Things Been, Things Seen

Things Been, Things Seen


She moved through the carnival much as she had wandered through life, confused by all the clutter and unsure about where she should make a start. She felt numbed by what she knew.

She came upon him in the rear of the section that held the psychics, past the decorations and the neon signs, past the faded posters that cried of mystery and greatness. He was slight of build, dressed in torn blue jeans and a simple shirt. He wore no jacket against the wind, and she shivered to see him like that, folded warm in her coat, watching the wind sweep his fine hair across his forehead. His manner spoke of utter isolation. He had John Lennon glasses, and a bearing that spoke of a slow careful patience. He was painting.

He painted like no one she had ever seen. The brush touching the canvas was supported by long thin fingers that could have belonged to a pianist. Two other brushes jutted out from between his fingers at strange angles, like spokes of a colorful wheel. He would paint a stroke and then the wheel would turn, green-tipped brush revolving up to make way for a blue-tipped one, another stroke of paint on a rapidly filling canvas. She watched in awe, for he painted so quickly, so deftly, so well. The brushes moved, hand clenched, paint growing from between his fingers to touch the canvas, each stroke eternal and unchangeable, each seemingly thoughtless yet perfect. He painted the landscape behind the crowds and the tents; he painted quickly, fearlessly. He seemed detached and cold, as she imagined God might have been on the last days of his whirlwind creation. Each stroke was measured, single strokes adding to the painting. It was perfect and fascinating, and somehow monstrous.

His world was bright. Clean. Wrong. She looked to the picture to see what he saw. She knew instinctively that it was like that for him, that he painted what he saw. Seeing his painting let her understand how he saw the world. He didn’t see the people there, didn’t see the manmade constructs that hid most of what he was painting. The fact that he could ignore all that life was horrible somehow, as though none of it mattered to him in the slightest. He painted with such great skill that he seemed otherworldly.

“Laurel.” His voice was soft, as she had known it would be. He kept painting. “Did you know that your name means ‘innocent, like a lamb?’” He didn’t look at her.

With a start she realized that he knew her name. Then she remembered that she still wore her name tag from the hospital. She hadn’t seen him look at her, but there was more than a touch of the magician about him, after all. “I don’t think it does,” she informed him. “You may be mistaken.”

He didn’t reply.

“Why are you painting that way?”

“I am a performer.” He never stopped painting, did not turn to look at her. “The spinning brushes are nothing more than a trick I’ve picked up, a practice in dexterity.” The brushes spun and danced in his hand, a wild thing he had captured. “They are meant to distract the observer from the picture I’m painting.” He turned and smiled at her, and she saw that he painted still, even with his eyes averted from the canvas. “I’ve never told anyone that before.” He turned back to the painting.

“What are you painting?”

“The world as it should be.”

“Why do you tell me…and no one else?”

“Because you are safe.”

Laurel was silent, trying to make sense of his words. She couldn’t, so she surrendered quietly, peacefully.

“What do you do here?” she asked.

“I paint.”

“And what else?”

“I tell the future.”

She paused, and was about to speak when a large man moved past her, overshadowing her, standing between the artist and herself.

“Tell my future,” he demanded.

There was a pause, during which the young man kept painting. “I’m expensive,” he said.

“I’ll pay.” The fat man reached for his wallet.

“Yes. You’ll pay. But not with cash.” The young man flipped to a new sheet of paper, a new canvas. He spoke quietly, the brush moving, and Laurel saw that his eyes were closed behind his glasses. “I’ll start with your past.” His hands turned like wheels, spinning the brushes.

The wind stirred his hair across his forehead, and he shivered. Laurel remembered that he had been oblivious to the weather before, and she wondered what it was that made him shiver now. The wind stirred, and brought his words to them. It was not the wind that stirred Laurel and the fat man, but his words.

“Your name is Raymond James Perriault, and you were born in a peeling, paint-flecked room in a town that never produced anything that mattered. You were never loved, and you’ve never loved.” The brush in his hand trembled and stopped, like clockwork winding down. Time stopped. There was silence all around the words he spoke.

