“There’s a man out there.” His wife’s voice floated in from the front room. It was always floating in wisp-like from some room or other.
“Oh?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“A man?”
“Yes, a man. Watching the house.”
“This house?”
“Yes, this house.”
“Oh.” He sighed softly and stood.
The man joined his wife at the front room window and they looked out across the lawn and the tracks to the verge of the far forest. An auto was parked on the verge, and a man was removing things from it. “Yes, I see,” said the man to his wife. He wondered what the distant man was doing, and what he was supposed to do about it.
The couple watched without speaking as the man pulled a stool from the car and set it on the ground nearby. Then he extracted what appeared to be a bundle of slats, stood them on end next to the stool, and spread them apart to form a tripod.
“What’s that?” the woman asked.
“Hmm,” her husband said, “looks like an easel.”
“An easel?” The woman frowned.
The man pulled a rectangular panel from the car and set it onto the easel, partially obscuring him from view.
“What on earth is he doing?” the woman asked, her voice dry with annoyance. “Is he some sort of government man?”
“Dunno,” her husband said, now growing annoyed, himself. “Can’t tell.”
Frowning, he continued to study the figure across the tracks. He would have to go over and see what the man was up to. He did not want to go over; he did not like to intrude into another person’s business, the man was not on their property, and he did not appear to be doing anything dangerous. Moreover, he would have to cross the tracks to get to the man, and he did not like to trespass on the railroad, let alone court death. He’d had enough of that.
Still, he did not like his wife to fret. He stepped into the sun and stood on the verandah a moment, peering at the distant man and mildly resenting his presence. Then he moved gingerly down the stairs and along the path edging the yard, to the tracks. The rails lay hot and heavy on their oiled crossties and well-manicured rock ballast, curving gently away out of sight to the west and spearing dead-straight into the east. The line was quiet, no train was in sight, and the man stepped lightly over the rails and down the high ballast. He rarely went out anymore, and was glad to find that walking was not the effort it used to be. He moved slowly toward the strange man and saw that the contraption was definitely an easel, with a small table set in front of it. Diffidently, he approached the man and said hello.
Falling 93 million miles, the sunlight pierced a diaphanous veil of haze and came to rest upon the steel rails and the house. It was a preposterous proposition, the house: a rearing Victorian concoction, towered, mansard-roofed, and ornately windowed. A house fashionable in the not-too-distant past but now of a type generally considered grotesque. Studying the proud tower, the classically-columned porte-cochere, the absurdly framed windows, and the uncompromising hauteur of the overall form, the man at the easel could only marvel. A lucky find, this glorious old monstrosity! A pity so few people appreciated such houses nowadays. Well, he would fix that.
“Yep, yep,” he said softly, whisking in the first lines with a thin brush. “Splendid mansard roof…all that gimcrack around the windows—couldn’t get away with that nowadays. Hah! Labor’s too dear. What did those men earn for all that frippery? Heh-heh—eight cents an hour, and glad to get it.”
The house man watched and listened, puzzled. The stranger seemed to be talking more to himself than to him. Well, he’d never met an artist before, but he had heard they were a moody lot. “Painting a picture?” he asked.
The painter squinted at the house and gave a sort of half-smile.
“May I see?”
The painter offered no objection, and the man from the house sidled around the easel and looked at the canvas. There it was: the house; rather, an outline of the house, vague and undetailed. Even so, the sketch captured the structure with astonishing clarity. “That’s our house you’re painting there,” said the house man. “My father built it back in ’83. Now it’s the missus and me.”
The painter made no reply and continued working swiftly and confidently. The house man didn’t want to annoy the painter—the fellow did not seem to relish conversation. Still, his curiosity was up. “Sell ‘em, do you?” he asked.
Frowning with concentration, the painter began dabbing in bits of detail. “Mm-hm,” he said, “that’s it.”
The house man persisted. “Imagine it’s a bit of a trick, gettin’ folks to buy ‘em.”
“Love that tower,” the painter said softly, “that looming aspect, like a finger, a finger from the past. A warning finger. Hah! A finger in the eye.”
A queer duck, thought the man from the house. The painter seemed to look right through him. Was he somebody famous—from New York, perhaps? A train whistle sounded faintly to the west. “That’ll be the Limited,” he said. A moment later, the locomotive rushed past, followed by ten dusty green cars. A man sat on the observation platform, staring back into the distance from where he’d come.
