Earth Colors Read online

  “What do you mean, ‘was in her eighties’?”

  Sloane had begun to twist in his arms.

  Frank said, “She died.”

  “That’s not unusual for someone in her eighties, is it?”

  Frank had begun to hunch his shoulders like he always did when something beyond his control was making him half mad and half worried. He said, “No, but there’s rumors that everything wasn’t quite right. Hell, Em, it was just a month or so ago.”

  I stared at the sidewalk.

  Frank shifted the baby into a one-armed grip and reached out with the other hand to touch my arm. “Em, I know you. You wind up right in the middle of every fight that’s going down. It’s an instinct of yours.”

  Sloane was now working her way into a good fuss. I reached out and took her into my arms, shaking my head vehemently. “No way, Frank. I was a headstrong little twit when I worked around here, but I’ve grown up a lot, I swear it. Hey, this little baby here has taught me a lot about covering my butt so I can be here for her and be responsible. It’s Faye that’s out chasing trouble this time, not me. And the job won’t go through anyway. Even if the old guy does want her to do it, he won’t pay enough to cover the avgas it would take to fly the plane, let alone what it would take to make the plane legal to fly. It has to go through its annual airworthiness check and there are always expensive repairs, and Faye’s annual FAA flight review to fly commercially is overdue. She’s kidding herself. She doesn’t even have a current medical clearance. Hasn’t flown since she was seven months pregnant.” I started moving down the sidewalk again, as much to escape Frank’s words as to arrive at my destination.

  Frank hurried to keep up, his scowl deepening. “She was flying an airplane at seven months?”

  “That’s another part of why your pal here was a preemie.” On cue, the baby broke into a full bawling cry.

  Frank stopped again. “Here’s my truck. Get in. I’ll take you to the Pawnee and we can talk to the baby’s mother, find out for sure if there’s really no connection.”

  I said, “No. Thanks for your concern, Frank, but I’m sure it’s unwarranted. I’d better keep moving, rock her to sleep. You just lift her into the backpack.” I turned a shoulder toward him.

  He said, “Let me bounce her.”

  “I should go.” I didn’t want Frank to be there watching if I failed to settle Sloane down. I knew her every mood, knew what made her smile and what made her cry, but that did not make her mine, and at times like this, she let me know it. “I’m sorry. I think just walking quietly is the best thing, with as few distractions as possible.”

  “Then I’ll stop by later,” Frank told me, and to Sloane he said, “You’re a lucky baby. Auntie Emmy’s a very good mom.” He gave me a look of longing. He started to walk away, but turned back. “I … About the Krehbeils. There’s really been some talk, Em.”

  “See you,” I said, heading resolutely toward the museums.

  A block farther along, I heard him call to me again. I spun around to hear what he was saying. A passing truck swallowed his words, but his lips said. “Take care.” A common-enough phrase, and yet the look on his face spoke of farewell.

  2

  THE FATES AND THE FURIES BEING MARGINALLY ON MY SIDE FOR the moment, Sloane did settle down as I lengthened my stride, but she did not fall asleep. By and by, we passed out of the business district, and dead ahead, I could now see the statue of Buffalo Bill on his horse that stood in the middle of the north parking lot of the museum complex. The statute showed him in a bizarre rallying pose that suggested as much as anything that he was falling off his horse.

  I felt a bit like I was falling also. Frank was a fine man who was wonderful with children. I couldn’t help but wonder what might life be like if I had not been so career-oriented.

  As if reading my emotions, Sloane let out a cranky whimper. I got going with my monologue again, hoping that between the sound of my voice and the rhythmic swaying of the backpack ride, she would fall asleep.

  “I used to come here with my dad,” I told her. “We’d stop by on our annual fishing trip to Yellowstone. The first time I saw the museum, I could barely cast a short rod, and as I grew up, so did the museum. Now it’s five museums and a library: there’s the Buffalo Bill Museum, of course; and then there’s the Cody Firearms Museum; the McCracken Research Library; the Plains Indian Museum; the new Draper Museum of Natural History; and—this is the best, Sloane—the Whitney Gallery of Western Art. It’s quite a place. The Louvre might have its Mona Lisa, and that joint in Amsterdam might have Van Goghs by the truckload, but it’s the paintings at the Whitney that make this cowgirl’s heart sing.”

