Prayers the Devil Answers (29 page)

“I'm sorry that paperback western didn't take your mind off your troubles. I could get you another one at the drugstore.” Or ask somebody for the loan of one. I wondered what Roy read.

He shook his head. “The problem with reading is that whatever's in the book always seems to relate to my situation in real life. Will the hero get the girl? Sure, but so what? In real life, nobody writes
The End
across the sky. There are no happy endings. If it's happy, it isn't the end. So you just keep going until you reach the unhappy ending. And I won't go near a whodunit. Lord, whatever you do, don't bring me one of those. It's hard to read one when you've lived one yourself and to know that instead of being the morally superior detective you're the heartless villain.”

I was surprised to hear him say that, because most people have a bucketful of excuses for anything they're ever blamed for. “Do you feel like a heartless villain?”

He didn't look at me, but he thought about the question for a good while. Just as he began to answer there was a break in the construction noise, which was good, because he spoke so softly I could barely hear. “A heartless villain? Maybe I am one, but I don't see myself that way. I feel like I tried to be a good person, but I wasn't always as strong or self-disciplined as I thought I could be. And one day my pride or my weakness got the best of me and took away ev
erything that mattered. Somehow my whole life got balled up into a nightmare that lasted less than a minute out there on that rock. Then it was over, with no going back, and I know that forever after I will be judged by just that one minute and by nothing else I ever did.”

“You must have thought a lot about that.” His answer had been too pat to have occurred to him right then in reply to my question. I guess sometime or other everybody broods over how they'll be remembered, and knowing exactly when you are going to die must make those thoughts that much more terrible. Maybe I'll be remembered as ‘the lady sheriff,' but I'd rather be remembered with respect and love by Eddie and George. That's all that matters, really, and at least, God willing, I'll have time to do more with my life before it's over.

The hammering started up again.

Lonnie Varden put his hands over his ears. “Nobody could read through that din. I wish to God I had something to draw with!”

“So you wouldn't have to think, you mean?”

He shrugged. “It's funny, but drawing
is
thinking, in a way.”

I tried to work out what he meant. “You mean you have to analyze what you're drawing so you can figure out how to make things the right shape and make them look like they're supposed to?”

“You do, but that's not what I was thinking about. After you do it often enough, that just comes second nature. What I'm talking about is the fact that sometimes when you start putting things on paper you find out what you really think, even if you hadn't realized it before. You draw a person, just trying to capture the set of the eyes, the angle of the jaw, . . . and when you finally stop and look at what you've put down on paper, you see a faint sneer on the lips, maybe, or a spark of anger in the eyes. Apparently you spotted some emotion while you were drawing that face, but you weren't aware that you knew it.”

“Did that always happen when you drew pictures of people?”

“Hardly ever, to tell you the truth. If you know someone well
enough to do a portrait of them, usually you know what they're like and what they might be feeling. Most of the time there isn't much emotion at all—except boredom. Posing is generally about as tiresome as watching the paint dry. It happened to me once, though. I drew a woman. I guess she was pretty enough—not like a movie star, not even all that attractive, really, but she had that look, that attitude that said,
‘I'm available. Yours for the taking.'
Men mistake that for beauty more often than you'd think. Anyhow, everybody thinks pretty people are also nice, you know. Even artists fall for that. Fairy tales, movies, you name it: we're all trained to believe that beautiful equals good.”

“Angels.”

“Yeah. Like angels. Just try putting an ugly angel on a stained glass window. Or have the good guy in a western played by some plump ordinary Joe. Anyhow, one time I drew this woman, thinking she was a fairy-tale beauty, and—well, she wasn't.”

“Your wife, you mean?”

“No. Somebody else. Somebody I wish had been on that rock instead of my wife.” Then he straightened up and shivered a little—a goose walking over your grave, people called that feeling—and I knew he wished he hadn't said any of that. When the moment passed, he turned to look at me, and I could see that he was calm and back in the present. “How 'bout I draw your boys?”

I hadn't expected that. “My boys?”

Lonnie Varden smiled. “I'll bet he didn't tell you. Your son Eddie sneaks back here sometimes when he's supposed to be dumping the mop bucket out back, and we pass the time of day for a couple of minutes. Please don't let on I told you. I didn't mean to get him in trouble.”

“I won't.” But I did make a mental note to tell the deputies to watch him closer.

“He'll be all right. I wouldn't do anything to scare him. I promise
you that. We don't talk about—you know, what's about to happen to me. Nice kid, that boy of yours. Well-spoken. He's got good bone structure too. You ever had his portrait done?”

I shook my head. “Just snapshots with our old box camera, that's all. I don't think even the rich people around here get portraits painted of their children. It wouldn't be easy.”

He looked around the bare cell. “I could probably manage to do his portrait for you.”

“Oh, I couldn't—”

“I know. You couldn't let your boys come in here and pose for a killer like me.”

“Not just that.” I was embarrassed that he had guessed my first thought, but there were other reasons as well. “I couldn't allow you to have all that painting paraphernalia in here.”

“I don't have any painting paraphernalia anymore. I never went home after it happened, you know, and I heard that Celia's family came down and burned everything that ever belonged to me—clothes, books, painting supplies—even the paintings themselves. It's all gone. So I guess once this hanging is over, I'll disappear from the world altogether.”

“The mural in the post office will still be there. They'll probably put pictures of it in magazines, on account of the fact that you did it.”

He made a face. “Not the way I wanted to get famous. I wish I could do something more than that.”

