Michael Argentini
The painting, all 7 feet of it, arrived at Jackie’s Cold Day Inn packed in a wooden crate. The return address was a PO Box in San Francisco. The note attached to the frame said, “Jackie, you were right. Living well is the best revenge. Living large is even sweeter. Letter to follow.”
Jackie’s is an old bar in a small town in the Texas plains. It’s surrounded by miles and miles of cotton fields, cattle, and a few oil wells on the flattest land on the continent. You don’t go to Jackie’s for the atmosphere which some say is toxic. You go there to have a quiet drink with your friends, gossip, tell and retell familiar stories. New customers are rare but welcome if they mind their own business and stay out of everybody else’s.
“Gina” Jackie said, “haven’t heard from her in years and now this.”
“this” was a painting of Jackie, nude, lying on her side, age maybe early twenties.
All the men around Jackie’s age said they’d seen the real thing back in the day and claimed that the painting wasn’t right in some way or another. They earnestly debated about a missing beauty mark on her hip and the tiny butterfly tattoo on her right breast was actually on the left one.
Sheriff Tom earned Jackie’s approval and some free drinks by declaring he studied the portrait, looked in the woman’s eyes and saw a party.
Actually, no one in Panhandle ever saw Jackie between the ages of eighteen to forty-five, dressed or undressed. She’d been tending bars in a dozen different states before coming home to Panhandle.
“Yep, that’s me. It’s right in every detail. Anyone says different can get the hell out of my bar.”
By the time my sales route took me to Panhandle the whole town had heard about or seen the painting now mounted over the bar displacing the aged Grand Prize, Pearl, and Lone Star beer clocks.
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| Always time for one more |
I knew I could count on Tom to tell me about the painting and the artist so I waited until he came in for a drink when his shift was over. He and Les walked in together. I signaled them to sit with me. Wendy brought our drinks and we arranged our chairs so we could all see Jackie’s painting. About that time Doc Harris and his receptionist, Doris, came in and joined us. Mike from the gas station and Gary, his helper, moved from their table to ours.
Doris nodded toward the painting. “Is that really Jackie when she was young?”
“She says it is, so word to the wise, don’t say different,” Tom said. Les nodded, agreeing.
Tom’s been the sheriff here as long as anybody can remember. If there’s anything he doesn’t know about the town or its citizens it hasn’t happened or they haven’t been born yet. He’s a good story teller. Even when you know how a story ends, you stay for every word. I was the newcomer to this one so he let the others tell what they knew.
“The artist is a woman named Gina, usta live here ‘til she moved to California ‘bout 10 years ago. Made a big splash there. I read some of her paintings sell for $20,000 and up, depending on who’s buying. She’s big stuff now. Her mom, dad, and her sister still live here.
“If you didn’t know her folks, Millie and Dylan Wilson, and saw them waltzing at the Community Center last week you’d say my what a lovely couple, celebrating married 55 years. The way she looked at him he coulda been a young buck ready to take on the world. He saw a red haired girl aliiive with the promise of youth and love. No one could intrude in their world. Never mind that he stumbled around the floor, pulling at his collar where it pinched his neck. Never mind that her hair was thin and gray. They were once again young and in love, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, ‘til death do us part.
“But if you lived in the same town with them you’d think different. Seems like they disagreed about things most married folks settle early in their marriage. Easy things like who gets out of bed first, makes the coffee, and lights the fires, they didn’t square away for years. For a long time folks tried to predict when they would split up. But after 20 years of speculating they just got bored with it and found other stuff to gossip about.”
Mike cut in, “I know they settled on who makes breakfast. He said ‘Millie, how black do you like your eggs?’”
Jackie cuffed him. “You told me your wife said that to you after your wedding night.”
Tom lit a Cheroot and said, “I remember one day I stopped by the Wilson’s to see how they were getting along. I knew they’d been arguing about retiring, selling the ranch and moving to town. So I say where’s Dylan. She says he disappeared ‘bout three weeks ago. No idea where he went or why.
“Why didn’t you call my office, file a Missing Person report?”
“I’ll tell you, Tom, I thought about it. But after a week or so, I didn’t miss ‘im that much. Figured if he was fixin’ to leave me anyway, why go lookin’?”
“He came back when he ran out of money. They patched things up, sold the ranch and moved to town. Dylan set up a bait and tackle shop next to Mike’s Conoco. Millie joined up with the Lady’s Auxiliary at the church.”
Gary leaned in and said, “One day after thieves broke down a side door at the bait shack he decided to brick it up. He never used that door anyway. He called me up said could I help him out. He’s too old to be mixing mortar and hauling bricks so I said ok. So there I am on my only day off laying bricks in the middle of July, him sitting in a folding chair, big umbrella, beer in his hand, feet up on the cooler and he says, ‘Did I ever tell you the story about the Three Little Pigs?”’
Everybody but me had heard that one before but they laughed anyway.
Doc Harris added, “They had twin girls, Angel and Gina but they didn’t look alike. Angel had red hair like her momma and Gina brown like her daddy. Growing up you couldn’t tell ‘em from any other kid. Early teens was another thing.
“Angel discovered boys but none of ‘em stuck around long probably ‘cause she made ‘em feel like dopes, almost like she didn’t know what she wanted and kept samplin’ what was around. She made it 3 years past high school not married or even seein’ anybody too serious.”
Tom blew a smoke ring inside another smoke ring and said, “Then she met Jim, a roughneck, chain guy, muscles and scars all over. Wouldn’t you know they started arguing right away, made up and got married all in one weekend. I thought it was Millie and Dylan, next generation but I was wrong. Once they hitched up it was them against everybody else.