“You were little Ray when you were five years old, when you threw that rock at another small boy and cost him his eye. You never confessed to that, did you Ray? And you never said sorry. That boy died when he was seventeen, first taking his daddy’s shotgun, and then taking his life.”

The wind trembled, and then stirred to life. The brush in his hand did too, as if moved by the wind and not his fingers.

“You’ve always been mean and stupid. You made your career by stabbing your friends in the back. You are a bad husband, and a bad father. For years now you have raped your daughter, sweet little Melanie…and she was such a beautiful child before you touched her, before you poisoned her.”

The wallet slipped from the man’s fingers and fell to the ground. The fat man reached out a hand, trembling. His mouth opened and closed, his face was red and his eyes were bulging, and all of it was soundless. Laurel just stood, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to stop listening.

“That brings us to your life now, in the present.” The young man looked past the other man, looked through him. “Melanie is telling her mother about you right now. She’s crying, both of them are crying and holding each other. Your wife can’t believe it, not yet, but she will….” His voice drifted, ghostlike.

The fat man bent, found his wallet with scrabbling fingers, then lurched towards the much smaller man. Still, there was not a sound. The bigger man loomed over the younger man. The artist turned his face upward, and smiled. “Your future is that you die alone, and no one will care that you have died, just as no one will ever care that you have lived.” The words were quiet, only kept alive by the wind. She heard a ripping sound as the page was torn and offered to the larger man. Laurel caught a glimpse of it, the darkened silhouette of a man lost in shadows, a gun in his mouth. Though the artist had painted with color, the picture was dark, almost black. As the artist handed the picture to the man, she was sure that she saw the picture move, saw it come to life.

With a sob, the fat man took the offered picture. Then he ran, looking ridiculous and tragic. There was the sound of his sobbing, his breathing, and then silence.

The young man flipped back to his original picture, and began to paint.

After a while, Laurel spoke.

“You are a monster.”

Softly he replied, “So was he.”

Laurel moved and stood behind him, and then wondered how she could have been so wrong. He had almost finished the landscape, and what had repelled her before was now breathtaking. It was devoid of people and devoid of ugliness. It was sterile and beautiful, the earth before man touched upon it. And still his hand moved, whirling, paint taking the page by storm.

A little later, when the wind had strengthened and the day had grown colder, she asked him to tell her about her future.

He stopped painting, putting the brush down, turning to face her from a world she had never touched, that she would never experience. He spoke as kindly as he knew how, a young man with age old eyes full of understanding.

“Laurel….lamb…I’m your future.”

She stared at him, and when he turned his eyes back to the canvas she followed his gaze. In the few seconds that she had looked away he had added a figure in the distance, a painter in front of an easel. The image swirled in front of her eyes, and Laurel leaned closer, as though to bring it into focus. She glimpsed a spark, deep in the dark that was there, and she moved closer still and reached out her hand as the artist turned to her...


The young man in the John Lennon glasses watched her paint a world, and he wasn’t surprised that she didn’t shiver in the cold wind that blew around them. He felt for her because he knew she could feel nothing.

Her hand held a wheel of color that turned, eternally creating.

“How do you think she ever learned to paint like that?”

The patient young man turned to the plump lady behind him. She was filled with wonder and cotton candy.

“I showed her. I taught her everything she’ll ever need to know.”

“She’s so talented. She has a wonderful future.”

He smiled at the woman. “She has no future at all. But if you don’t mind paying, she can tell you about yours.” She gave him a confused look. He put his hands in his pockets and shivered in the cold wind.

The plump lady smiled, flirting with him. “Why don’t you pay for me?”

He returned her smile. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Each of us earn our futures, and we must each pay our debts. House rules.” His smile widened until it was like an expression stretched over an empty place. “Besides, I’ve already paid.”

He left then, turning away, and he had walked quite a distance before he heard the plump lady ask to have her future told.

He smiled, but he didn’t look back.