“You asked me for art supplies before.”

“I know, but now that the hammering has started, I thought you might reconsider, just to keep me from going crazy.”

I hesitated. “Painting supplies could be dangerous, couldn't they?”

He smiled, bemused at the notion. “Yeah, I reckon I could squeeze the oil paint out of the tube, swallow it, and die of poisoning. Or I might break up a wooden easel and make a sharp lance out of one of its legs.”

“I hadn't thought much about it. Sounds like you have, though.”

“Just off the top of my head. I was just being silly. But I tell you what: I'm bored out of my skull just staring at these bare walls—and listening to the sounds of the hammering out there. I wish I didn't know what they were building.”

“I'm sorry. I can't help that. I told you: none of us much cares for the noise either. We can hardly hear ourselves think.”

“At least you don't have to take it personally. For me those hammer blows are like a loud heartbeat. When they stop, I stop.”

“I'm sorry. Nobody meant for it to torment you. They just decided to build the scaffold there for practical reasons.”

“Tell you what: let's see if we can work out a safe way for me to keep myself from going crazy and for you to get a portrait of your son. My last chance to leave a mark on the world.” He saw me hesitate, and his teasing expression gave way to one of regret. “Please, ma'am. I want to be remembered for something besides what I'm dying for.”

I was still looking for the snare. My people don't trust strangers at the best of times, and I was afraid that because I was female he'd think I could be easily tricked. “You could turn a paintbrush into a weapon, too, though.”

“All right. What about a piece of chalk? Or a stub of charcoal? They're not poison. You know those pills people take for indigestion? Chalk is what they are, more or less.”

“Charcoal burns.”

“I don't have any matches, though. And I don't see anything in here that I could rub together to make a spark, do you?”

“I guess not. I doubt that would work on bare charcoal anyhow. It sure wouldn't work on coal. But there's not an art supply store within forty miles of here, is there? Where would I get fancy charcoal for making pictures with?”

He laughed. “About fifty yards from here. For free.”

“Where?”

“You know that big old willow tree that grows down by the creek? You could break off a limb—about the size of a hammer handle, I guess—and stick the end of that branch into a fire. That'll make the best charcoal there is. Then you sharpen it with a knife so it will have an edge. That's what I'd draw with anyhow. I'll bet you Rembrandt and da Vinci did the same.”

“Just ordinary charcoal?”

“
Willow
charcoal. That's what artists draw the shapes with. Underneath all that oil paint, every work of art starts out as smudges of charcoal. It's the bones of the painting.”

“But you couldn't have the oil paint or the rest of the materials you'd use.”

“I can do you a portrait in charcoal. We'd have to fix it afterward so it wouldn't smear, but it's the best I can offer. Besides, I can't think of any way to do any harm with them, even if I had a mind to, which I don't. Please: fix me a willow branch of charcoal, burn it and sharpen it like I told you, and then get some plain white paper from the butcher shop. If you'll do that, you have my word that I'll do you the finest portrait I can.”

“Would you have time to do one?”

“I have nothing but time.”

“Well, I can't let Eddie come back and pose for you. It wouldn't be right. And my other boy, Georgie, he's too little to be hanging around a jail, even if his mama works here.” That was true enough, but in a corner of my mind I pictured the newspaper headlines if those journalist vultures got hold of the tale:
SHERIFF'S SONS POSE FOR CONDEMNED KILLER
.
No picture was worth that kind of public humiliation.

He thought about it for a moment. “I could work from a snapshot, you know. In fact, it might be easier to do it that way than to try to get two squirming little boys to sit still.”

“Have you ever done a picture from a photograph?”

“Sure. A lot of times, when I was painting murals for the government, I had to rely on the illustrations in books, because the real people and buildings I needed to depict were long gone. I'm used to working that way. You can get me a picture of your boys, can't you?”

I couldn't think of anything wrong with that plan. Paper, a burnt stick of charcoal, and a snapshot seemed little enough to ask. I'd be glad of a real portrait of Eddie and George, and I thought it might be a kindness to give the poor man something to do, to take his mind off what was to come. I wouldn't want to be beholden to him, of course, but maybe I could bring him some pie or a candy bar to thank him for his trouble. He wouldn't have any use for money anymore. “I'll think on it,” I told him. “But if I can see my way clear to letting you do this, I'd be grateful to have a picture of my sons. You're kind to offer.”

He nodded. “It'll be my legacy, I guess. All I want is to be remembered for something besides . . . well, besides what happened up on The Hawk's Wing.”

“I wish you'd tell me why you did it. Just so I'd know.”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“You don't seem like the kind of man who would do such a cruel thing.”

He nodded. “I wouldn't have thought so either.”

The best picture I had of the boys was the one in the wooden dime store frame on the desk in my office. It was just a family snapshot, but I was partial to it. It was a clear fall day, and the two of them were sitting on the log out behind the house. Eddie was leaning back a little on the log with his arms around Georgie; both of them were dressed in their church clothes and grinning crinkled smiles up at the camera—the kind of smiles people put on when they're having their picture taken so that later you have no idea whether they were happy
or not. Albert had taken that picture last fall, and I looked at it for a moment, trying to remember the whole scene: the red and gold oak leaves in the woods behind the log, Albert holding the camera and hollering for the boys to smile, and me standing near the back steps, waving to try to make Georgie look at the camera. But that image in my head was just as much of a picture as the one in the frame. I had taken a picture with my mind's eye, and now it was just as frozen as a snapshot, not a real living memory at all anymore.