The Colorman (10 page)

“You need anything…” Quinn said. Half sentences were like code between them. ‘You call me' was the rest of it.

Rain scanned the directions to the Highland Morrow paint factory she had gotten off their Website, since she'd read in the Escapes section in the
Times
that their yearly open-house tour was on the last day of August. That was how Rain discovered that the cabin was right next door to it. The directions were nearly identical. Though one was on Mahican Brook Road and the other on Old Post Road, they were evidently mere steps away from each other.

The buzz of the big van engine still rang inside her as Rain locked it up out front of a rather anonymous looking structure that MapQuest seemed to believe was her “cabin.”

Already fifteen minutes late, Rain dashed directly down the little dirt road toward the factory she'd passed at the poky little intersection.

She had called ahead to reserve a spot in the tour, so she trotted down and bustled noisily through the front door to the factory, where she was greeted by a man in a paper cap who asked her name like this was Studio 54 in high 1976.

“Rain Madlin, I think…” Rain said uncertainly. The man looked up at her quizzically. “It's either under Madlin or Morton. I forget which one I used,” she added apologetically.

“Madlin,” the man said. “Go ahead on in. They've started in the conference room.”

The building wasn't as big as the term factory might suggest. Its large inner space had high ceilings and at the back a large, loft office behind paned glass walls above a spiral staircase. The conference room, the shades pulled low, overflowed with visitors, and the only place to stand was right in front, near to the man speaking.

James Morrow himself. Though tall and masculine, there was something of the injured creature about him. He carried a mood of barely discernible irritation as he projected images onto a screen.

He had one of those old-fashioned overhead projectors that involved a heavy light box with a magnifying redirectioner on a crane above it projecting onto a screen. Rain's math professors had used these contraptions in high school, their cracking, wax-stick pencils tick-tick-ticking on the film as they wrote out problems.

Instead, Morrow slapped transparencies on the lightbox, one after another. Great, thunderous, Renaissance paintings, shown in closer and closer shots, down to abstracted paint strokes, bits of crude, tiny particles suspended in various media, oils, sizes.

“So how did he, did VAN EYCK, or REMBRANDT, or TITIAN translate the brilliant color we see out there in the world and capture it for all eternity on the face of a stretched canvas?”

Rain was in the doorway's threshold to the side of the screen and had to crane her neck over to see what was being projected.

Morrow flipped off the last transparency and refocused the crane. His own hands projected onto the screen. They gingerly fingered cuttings of bright green leaves of grass and a handful of flowers.

“The chemical—the
al
chemical processes that makes a leaf so brilliantly green will not outlast the plant's lifespan.”

Morrow took the bright, green blade of grass and rubbed it until it darkened to a watery grey.

“The absorption and reflection of light on those particulates—that delicate combination—is the key to every shade, every value, every tone, every hue in the spectrum. And that structure is the result of a constant pulsing chain of reactions through the plant's veins. Gone when the plant no longer lives. Pluck a flower,” he moved to some carefully dried roses, “and it will fade and crumble in an instant of art's lifetime.” Morrow pulverized it. “We value permanence and stability in pigments. Those without these qualities we call fugitive.”

Morrow moved past Rain, excusing himself as he reached behind her for the light switch. He stopped awkwardly as he met her eye and then turned back toward the rest of the room.

“We'll be…” he said and his voice wavered suddenly, “we'll be heading into the uh…other room.” He pushed past Rain and led the group into the large center room of the factory amidst the mixing, the boxing and the tubing.

Morrow yanked out trays of crumbled rose madder, roots drying in a huge, box-like kiln. The trays were rough-hewn and shaped like morgue shelves.

Taking a chalky, brilliant-yellow ball from a box, he tossed it to Rain. Morrow looked at her more acutely as she scrambled to catch it, his brow furrowing. The group chuckled nervously.

“Urine of cows fed only on mango leaves,” he said.

Rain, unperturbed, turned it over and weighed it in her hand, an easy, bouncing assessment. Morrow snatched it back and turned away.

