The Hotel Eden(37)

But, in the meantime I was a farmer, I guess, or a hired hand, something. I did take an interest in Mrs. McKay’s paintings, which were portraits, I suppose, portraits of farmers in shirtsleeves and overalls, that kind of thing. They were good paintings in my opinion, I mean, you could tell what they were, and she had some twenty of the things on her sunporch, where she painted. She didn’t paint any of the farmers’ wives or animals or like that, but I could see her orange tractor in the back of three or four of the pictures. I like that, the real touches. A tractor way out behind some guy in a painting, say only three inches tall, adds a lot to it for me, especially when it is a tractor I know pretty well.

Mrs. McKay showed some of these portraits at the fair each year and had ribbons in her book. At night on that screen porch listening to the crickets and hearing the moths bump against the screens, I’d be sitting side by side with her looking at the scrap-book. I’d be tired and she would smell nice. I see now that I was in a kind of spell, as I said, I was affected. Times I sensed I was far gone, but could do nothing about it.

One night, for example, she turned to me in the bed and asked, “What is it you were in jail for, Ray? Were you a car thief?”

I wasn’t even surprised by this and I answered with the truth, which is the way I’ve always answered questions. “Yes,” I said. “I took a lot of cars. And I was caught for it.”

“Why did you?”

“I took the first one to run away. I was young, a boy, and I liked having it, and as soon as I could I took another. And it became a habit for me. I’ve taken a lot of cars I didn’t especially want or need. It’s been my life in a way, right until the other week when I took your car, though I would have been just as pleased to walk or hitchhike.” I had already told her that first day that I had been headed for Yellowstone National Park, though I didn’t tell her I was planning on making Rays all over the damn place.

After a while that night in the bed she just said, “I see.” And she said it sweetly, sleepily, and I took it for what it was.

WELL, THIS DREAM doesn’t last long. Five weeks is just a minute, really, and things began to shift in the final days. For one thing I came to understand that I was the person Mrs. McKay was painting now by the fact of the cut fields in the background. The face wasn’t right, but maybe that’s okay, because my face isn’t right. In real life it’s a little thin, off-center. She’d corrected that, which is her privilege as an artist, and further she’d put a dreamy look on the guy’s face, which I suppose is a real nod toward accuracy.

“Are these your other men?” I asked her one night after supper. We’d spoken frankly from the outset and there was no need to change now, even though I had uncomfortable feelings about her artwork; it affected me now by making me sad. And I knew what was going on though I could not help myself. I could not go out in the yard and steal her car again and pick up my plans where I’d dropped them. I’ll say it because I know it was true, I was beyond affected, I was in love with Mrs. McKay. I could tell because I was just full of hard wonder, a feeling I understood was jealousy. I mean there were almost two dozen paintings out there on the porch.

But my question hit a wrong note. Mrs. McKay looked at me while she figured out what I was asking and then her face kind of folded and she went up to bed. I didn’t think as it was happening to say I was sorry, though I was sorry in a second, sorrier really for that remark than for any of the two hundred forty or so vehicles I had taken, the inconvenience and damage that had often accompanied their disappearance. What followed was my worst night, I’d say. I’m a car thief and I am not used to hurting people’s feelings. If I hurt their feelings, I’m not usually there to be part of it. And I cared for Mrs. McKay in a way that was strange to me too. I sat there until sunrise when I printed a little apology on a piece of paper, squaring the letters in a way that felt quite odd, but they were legible, which is what I was after: “I’m sorry for being a fool. Please forgive me. Love, Ray.” I made the Ray in cursive, something I’ve done only three or four times in my whole life. Then I went out to paint the barn.

It was midmorning when I turned from where I stood high on that ladder painting the barn and saw the sheriff’s two vehicles where they were parked below me. I hadn’t heard them because cars didn’t make any whump-whump crossing that new culvert. When I saw those two Fords, I thought it would come back to me like a lost dog—the need to run and run, and make a Ray around the first hard corner. But it didn’t. I looked down and saw the sheriff. There were two kids in the other car, county deputies, and I descended the ladder and didn’t spill a drop of that paint. The sheriff greeted me by name and I greeted him back. The men allowed me to seal the gallon of barn red and to put my tools away. One of the kids helped me with the ladder. None of them drew their sidearms and I appreciated that.