  I found myself smiling. In the quiet rooms of the Whitney, I could open myself to a state of reverence for the Western experience. In those rooms, I would find the American West as it appeared before the advent of interstate highways and burger stands, back before Model T Fords and steam locomotives crossed the plains, back when travelers wore buckskins and weskits, back when travel itself was on horseback or even by foot. From the gallery’s walls opened scenes by George Catlin, William Tylee Ranney, and John Mix Stanley, dating from the days of the great artist explorers and the Emigrant Trail, when whites and Indians first met and then clashed over the bare resources of survival. There were vistas of Yellowstone as it looked before it was a national park, or even a part of our nation, painted by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran. There were visual narratives by the great magazine illustrators, such as Frederic Remington’s and Charlie Russell’s depictions of harsh light across dusty plains and craggy peaks where hard men fought a love affair over land and cattle. And there were more recent additions: arresting portraits of the last few cowboys and Indians painted by such longing romantics as James Bama. Art is, after all, history.

  At the museum complex, I trooped up the lawn past a collection of teepees. Inside the main entrance, I dodged the admissions kiosk and instead spoke to the man who sat at the desk to the right. “There should be a pass waiting for Faye Carter,” I said, letting him think I was her. “It’s for a meeting here later this afternoon. I was wondering if I could go in early, and then return at the appointed hour.”

  “Certainly, Ms. Carter,” the man said, rising politely from his chair. “The curator and his party are expecting you at four, but I can issue that pass now.” He had me sign in.

  I scribbled something illegible.

  He gave me a pass marked VISITOR, winked playfully at Sloane (who was now doing her Perfect Baby act), and settled his bones back into his chair.

  “Thank you so much,” I said.

  The man nodded and wiggled his bandy fingers to the baby.

  I gave him my most sugary smile and then zipped through the turnstile. To Sloane Renee, I whispered, “Sweetie-pea, it’s not that museums overcharge—trust me, they don’t—but your old Auntie Emmy is sorta short on funds, so it was necessary to use some of the moves your daddy taught me. Your daddy was a very ethical man—don’t get me wrong—but he was one of the best agents the FBI ever had, and that means he knew how to be slippery at times. I was his respectful protégée, which is a big word that means he was teaching me the business, and out of respect for his memory, you’d want me to keep in practice, now, wouldn’t you? So you see, using your mama’s free pass was not exactly deceitful, but more like … misdirection, and … an homage.” I cut straight for the Whitney, which opened just a few strides off to my right.

  Ah …

  I took a quick look at the first two rooms as I hurried through to my formal pilgrimage to the works of Frederic Remington. His gallery, quite appropriately, took up the far western corner of the museum. Here I would find not just his grand renderings of cowboy-and-Indian fare, but also the smaller landscapes that he apparently had considered little more than oil sketches. The first always filled my Wyoming cowgirl heart with pride, while the second seemed a dance of the veils, luring me in past the bravura of Remington’s commercial presence to the subtle magic o
f his personal hard-focus spin on American Impressionism. As I strode down the gallery, I told the baby, “An Impressionist he truly was: Look! He put the most improbable colors next to each other. He could evoke everything from the blinding heat of a prairie summer to the brilliant shadows of a desert night.” I was waxing poetical, and impressing even myself. “But let’s start at the source: his studio.”

  I took a right turn at the end of the gallery and pulled up next to a barrier. Beyond it waited the reconstruction of Remington’s wonderful room, with its giant fireplace, now tucked intimately into this quiet corner of the gallery. How surprised I had been, the first time I’d seen it, how filled with awe. I wondered what the baby was making of it through her innocent eyes. Did she have any idea what she was seeing? I held out my arms, presenting the room to my tiny charge. “Check this out, m’dear. It’s filled with the raw stuff of Remington’s inspiration—Indian tomahawks and beaded moccasins, a cavalry saddle and canteen … . And look: even an early Mexican straw sombrero.”

