soon the shack was perched on a boulder field, and behind it rose the silhouettes of barren crags and a haunted, wind-torn snag. Then she splashed the apricot of sunrise across the horizon, and on the rocks and roof of the hut. It was after midnight when she finished, but she was too happy to be tired. It had been pure recreation. And she had made a breakthrough in her painting: she had painted something as unfamiliar as a building, and succeeded.

She took it to work in the morning, for she knew Willy deserved much of the credit—not only in his example of how to do it, but also in the dispelling of her doubts. “I see you lost no time moving that shack to the mountains,” he wisecracked, but he was obviously pleased. When Mr. Larkin dropped by, Willy showed it to him like the proud teacher he was. Sevana was surprised at how sincerely the retired officer complimented her. This, coming from someone beside Willy, encouraged her the more.

With this success behind her, things began to improve at art class. Fortified by Willy’s confidence in her ability and the confidence she was gaining in herself, she was no longer so afraid to try and fail, and try again. She grew used to painting things she had never attempted before. She practiced dewdrops and crystals and fog and smoke until they looked almost as good as Willy’s, sometimes surprising herself. And Willy was always there, cheering her along. He was taking her progress to heart as if it was his own.