Windscript Volume 24, 2007-2008 - Saskatchewan Writers' Guild

The Magazine of Saskatchewan High School Writing
Arden Angley
Painter
It is my sister’s 19th birthday; we are going to our cousin’s farm. We’re blowing down highway #10. Turning
off left about a half kilometer past Woseley on our way down to the Qu’Appelle Valley. The land is
littered with stationary cows that seem intentionally set up for the perfect prairie picture. Our city van
desperately scrapes along the frozen back road. I look up from my lap just as we pass Elisboro. A hamlet
of six people, four of whom are staring at us trying to spot the idiot family inside. I blink and press my
hands to my eyes for a moment. I forgot how long I had been battling to keep my eyes open against the
enormous weight of light. I open them again. The sky’s lid is the stirred blue you’d find on homemade pottery,
descending into a frayed grey around the edges, and somewhere in the middle it’s cracked by the sun
screaming out like an open wound over the winter wheat and the stubble of summers shadow. The roads
climbing the hill curve in and swoop out lulling the countryside into unconsciousness. A painter lives at
the very top of the Qu’Appelle Valley. Her house looks over the plateau of toast and butter land. In every
season she paints a picture of where she lives. My eyes are sewn to the house as our van pulls past waiting
for it to move, or breathe, or wink. Anything to show some life. My legs are bent underneath my weight
and my cheek is hugging the back of the seat where my head should sit, transfixed on her house watching
it through the back window get smaller and smaller. My sister is sleeping. My dad and I are ignoring the silence.
When my mother and father divorced I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t ask why or how could you do this
to me. I just wondered why it had taken so long. Mom moved away immediately, to a house out here. She
quit her job and paid for a few acrylic and oil painting classes. When her license expired she didn’t drive
in anymore. She met a new man who bought her paints and groceries. They live together. I don’t know his
name. They do not own a phone. My mom lives to paint her neighbourhood. The cows never move and
all the bales stay put. She sells every piece of artwork. Each of her paintings is the same and yet customers
buy them and hang them in their houses in an attempt to bring the outdoors in. To surround themselves
in nature. To bask in pictures of valleys. My dad has to take care of my sister and me. Somewhere along the
way he lost his temper. We are both sitting in the back seat. We roll up to our cousin’s house and unload.
My dad hollers for one of us to bring in the cake. I step out and roll the door shut. The shadows of the
moving clouds stumble on the still life down here. I look up at the clouds tumbling in, furrowing their
brows at each other. Disappointed at all the dead life below.
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volume 24