  It was all of ten seconds before Sloane began to wiggle. Now that I was standing still, she had decided it was time to get up and party. Erupting from her contentment, she dug her little bootied feet into the space between the frame of the backpack and my spine and began to shove herself skyward.

  I knew this signal well. It meant she wanted down. No more backpack for her. She wanted to get down on that board gallery floor and move, zigging and zagging about like a demented moon-rover.

  From the way Sloane was arching her back, it seemed that this might even be her moment to rise up and walk, even begin to run, using her sticky fingers to grapple all things that museums label DO NOT TOUCH.

  I greeted her kicks with a jagged sense of frustration, still tense from my meeting with Frank, and—not for the first time—wondering how a child I so deeply loved could snap me over the brink from frustration into seething annoyance with such terrifying speed. I stuck a finger back over my shoulder for her to grab, but she rejected my feeble maneuvers and instead leaned in the opposite direction, attempting to launch herself over the top of the frame. I tried the old bouncing up and down gambit, but she continued to fight against her shoulder harness, and in the process managed to grab herself a good handful of my hair and give it a yank.

  “Sloane, honeycup,” I gasped, “that’s not how to put Auntie Emmy in a nice mood, now, is it?” I reached back with both hands and tried to loose my hair from her grip, but she managed to work her hands free of the little mittens that were clipped to the cuffs of her snowsuit and had twined her sticky little fingers tight against my scalp.

  “Sloane . .”

  The baby answered with something that sounded like a miniature motorboat trying to find its way through mud as she twisted her handful, this time putting particular stress on a few hairs, which hurt much worse than an even strain across a fistful.

  “Sloane!” I screeched, my voice rising in pitch despite all attempts to keep in mind that the source of my agony was an infant who had—through innocence and curiosity—got her neurologically immature fingers stuck in my hair and not a demon from some parallel dimension who was systematically probing for the one stimulus I found most irritating.

  “Let me help,” came a man’s voice from behind me. “Tickle, tickle, tickle,” he added, before I could turn to see who was speaking.

  Sloane giggled and let go of my hair with little more than a parting tug.

  I glanced over my shoulder so that I could see my saviour. And jerked with surprise, because the man was standing only inches from me, staring at me through pale gray eyes that flashed like ice.

  Overwhelmed to find anyone that close, especially someone with such a disconcerting gaze, I turned around and stepped back, moving away from him.

  He stepped forward, continuing to play with the baby.

  I did not like this. Strangers fiddling with one’s baby, or one’s buddy’s baby was not all right—a phrase that, as a newly minted childcare-giver, I had recently added to my repertoire. I gave Gray Eyes a look that said Back off.

  Instead of backing off, he shifted his gaze to me, and studied my face just as candidly as he would have done if I were a piece of sculpture on exhibit, his lips relaxing into a dreamy smile.

  Okay, if you won’t back off, I will, I decided, and eased my weight onto the leg that was farther from him. I clicked down a mental list, assessing him: White. Male. Moderate height and build. American. Northeastern, judging by his accent. Upper-class preppie, judging by his clothing and mannerisms. And not quite on the planet, judging by his presumption in staring at me like this!

  He continued to stare at me, so I stared back. I had met a great variety of strange people in my day, but a presentable, well-to-do white male who stares fixedly at women and children in art museums was new to me. He appeared to be in his early forties (about five years older than me), and had the first smattering of gray hairs amd lines around his eyes and mouth to prove it. His grooming was impeccable, right down to the perfect haircut and subtle scent of expensive toiletries. He was dressed in a comfortable-looking tweed jacket, a nice flannel shirt and blue jeans. He was not local: cowboys do not wear that kind of jacket, their jeans fit a darn sight tighter, and they do not wear flannel shirts—even expensive Abercrombie & Fitch jobs like this one—to visit museums. No, I decided that rig suggests that he formed his sense of style within striking distance of the East Coast boarding school from hell I attended for two miserable years.

  I do not like to admit this prejudice, but sadly, it lives on in my crooked little heart. Indeed, during my two-year tenure in boarding school, I had formed a marked allergy to preppies. I had found them too often vain and presumptuous, given to a sense of entitlement that built a wall across the places where empathy needed to grow.

