Blackfly Season

25

STEPHEN P. RUSSELL HAD COME prepared—floppy straw sun hat, bright white bug shirt, Off Deep Woods insect repellent—he was ready for anything. As Algonquin Bay’s best-selling watercolourist, Stephen P. Russell prided himself on being an all-weather, all-terrain sort of man. His ancient Volvo wagon was crammed with boots, umbrella, slicker, sandals, sunblock, coffee Thermos, as well as the painterly paraphernalia of the amateur artist: easel, brushes, colours and a none-too-steady folding stool.

Stands of birches were his bread and butter, preferably birches adorned with clumps of snow or dripping with rain. He sold two or three of these works every weekend at the farmers’ market. You couldn’t live on the money it brought in, but it was a nice supplement to a pension from the Nipissing Separate School Board. He prided himself particularly on his ability to render the platinum sheen on the leaves of the silver birch, the very effect he was creating at this moment.

A steady breeze was riffling the leaves and blowing them back like the fur on a cat. A languid chorus line of Scotch pines swayed beside the birches, but the painter ignored them. These he would do with a green wash later, blurry as you please. That was the great thing about watercolours—it was easy to blur everything you didn’t want the viewer to see. Pines were not Stephen P. Russell’s strong suit.

The brushwork on the birch leaves took a lot of doing, a lot of concentration. And for some time, the painter had noticed that his concentration was flickering. Normally he could work for hours, thinking of nothing but his subject and his technique, but today he had finished his Thermos of coffee early, and now nature had to take its course.

He turned from his easel and looked behind him toward the nasty construction site. No, he would have to head the other way. He got up with difficulty from his stool—oh, the aches and agues of the so-called golden years!—and tottered stiffly toward the bushes.

At first he didn’t realize what it was. The thing was only in his peripheral vision, and he was seeing it through anti-bug mesh. It made him jump because he thought somebody had caught him relieving himself outdoors. It was only after he had zipped up, his face burning with embarrassment, that he turned and realized that this person had not seen anything at all.