“Color is a product of life's layers. A cheek. The high tone of blood coursing beneath the fatty tissue, yellowing and rounding the tone. The infinite shades of melanin stretched over that and a final layer—a sheen of oil perhaps? Or the ash of the unwashed? A dusting of mineral powder?”

Morrow did not look at Rain while he spoke. It was as though he were afraid to look at her. He continued to walk, quickly, and sort through materials and vials and canisters. The factory amazed Rain. She could hear gasps coming from the others.

“Particles that capture such subtlety, that bounce the light back to us in such infinite variety and with such fine distinction—they're worth everything to the artist. The colorman will go anywhere to achieve those little bits of grime if they'll reduce into the desired powders.” He saved the best for last. “The finest lapis lazuli, roots of far-flung flora, rare beetles, even mummies—which make the beautiful purplish brown we call
caput mortuum
.” Morrow held up a tin box and opened it. “It was prized to the point of fakery in the eighteenth century, but then again they were using it for medicine as well as pigment. He dipped a finger in and wiped it along a white card on the table. Some visitors recoiled. Others leaned forward. Rain was intrigued by the rich, purply streak. It could just have been the hype, but it was mysteriously beautiful, the smear of color seeming to suck light toward it, even bending the white of the card toward its deep purple glow.

“And before anyone asks,” Morrow added crankily, “yes: modern labs can synthetically reproduce many of these,” he paused, “…colors. These earthly tones and plenty not of this earth. Not interesting to me, however. And not very interesting to most artists who want to capture the plentiful magic of the world around them through the myriad lenses they have available to them. Chemical hues might resemble the original thing quite uncannily,” he paused and shot a glance toward Rain. “Quite uncannily,” he said it again. “But when used, when pushed and pulled and combined with other hues, their inferiority becomes obvious. They are simply not the original thing…” he paused again. “Not the same thing at all no matter how uncannily…”

Morrow trailed off and continued along to the other side of the room.

Rain dashed behind him. Absurdly, it felt as though he were running from her.

“Uh, excuse me,” Rain said, finally catching up to him. “How do you fake a mummy?” Nervous laughter bubbled from a few people in the group.

“Bitumen,” Morrow said, not looking at her. “Uh, wrappings, herbs and a dead body from the poorhouse or an alley somewhere. Bitumen is the key: it's a kind of tar. Hydrocarbons from a distillation of petroleum in the case of the real mummies from Egypt. At one point, the real ones were mostly gone,” he explained. “This was during the eighteenth century, when there was a nice trade in mummies. People couldn't get enough of them.”

Awkward murmurs from the group interrupted his digression. “It produces that stunningly translucent rich brown,” Morrow said to them as if this would make them all understand.

“One more thing,” Rain said, before he could move on, “you said ‘alchemical' earlier. What is that exactly?”

“What do you think it is?” Morrow asked back abruptly.

“I guess I thought it was false chemistry.”

“Ah, yes, an attempt to create gold?” He averted his gaze.

“A sort of magic?” Rain offered.

Morrow still avoided looking at her. He pinched his nose with his fingers impatiently. It was a gesture similar to one of Karl's.

Morrow strayed from her while answering. “Alchemy is simply the application of fundamental processes that underlie all chemical principles. Heat…” Morrow indicated the kiln, Bunsen burners, ovens and forges, “…pressure, hydration…” He led them into an enormous, vault-like room. A greenhouse of sorts filled with a grid work of pools. “And time,” he said.

They looked at the pools. A couple of workers slowly stirred and poked at them.

“What are these?” Rain asked. Morrow's gruffness inspired some kind of eager honor student within her.

“They're…it's stand oil. Oils and fats that will become the bases for the pigments. The stabilizers…” Morrow interrupted himself, pinching his brow again. He appeared to be wilting. “I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to leave you here. I'm…”

Morrow left the small tour group standing in this enormous greenhouse. Rain watched him go and then walked along the aisles. The pools were dense and slick surfaced, and appeared as a series of small, populated ponds. The workers moved slowly around the shallow pools, stirring and poking delicately.