  This guy was like that, only somehow worse. At least other East Coast snobs have the gentility to ignore me, not examine me like I’m some kind of specimen under glass; and, as far as I know, they leave each other’s babies alone.

  “Sweet baby,” he said. “About seven months?”

  I did not reply.

  He made a genteel bit of kissy-lips at Sloane and stuck a finger over my shoulder for her to grasp, which she was pleased to do, showing precociousness in more ways than just an early crawl.

  I shifted farther away from him, breaking contact.

  He smiled, just a glint of perfect white teeth. He let his gaze linger on me like he knew something important that I did not, and then moved on down the gallery.

  More shaken than was reasonable, I watched him go, wondering what a damned Easterner was doing here off-season anyway. Had his personal jet been forced down by a storm, or a need to refuel? I wanted to spit: So great was his condescension that I found myself placing him and his patrician bearing high above the clouds, enjoying the heights of existence.

  A second man hurried to fall into step beside him. His attire was less specifically genteel: gray flannel slacks, white shirt, a necktie. The two stopped in front of The Sentinel, a painting of a Westerner standing guard in front of a Conestoga wagon by moonlight, rifle cradled in his arms. The gray-eyed man leaned back, arms folded in refined contemplation, a strange postural echo of the rough-cut guardian in the painting he was observing. “This one?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the man with the tie. “We crate it up tomorrow and ship it east. It’s going to be a great show.”

  The man with the necktie must be the curator of this gallery, I decided, belatedly concerned that he might have seen Faye’s name on my visitor’s pass. I glanced at it, double-checking that it said only VISITOR, and exhaled with relief. Whew! Faye will be meeting with this guy and her old geezer later this afternoon.

  Then a new worry bloomed: What if the gray-eyed man sticks around? What if he’s part of the group that’s meeting here today? Might he hassle Faye the way he hassled me? On further contemplation, I decided, She can handle someone like this. She grew up in the smart set. She’d dispatch this guy with
a glance.

  The two men stared at the masterwork awhile before either spoke again, then the gray-eyed man said, “Hooker’s green.”

  “Ah,” said Necktie.

  “Yes. That’s the color Remington typically used to get the effect of moonlight,” Gray Eyes continued, his voice growing sonorous with erudition. “It’s an odd pigment, a combination of Prussian blue and gamboge. An interesting choice, don’t you think?”

  Necktie nodded.

  The gray-eyed man continued his scholarly dissertation: “It’s simultaneously dark and light, even though he grayed it out. Intense, particularly against the warm white of the moonlight on the wagon’s cover.” He shook his head. “I would never have thought of it. Never. The man was brilliant.”

  Hooker’s green. I was surprised to notice that much of the painting was, in fact, green. The picture depicted nighttime underneath a bright moon, with deep gloom under the wagon and just a smattering of bright stars like buckshot in the far sky. The guard’s eyes were lost in the depths of shadow.

  The gray-eyed man continued to stare at the painting, and I continued to stare at him. Now that he had taken his icy gaze off of me, I noticed that he was in fact quite good-looking. I wondered if I had been too quick to turn a cold shoulder toward him. As I watched, he shook his head absently and made a small clicking noise in the corner of his mouth, an odd gesture, but one as familiar to me as the unguarded moments after sex. Perhaps it was because I had just seen Frank, and had been pried open by the ghosts of my love life, but in that instant Gray Eyes evoked my boyfriend, Jack Sampler, and in spite of what had transpired between us five minutes earlier, I felt a shock of attraction for him.

  Dismay whizzed through me; it seemed it was my afternoon to be upset by men. I studied this man’s face, trying to reassert my earlier wariness. I concentrated, trying to analyze how I could simultaneously dislike this man’s behavior and find him attractive. I assured myself that it was only that he reminded me of Jack, no more. I told myself firmly that Jack was a far better man than this, and berated myself for even noticing anyone else. But Jack was far, far away, and it had been a long, long time, and I could no longer quite remember exactly what he looked like. Was this how my brain let me know that far had become too far, and long had become too long?