I’d pack my sketchbook and a handful of charcoal pencils and I’d sit and draw. Sometimes I’d holler off a cliff and wait for the echo to swoop back to me. I can’t explain why—simply felt compelled. Cecil’d blame it on the artist in me, but landscapes have a certain solidity, a certain, unquestionable reliability, and the echo is their earmark. It takes distance for the sound to splinter and scatter, to slow down enough for rocks to gather shards of voice and put them back together. It takes scope . An echo hints at a great wisdom—bluecollar wisdom. It departs and returns, departs, returns. A wisdom of reliability, I guess.
As we drove, Cecil bent his elbow out the window, gripped the wheel at its twelve-o’clock with one loose hand. He wore a blue ballcap with a bunch of burrs along the rim, a checkered T-shirt beneath his grey vest. He had his share of wrinkles around his eyes and a mouth that bent easy into a scowl but did so less often than you’d expect. No real scars to note besides a few spark burns on his chin. He looked like a highschool gym teacher.
I like the landscape here, I said.
Nice to be able to go outside. I was in London for a while—it felt like always being indoors. I don’t know how city guys do it.
Different values. My wife was one.
And she isn’t here.
Thank God for that.
Cecil slid one eye my way and his cheek twitched to a smile. You won’t find city guys here, he said. We run them out of town.
Make a game of it, I bet.
We keep score, too.
The road wound through a gap in a canyon wall where the rock face was the colour of clay and high enough to block the morning sun. On the other side, we rolled through a tourist town called Radium that was built around natural hot springs. Its main drag had a liquor store and half a dozen hotels, each with their vacancy sign lit. Beyond that, the highway curled along the lip of a gully that stretched to the horizon. From our view I could see a lake and small crops of houses dotting the water’s rim and, in the distance, the sulphury glow of lights—lanterns, houseboats, truckers grinding miles in the first hours of the day.
I could draw that, I said.
Draw it?
Keeps me out of trouble.
Better than my hobbies, Cecil said.
Used to draw people. That got me into trouble once or twice.
Used to?
After my last tour, just couldn’t keep at it.
Cecil looked over at me. I don’t know what to think about this war, he said.
None of us do, I told him, and stared out across the gully. I’ll tell you this, though: it’s our kids getting shot.
Was the same with the Nazis.
They deserved it, at least.
Were you at Normandy?
Ten years too young, I said, and patted my arm, the scar hidden there. We got bombed, our own goddamned guys.
Friendly fire isn’t.
You gotta watch for it. Guys’ll shoot you in the back, on purpose or not.
Probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
Tunnel vision, I said. That’s human nature.
CECIL LIVED IN A heavily treed segment of town, down a steep hill, and close enough to the beach for him to claim he could see the water from his bathroom on the second floor. The road was gravel and dirt and Cecil, for years, would bitch about street taxes he never saw a cent of. Not even new gravel , he’d often say. The truck’s tires churned rocks and pinged pebbles against the undercarriage. Boys ran amok on the street and the shoulder and the yards that lined it, cap guns in hand, yelling bang and gotch your arm , and sometimes crouching behind tree stumps or old cars or among the knotgrass that grew unchallenged in the ditches. As we drove by, Cecil gave short, blurting honks to clear them from his path. They waved and stood on the roadside as if at attention, and Cecil bobbed his head, winked, and more than once saluted.
His house was a small one with army-green siding that Cecil, colour-blind, called grey. He parked beside a cinder-block retaining wall with a dangerous lean. At the far end of the carport
As we drove, Cecil bent his elbow out the window, gripped the wheel at its twelve-o’clock with one loose hand. He wore a blue ballcap with a bunch of burrs along the rim, a checkered T-shirt beneath his grey vest. He had his share of wrinkles around his eyes and a mouth that bent easy into a scowl but did so less often than you’d expect. No real scars to note besides a few spark burns on his chin. He looked like a highschool gym teacher.
I like the landscape here, I said.
Nice to be able to go outside. I was in London for a while—it felt like always being indoors. I don’t know how city guys do it.
Different values. My wife was one.
And she isn’t here.
Thank God for that.
Cecil slid one eye my way and his cheek twitched to a smile. You won’t find city guys here, he said. We run them out of town.
Make a game of it, I bet.
We keep score, too.
The road wound through a gap in a canyon wall where the rock face was the colour of clay and high enough to block the morning sun. On the other side, we rolled through a tourist town called Radium that was built around natural hot springs. Its main drag had a liquor store and half a dozen hotels, each with their vacancy sign lit. Beyond that, the highway curled along the lip of a gully that stretched to the horizon. From our view I could see a lake and small crops of houses dotting the water’s rim and, in the distance, the sulphury glow of lights—lanterns, houseboats, truckers grinding miles in the first hours of the day.
I could draw that, I said.
Draw it?
Keeps me out of trouble.
Better than my hobbies, Cecil said.
Used to draw people. That got me into trouble once or twice.
Used to?
After my last tour, just couldn’t keep at it.
Cecil looked over at me. I don’t know what to think about this war, he said.
None of us do, I told him, and stared out across the gully. I’ll tell you this, though: it’s our kids getting shot.
Was the same with the Nazis.
They deserved it, at least.
Were you at Normandy?
Ten years too young, I said, and patted my arm, the scar hidden there. We got bombed, our own goddamned guys.
Friendly fire isn’t.
You gotta watch for it. Guys’ll shoot you in the back, on purpose or not.
Probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
Tunnel vision, I said. That’s human nature.
CECIL LIVED IN A heavily treed segment of town, down a steep hill, and close enough to the beach for him to claim he could see the water from his bathroom on the second floor. The road was gravel and dirt and Cecil, for years, would bitch about street taxes he never saw a cent of. Not even new gravel , he’d often say. The truck’s tires churned rocks and pinged pebbles against the undercarriage. Boys ran amok on the street and the shoulder and the yards that lined it, cap guns in hand, yelling bang and gotch your arm , and sometimes crouching behind tree stumps or old cars or among the knotgrass that grew unchallenged in the ditches. As we drove by, Cecil gave short, blurting honks to clear them from his path. They waved and stood on the roadside as if at attention, and Cecil bobbed his head, winked, and more than once saluted.
His house was a small one with army-green siding that Cecil, colour-blind, called grey. He parked beside a cinder-block retaining wall with a dangerous lean. At the far end of the carport
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