An assistant took questions from the group, which slowly dispersed. Rain slipped away, wandering through rooms they had already toured.

Eventually, she found herself before a spiral staircase under the high, window-paned offices. She could see James Morrow standing on the landing, still and quiet, his back to her.

“Excuse me?” she called up to him.

James turned and saw Rain below him.

“I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Morrow,” Rain said. “I just wanted to thank you for the tour. I'm moving into the little cabin on the edge of the woods there.”

“Yes, of course,” James said, without smiling. “John Morton's cabin.”

Rain couldn't speak for a beat. “My father,” she said when she finally found her voice again.

Morrow looked at her directly for the first time. “I'm so sorry for your loss,” he said genuinely.

“You knew him?”

“Not well. Not…I'm terribly sorry. I have to…”

Morrow retreated into his office, leaving Rain alone.

Morrow watched Rain out of his office window as she tromped across the small lawn toward the dirt road. He reached out without looking and took up the portrait of the young woman on his desk, held it in one hand and rubbed his thumb along the glass all the while keeping his eyes trained on Rain's back as she hiked up the road toward the cabin.

As Rain approached the cabin along the dirt road, its darkstained, board-and-batten and broad, mossy roofline nearly disappeared into the woods, despite its striking modern lines. The cabin stared blandly back at Rain, as unfamiliar and unapproachable as when she had first pulled up in front of it.

She could make out the outline of a small door bizarrely cut into a wider garage-style lifting doorway.

The heavy cap of the low roofline and the odd door didn't reveal what this place might have been—a storage shed or possibly a power station's outbuilding. But when she unlocked and then raised the larger door up, tucking it seamlessly into its slot between the roof and ceiling—the cabin opened up in a welcoming, broad gesture. She entered and slid pocket panels of screening across the opening, turning the upper part of the cabin into one, big, screened porch.

The opened space was like a proscenium, a bed and bath alcove to the left and a small efficiency-style, Pullman kitchen to the right. The rest of the interior lay a few steps down from the entrance. The ceiling angled toward enormous windows looking out into the woods. More windows extended around the right side of the house, bringing in generous light. One expanse of wall was painted a silvery graphite, with one small painting humbly hung in the center. Sheets covered the furniture; cabinets were thrown open and empty. Despite work to be done, the cabin was far from the abandoned shed Rain had expected.

A wall divided the bedroom from the living room, but only an empty bookshelf and an inset ceiling track gave privacy from the kitchen. In the small living area, two long tables lay side by side. Tucked together, they might have been her father's desk. The broad but diffuse light from the woods cast ornamental shadows over the draped forms. Distracted by the grand space and clever design in the cabin, Rain abruptly yanked the sheets from the tables, sending whorls of dust into the air and revealing beautiful pieces crafted in pine and loaded with a dozen or so cardboard boxes.

Having settled in, Rain used the tables to organize the papers she'd unearthed. Rain's laptop and printer lay on the other table along with her camera and some extra lenses. Cleaning supplies and bundled linens lay about. A huge boxy couch in mustardorange tweed sat in front of the great glass windows. Some mismatched wooden chairs and a few smaller tables and lamps were scattered about.

Rain slit open the boxes, trying to makes sense of their contents, doling them into emptied boxes marked “Columbia U. Library,” “Keep” and “Trash.” Letters and some of the photographs were going into the library box. Only a very few photos landed in the keep box.

It seemed whole eras of her father's life had been locked up in here, thankfully kept dry and dark in the sealed boxes. Rain found herself disturbed by the fact that her father's passing in some ways felt alright, and that this sudden equanimity seemed to outweigh her grief. Flipping through pictures she hadn't seen before, she expected—and eventually began
trying
—to feel sorrow and the kind of railing-at-heaven sense of unfairness that she was feeling at the wake. But instead, she saw a life fully lived. A life that had been fun and filled with success and meaning and fully experienced at every moment—along with, of course, the prolific and thorough renderings of those times in her father's books and letters, even in articles and lectures. But it didn't seem right to feel such easy admiration and a sense of liberation now: it was too early for that, wasn't it?