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"Who's awake?" "Perse," I said "Who is...

Tuesday 1 June 2010

"Who's awake?" "Perse," I said "Who is that?" "I don't know," I said"But I think we're supposed to drown her back to sleep ix The picnic basket had been scarlet when it was new, and had faded only a little over its long life, perhaps because so much of it had been spent tucked away in the atticI began by hefting one of the handlesThe damn thing was pretty heavy, all right; I guessed about twenty poundsThe wicker on the bottom, although tightly woven, had sagged down someI set it back on the carpet, pushed the thin wooden carry-handles down to 796 either side, and flipped back the lid on hinges that squeaked slightly There were colored pencils, most of which had been sharpened down to stubsAnd there were drawings made by a certain child prodigy well over eighty years agoA little girl who'd fallen out of a pony-trap at the age of two and banged her head and awakened with seizures and a spy bag replica magical ability to drawI knew this even though the drawing on the first page wasn't a drawing at all - not really, but this: I flicked it upBeneath was this: After that, the pictures became pictures, growing in technique and sophistication with a speed that was beyond beliefUnless, that was, you happened to be a guy like Edgar Freemantle, who had done little more than doodle until an accident on a building site had taken his arm, crushed his skull, and nearly ended his life She had drawn fieldsA gigantic black face, round as a basketball, with a smiling 797 red mouth - probably Melda the housekeeper, although this Melda looked like an overgrown child in extreme close-upThen more animals - raccoons, a turtle, a deer, a bobcat - that were naturally sized, but walking on the Gulf or flying through the airI found a heron, executed in perfect detail, standing on the balcony railing of the house she had chloe white grown up inDirectly below it was another watercolor of the same bird, only this time it was hovering upside-down over the swimming poolThe gimlet eyes staring out of the picture were the same shade as the pool itselfShe was doing what I've been doing, I thought, and my skin began to creep againTrying to re-invent the ordinary, make it new by turning it into a dream Would Dario, Jimmy, and Alice cream their jeans if they saw these? I thought there was no doubt Here were two little girls - Tessie and Laura, surely - with great big pumpkin smiles that deliberately overran the edges of their faces Here was a Daddy bigger than the house beside which he stood - had to be the first Heron's Roost - smoking a cigar the size of a rocketA smokering circled the moon overhead 798 Here were two girls in dark green jumpers on a dirt road with schoolbooks balanced on their heads the way some African native girls chanel cc logo earrings balanced their pots: Maria and Hannah, no doubtBehind them came a line of frogsIn defiance of perspective, the frogs grew larger rather than smaller Next came Elizabeth's Smiling Horses phaseThere were a dozen or moreI leafed through them, then turned back to one and tapped it"This is the one that was in the newspaper article Wireman said, "Go a little deeperYou ain't seen nuthin yetmore family, rendered in pencil or charcoal or in jolly watercolors, the family members almost always with their hands linked like paperdollsthen a storm, the water in the swimming pool lashed into waves, the fronds of a palm pulled into ragged banners by the wind There were well over a hundred pictures in all She might only have been a child, but she had also been unbottlingTwo or three more storm picturesmaybe the Alice that had uncovered Eastlake's treasure-trove, maybe just a big thunderstorm, it was impossible to new cartier watches say for surethe Gulf again, this time with flying fish the size of dolphinsthe Gulf with pelicans that appeared to have rainbows in their mouths I stopped, my breath caught in my throat Compared with many of the others I'd gone through, this one was dead simple, just the silhouette of a ship against the dying light, caught at the tipping-point between day and dark, but its simplicity was what gave it its powerCertainly I'd thought so when I drew the same thing on my first night in Big PinkHere was the same cable, stretched taut between the bow and what might in Elizabeth's time have been called a Marconi tower, creating a brilliant orange triangleHere was the same upward shading of light, orange to blue There was even the same scribbly, not-quitecareless overlay of color that made the ship - skinnier than mine had been - look like a phantom out there, trudging its way north "I drew this," I said gucci backpack faint