Maud's House (24 page)

“That Mr. T-Bone. He’s about to destroy the painting.”

“Oh no,” I gasped, shoving a salad in Freda’s hand and hurdling over the counter.

Freda slid the salad on a nearby table and followed me as did everyone else in the restaurant. The restaurant emptied like an overturned hourglass. People streamed into the darkening evening, neverminding the rain, forgetting coats. Somewhere a bell dinged wildly.

President Hysterical caught up with me. “I was just washing out the coffee pots, they hold thirty cups, you know, when he came in, carrying a chainsaw. He looked like one of those mass murderers in the movies, wild eyes, muddy clothes, ghastly face, carrying a chainsaw. Don’t kill me I pleaded…”

The ground was a skating rink of mud. I ran faster, cutting through back yards, slipping in the field of softballs at Odie’s house. I took the corner at Wynn’s shop too close and crashed into a bush. Behind me was a trail of soaked, mud-covered, slipping and sliding, cursing townspeople. Occasionally, one fell and the air turned blue with commentary: “Damn, Odie, what’d you do—booby-trap your yard with softballs? Catch many criminals this way?”

We heard the buzz of the chainsaw before we reached the gymnasium double doors. It was a lonely sound in the dark, forlorn as a saxophone, wild as a songbird. It came out of the rain to terrify us and tease us and douse us with despair. I ran harder, splashing across the street, hoping it wasn’t too late.

We poured into the gymnasium, wet and gasping, and skidded promptly to a halt.

T-Bone froze at the sound of the gymnasium doors crashing against the wall. He held the blade of the saw at the top of the painting. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting to hear the keening, ear-splitting scream of the saw as it slowly cut the picture in half. I held my breath, listening for the moment when the chainsaw chewed through canvas, frame, wall; through artery, muscle, bone; through grass, dirt, earthworm; through gas, light, space dust.

T-Bone stepped back. He shut off the motor. Silence rang in our ears. The chainsaw fell from his hands. It crashed to the gym floor, and T-Bone jerked, as if being frightened awake. He stared at the painting, lifted a hand to it, a beseeching hand, a gentle hand, but did not touch it. He turned and looked at me.

Finally, I moved. Water squished out of my wet, rubber-soled shoes. Slowly I approached T-Bone across the gym floor. T-Bone never took his eyes off me. My uniform clung to my body; my hair curled around my face. My heart roared in my ears. I came to a halt before him; we studied each other.

“I’ve always loved you, y’know,” he whispered. After a long moment, I lifted a hand and smoothed his ruffled hair. He groaned, grabbed my hand, and held it against his cheek.

“Is that what stopped you?” I asked.

T-Bone turned to study the painting. He shook his head. “Suddenly, I realized, it’s just a painting.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s not the savior of Round Corners, and it’s not a rival for your affections. It’s simply paint and canvas. The
real
painting of Round Corners is inside you. It gives you a glow. I saw that glow in a little girl with long legs and a face full of hair and I remember thinking, even though I was only seventeen: That glow could warm me forever. I found that glow, when I danced and when I was near you.”

T-Bone blushed. It was quite a speech for him. He looked at his feet, pulled back his shoulders, and said in a voice I hadn’t heard in a long time, the old T-Bone, “I see my cows, but I don’t see me.”

“I never could draw you. Why do you think that is?”

“You’ve made a million sketches of me.”

“But none were ever right. I try again and again, and they’re never you.”

“Maybe I’m elusive, the man of contradictions, the dairy farmer who can’t keep his cows alive, the clumsy tap-dancer.”

“Or maybe you just mean too much to me,” I said. “Maybe there is no canvas big enough in my heart to contain you.” T-Bone turned and stared at me. I smiled and held out my hand. “Dance with me, T-Bone.”

T-Bone’s eyebrows jerked in surprise, and he took a step back in fear. I took a step forward. He retreated again. I advanced with a giant step, slapped my hand on his shoulder, and looked pointedly at his left hand. Awkwardly, he folded my hand in his. We shuffled slowly, at first. He leaned on me a little, and I edged closer to him. I dropped my head on his shoulder, and I felt his arm circle my waist. Slowly we circled the gymnasium.

Like the king and queen at the homecoming dance, like the bride and groom at the wedding, we moved in a world of our own until one by one the others joined us. Frank was the first to whisk Ella out onto the floor. The Reverend and Mrs. Swan waltzed past next. Odie offered his arm to Louise the sewing grandmother. The Winchesters danced with Baby Winchester sandwiched between them, asleep in a Snugli strapped to Harvey’s chest.

Someone flipped on a radio, and soon everyone was whirling and twirling, slapping their muddy feet on the polished gymnasium floor. They laughed and spun each other around, they dosey-doed, they tangoed. They did the electric slide and slipped into each other.

As night fell, the townspeople drifted home, humming in the rain. They felt almost light-headed. They told themselves it was because the painting was safe. But if that was true, they wondered, why did they have other things on their minds?

That night in bed Wynn Winchester whispered to her husband, while he held her in his arms, “I think the baby’s new sweater ought to be in lavender, don’t you think?” Odie Dorfmann told his wife, while he crawled into his baseball pajamas, that he had “an idea for a series of birdhouses—homes of the presidents.” Reverend Swan prayed for Round Corners that night and when he was finished, he made the sign of the cross, just the way his Catholic mother had taught him. Ella Snowden began a new poem about Round Corners that night; she fell asleep at the kitchen table and early in the morning Frank gently removed the pen from her fingers, lifted her into his arms, and put her to bed.

I took T-Bone home, stood him in a hot shower and then joined him. I tucked him in bed and snuggled in beside him. The rain stopped. I saw a star through the window. And suddenly, I felt light, as if I were stardust too and shining through the window of someone else in some other world.

I
thump George’s headstone, not too hard, really more out of habit.

George, it has occurred to me our conversations are fairly one-sided. I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore. You always did expect too much. This is a perfect example. You expect me to still keep talking to you after you’re dead. Expectations, I have discovered, will kill you. That may not be something you have to worry about but as for me…

The sun is warm on my face. The day is tempting with a taste of summer, a hot hors d’oeuvre offered in May. It’s not a bad day at all to sit in a graveyard under the budding trees. I can lean back against George’s tombstone, rest my head and just dream.

At home, T-Bone is cooking dinner. He’s making pizza, from scratch, probably whistling. He gets into anything involving dough. Jazz is sneaking out of the radio, loud enough to blow your ear drums; when I pull into the drive, I’ll see him through the window, diving for the radio knob and giving it a quick spin to Catfish Joe’s show. He says he’s beginning to like country western. Sure.

T-Bone’s still a worrier. He worries about my eating habits, the price of milk, if he’s feeding the birds too much and ruining them for life in the “real natural world.”

He worries about everything. But my painting.

The Round Corners Painting hangs in the Town Hall. Everyone who enters the Town Hall to pay a traffic ticket or complain about a fuel bill takes it upon himself to straighten the picture. The cows are always cock-eyed.

I enter my studio every day. And sometimes I even paint something other than cows.

What do you mean not often, George? I don’t know why I even talk to you when you’re like this, when you’re in your know-it-all mood. What about the house? How did we get on the house? I think it looks great. White is not nice. White is for sissies, George. And I’d like to know what you know about houses and art. For your information, House Beautiful is doing a story on my house.

Not really. But as I said, having the last word is important sometimes.

The End

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