@@@@@ Ilse and Jack had praised them, but one was
@@@@@
Ilse and Jack had praised them, but one was my
daughter and the other my hired man
When he reached the colored pencil drawing of the
tanker at the very end of the line, Wireman
squatted and stared at it for maybe thirty seconds
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with his forearms resting on his thighs and his
hands hanging limply between his legs
"Shhh," he said, and I endured another thirty
seconds of silenceWhen he turned to face me, his eyes looked
very large, and the left one was inflamedWater -
not a tear - was running from the inner cornerHe
pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his
jeans and wiped it away, the automatic gesture of
a man who does the same thing a dozen or more
times a day
"Holy God," he said, and walked toward the window,
stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket
"Holy God what?" I asked"Holy God what?"
He stood looking out"You don't know how good
these are, do you? I mean you really don't
"Are they?" I askedI had never felt so unsure of
myself"Are you serious?"
"Did you put them in chronological order?" he
asked, still looking out at the GulfThe joking,
joshing, wisecracking Wireman had taken a hikeI
had an idea the one I was listening to now had a
lot more in common with the one juries had heard
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always assuming he'd been that kind of lawyer
"You did, didn't you? Other than the last couple,
I meanThose're obviously much earlier
I didn't see how anything of mine could qualify as
"much earlier" when I'd only been doing pictures
for a couple of months, but when I ran my eye over
them, I saw he was rightI hadn't meant to put
them in chronological order - not consciously -
but that was what I had done"Earliest to most recent
He indicated the last four paintings - the ones
I'd come to think of as my sunset-compositesTo
one I'd added a nautilus shell, to one a compact
disc with the word Memorex printed across it (and
the sun shining redly through the hole), to the
third a dead seagull I'd found on the beach, only
blown up to pterodactyl sizeThe last was of the
shell-bed beneath Big Pink, done from a digital
photographTo this I had for some reason felt the
urge to add r