The painter watched the train vanish into the eastern haze. “Yes sir,” he said, “fine spectacle, a train. Gives you such a feeling of movement.” He lay his brush down, stood, stretched his neck, and said, “This house: no movement at all. Just sits here watching the world go by. Yep, a nice find.”
What could you do in this life, or any life? The old man considered this question daily, and daily he answered it. He had done his work good and true, he had loved his wife as best he could, and he had given her a home. His father had built the house and his son had cared for it well. It had been a good home, if a mite large. Didn’t need all those rooms and it cost the devil to heat. What would become of it, after—? Well, you couldn’t worry about such things. Worrying did no good. The missus worried too much and look what it got her. Look what it got the both of them.
Minus the worry, they might have seen some of the world. As a boy he’d been fascinated by the West and the Indians, and had always dreamed of seeing the vast red rock country of Arizona and New Mexico. Were there any Indians left? How did they live, now? He had talked earnestly about that with the missus when they were young and courting. Talked getting down to New York, too, seeing a Broadway show (he had seen “Little Johnny Jones” when it came through years ago, and thought it splendid) and the skyscrapers and maybe even one of the big liners down at the docks. Be something to sail out across the Atlantic. By God! There was a word people used to describe what he felt as a young man and felt even now: wanderlust. Funny sort of word, but it fit, exactly. Wanderlust! Of course, nowadays the “lust” part of it wasn’t quite seemly. Still, it held.
The missus had other feelings, feelings that hardened as the years wore on and home-bound obligation deepened its roots. “Think of the expense,” she said. “Who will look after the house?” She had been a good wife, in her way, but she was a serious woman: austere, classical. Rather like one of those Grecian statues. Her remoteness had appealed to him in youth, but in time the appeal rather faded. She did not care much for music or laughter or any kind of fun. She just hadn’t much give to her. Worry tightened its hold, and when he had last dared broach the subject of a short New York trip she had said, “Aren’t there a lot of Negroes there?” That was the end of it. And since the accident, they seldom went out of the house at all. It was just as well; the world of fast cars and wireless and jazz music was beyond them. Funny, though: He didn’t feel old. Didn’t feel much of anything these days. Well, no use fretting over it, or anything else. You did what you could and that was that.
A soft breeze stirred, pleasantly cool in the July heat. The painter paused, set his palette on the table, sipped some cold tea from his canteen, and studied the house. The sun was just beginning to dip to the west, shedding a soft, bleached light on the west flank of the house and leaving the front in deepening shadow. The effect was one of stark grandeur, with perhaps a slight tinge of foreboding. “Got to get that light,” he muttered. “What is that yellow, there? Good thing I had my stuff with me…It’s that light that gets it. He mixed some chromium yellow and bone white and lightly dabbed a little on the sunny side. “Mmm—hmm,” he said, pleased, “almost like bleaching bones…heh-heh: bleaching bones of death? Maybe not quite that—don’t want to be so damned obvious. Stasis: that’s it, Stasis! Good old Greek word. Memory…the past…maybe not death, but dancing around it.” He grunted. “Don’t want to get too flummoxed by all that. No—get the light, that’s the main thing. That’s what Jo seems to like about my stuff.”
Jo was a good wife. Behind him, always, behind him all the way, nip and tuck, nipping at his heels like a little terrier, encouraging, driving, needling, sometimes. Not sure he always appreciated that in a woman, but she was a good wife nonetheless. Had to have a good woman behind you, that was sure. Being alone: too much of that gave a man an odd frame of mind—and folks thought he was odd enough as it was. A married man was a happy man, and he was happy. The needles—well, hell, what couple didn’t have their needles from time to time? Added spice to life!
The light on the house deepened, shining with increased intensity into the eyes of the painter and down into that strange place only he knew about. The shadows, too, deepened and followed the light into the secret place. A good place it was, a place of light and shade and imagination. All this nonsense about ‘loneliness’ in his stuff—it was the light, that’s all, and light wasn’t ‘lonely’ or anything else. Just light. Of course, behind that light was life, energy. All that stored-up energy, all that stored-up life, giving off light. This house: what kind of life had it had? Well, he could hint around at it with this picture and convey it in the light. He chuckled softly: a reflector, that’s all he was, a goddamn reflector. If people couldn’t see that… Jo saw it, and she was the only one who mattered. “Good little woman, Jo,” he thought. “Mustn’t take her for granted.”