“Now it’s not like they go looking for fights. No, no, the fights always came to them somehow. I told them they should make the payments on my squad car they rode in it so much. They quieted down eventually, picking their battles ‘stead of jumping into all of them.
“Jim and Angel, still regulars but not like before.”
Doris said, “Gina was different from and the same as Angel in a lotta ways. Boys followed her around, too, but she just wasn’t the marryin’ kind. She loved two things: books and her art. Got into a mess of trouble for drawing on the margins of her schoolbooks. Never mind that the pictures were about what was happening on the pages. She kept at it drawing on everything flat until the principal threatened to expel her.”
Tom: “It was Milo at the craft shop that saved her skin. He hired her after school to help around his store.
"Now there’s a queer bird. It’s my job to know who’s who in town, also I'm nosy. Anyway, I paid him a visit when he opened his shop. All he had was boxes and boxes of books. Thought to myself, a bookstore but he said they were his personal collection. Now what’s a middle age man like him doing in a town like this? Figured he must be runnin’ from something. He said he was from California so I looked him up there. Came up clean but he quit his university job all of a sudden and left town. Nobody’s looking for him that I can tell. Maybe someday he’ll tell me why he’s here.”
"Now there’s a queer bird. It’s my job to know who’s who in town, also I'm nosy. Anyway, I paid him a visit when he opened his shop. All he had was boxes and boxes of books. Thought to myself, a bookstore but he said they were his personal collection. Now what’s a middle age man like him doing in a town like this? Figured he must be runnin’ from something. He said he was from California so I looked him up there. Came up clean but he quit his university job all of a sudden and left town. Nobody’s looking for him that I can tell. Maybe someday he’ll tell me why he’s here.”
Jackie: “Milo coached her about oils, pastels, pencils, and stuff, gave her art books to read, and she got pretty good at it. She even sold some of her paintings. Didn’t get much, maybe $10, $15 for something that reminded somebody of their horse or the ranch they grew up in. But then things got a little wild. Some switch flipped in her mind and she started painting stuff nobody could understand. Strange colors and shapes and names that didn’t match to what you saw.”
Doris: “She lined her pictures up in front of City Hall. Even took her stuff to Amarillo and Lubbock. Folks just walked by like there’s nothin’ and nobody there. That had to hurt, you know? I felt bad for her but her paintings didn’t make sense, leastwise to me. Nothing in the pictures matched the titles. One of ‘em she called Sunset. Gotta tell you, nobody’s ever mistaken a green triangle for the sun, flares shootin’ out.”
Les said, “I didn’t get her paintings either. I remember one time I was working on my car and she comes by in her purple Jeepster. We’re talking and the whole time she’s staring at the engine like she’s trying to memorize it. A couple weeks later I see one of her paintings hanging in the library. It’s all crazy colors like a tangle of garden hoses, circles and angles here and there. The title says “327 cu V8”. Well, I know a 327 is what I got in my car. I have a little time so I study the picture and, by god, more and more it starts to look like what she says, a 327 V8. Messed with my mind a bit, still does.
“It was pretty sad to see her and her paintings on the sidewalk every Saturday, nobody buying, hardly anybody even lookin’. I feel guilty about that.”
Everybody went quiet then Tom spoke.
“Gina’s luck broke when I stopped to help a German businessman stranded on FM 3221 up near the caprock ridge. I called Mike to haul the Mercedes to his shop. On the way to town, this guy, Schmidt, I think his name was, told me he was on his way back from Galveston to San Francisco for a business meeting. Made a crosscountry trip twice a year but Texas was his favorite state, wide open highways, low traffic, sometimes not another human being for a hundred miles.
“Well, the Mercedes had a busted hose with a special fitting that Mike had to get from the dealer in Amarillo, be at least another day before the car was fixed.
“I took Schmidt to Jackie’s for a drink then gave him the nickel tour of Panhandle. Stopped at Milo’s for a spell. Gina had some of her pictures on the walls, usual stuff; you know, horses, windmills, bunkhouses.
“One wall had her wild stuff, looked like a Sherwin-Williams store exploded on it.
“Schmidt says, how much for this one?
“Gina says, “How ‘bout .... 20???”
“Schmidt says, ‘No! It’s worth much more! How much?’
“25?”
“So he buys two and takes Polaroids of the rest.
“Next day his car’s ready and he’s back on the road.
“About a month later I get a letter from him. Inside is a check for $200 and two of the Polaroids he took at Milo’s. His note says, ship these two COD and tell the artist to come see me in San Francisco. She’s wasting her talent in Texas.
“That was 10 years ago. Schmidt and his wife took her in ‘til she got settled. She never came back but once in a while she’d write her momma a letter saying she was doing ok, not to worry.”
Jackie caught Wendy’s eye and nodded. Wendy went behind the bar and brought Jackie a letter from Gina.
Folded inside the envelope was a note and the front cover of TIME magazine. Below Gina’s smiling face it said, “Meet the art world’s newest star.”
Jackie unfolded the note and read aloud,
“Jackie, this is coming out next month. I’ll send you a copy as soon as it’s released. It looks like my work isn’t so awful after all. I did all kinds of scut work for years before my paintings got noticed but it was worth it. I almost gave up once or twice.
You have my permission to sell the paintings you bought from me before I left. I know you bought them so you could give me some money and not make it look like pity. Mr. Schmidt says you can make a bundle selling ‘original Ginas from her early period.’
I hope you liked your portrait. Miguel, your ex-boyfriend from Tucson, helped me with it. He swears it’s you!
Gina