Of course, it all really boiled down to It.The sex angle. Couldn’t deny it. This house, with its arrogant cocksureness, its glorious bricabrac, its gimcrack grandeur, its rampant tower: what else but pure It? Even now, well past its prime—the old belle of the ball, still flaunting her faded beauty. Yes, the sex angle was always present, in ways we scarce realize. “Hah!” he chortled. “If folks don’t see that right enough, it won’t be any fault of mine!” He brushed on more yellow, then moved into the shadowy front with off-black. “Yes,” he whispered—“yes.”
“She’s watching us, you know,” said the house man. “Watching out the front room window. She’s the one who saw you were out here. Always watching out that window. Watching the trains, the sky, the birds. Whatever comes along, she’s watching. Nothing much gets by her.” He raised his voice in mimicry: “‘There’s a man out there’!’ Thought you might be a government man.”
The artist continued brushing and said nothing. Certainly a quiet fellow, the house man thought. Maybe he was hard of hearing. Well, nothing wrong with that; plenty of jibber-jabber enough in the world. Still, it had been some time since he had had a nice chat. “Oh, she’s a mite high-strung at times,” the house man continued, “but a good woman. A man like me’s lucky to have a good wife. Guess I’m no great prize, as far as that goes.” The sun continued its western descent. Down the tracks, a golden haze veiled the far distance.
The painter’s eyes flicked between house and canvas, his brush moved swiftly and steadily between pallet and easel. The lines on the canvas were fuller now, the colors—the light—richer, the details of window-frame and cornice and column emerging in stark clarity. The house on the board was coming to life, a new life, a life free of its foundation, its inhabitants, even its past. The painter felt a tiny shiver at the realization: The house was becoming his. No, not his so much as…Well, best not get too wound up in such stuff.
“Well, now, golly,” the old man said, “that is something.”
The painter stood back again and stared at the house. “Lovely subject,” he said softly. One could almost imagine a figure standing in an upper window or on that broad verandah, he thought. Might add an element of—something. He pondered this another moment. “No,” he said to no one in particular, “too much…House stands alone. That’s the whole point. Alone in the world and proud of it, time and fashion be damned!”
The old man nodded. “Be nice to see it when it’s done.”
The artist put down his palette and rubbed his hands contentedly. “Yes, indeed…proud old house, standing stock-still, tall like an old oak, rooted here—rooted to the past…trains—time, moving, moving on. Yep, yep…Nice contrast—the ‘quick and the dead.’ Mm, I think this should turn out quite nicely.”
He lifted the canvas from the easel and put it and the rest of his things in the car. He turned toward the house once more and gave a little bow. “Farewell, Monsieur Mansard,” he said, “it’s been a pleasure.” The painter climbed behind the wheel, started the motor, and nosed onto the highway. “Grand old place,” he muttered, “wonder what sort of folks live there.” He would make this picture reflect that wonderment, that mystery. Maybe he wasn’t much good at painting people (though he knew some would argue that), but he could damn well paint the places they inhabited, and the riddles that hovered around them. Never mind who lived there, their house spoke to him. Spoke volumes. “Interesting phenomenon,” he said–“almost like the house knew I was there.”
The house man watched the auto turn onto the county road and disappear into the forest. Yes, a queer sort of duck. Farewell, Monsieur Mansard—why’d he call him that? Well, he supposed the house was a funny old place, at that. Not quite the style, nowadays. But it was home. His wife watched from the front room window as he moved across the tracks and up the gravel path to the door. He stood a moment on the verandah, peering at the place where he and the painter had stood. Nice to have a visitor, even if he didn’t have much to say. Certainly looked like he knew his business, the way those hands moved—the hands of a real artist. Yes, it surely would be nice to see that picture when it was done.
He smiled wistfully and passed through the door. I never will get used to that, he mused, as the house gathered him in. A whistle sounded in the east, and a moment later the westbound Limited rushed past. A man sat on the observation platform, staring back into the distance from where he’d come.