Old Tin Sorrows

26

It smelled in there. Not too bad a smell, but a strong one of moldy hay. It didn't do my cold any good. My nose ran like a fountain.

There was a room inside the hay, larger than I'd expected. Snake had spanned it with planks to support the bales on top. It was maybe six feet wide and ten feet long. His paintings were there, along with other treasures, mostly what we'd consider trivial or trash. Junk from the war, mostly. And medals. Snake had accumulated him a potful of medals, proudly displayed on a tattered Karentine banner against the narrow end wall.

I couldn't help feeling for the guy. A hero had come to this. A life for his country, for this.

And our rulers wonder why Glory Mooncalled is a folk hero.

Both side walls were lined with paintings, none of them framed, all just leaning there, stacked three and four deep. They were every bit as good as Cook said they could be. Better, maybe. I'm no expert but they looked like the product of a driven genius.

They weren't cheerful paintings. They were the spawn of darkness, visions of hell. One caught my eye immediately and hit me like a blow in the gut. It was a swamp. Maybe not the swamp that became my home away from home during my stint, but a place just as horrible. And that painting was no simple, brooding landscape faintly touched with the dark side. Swamp things swarmed there the way they seemed after they'd driven you mad for months. Mosquitos the size of hornets, eyes that watched from the dark, stagnant water. Human bones.

In the foreground was a hanged man. The scavengers had been at him. A dark bird perched on his shoulder, pecked his face. Something about the way he hung left you certain he'd hanged himself rather than go on.

A couple of guys in the company had killed themselves when they couldn't take it anymore.

Gods. I felt like I could fall into that painting and tumble right back through time.

I turned it around. It got to me that much.

Shaking, I went down the row on that side, then up the other. No other piece had the personal impact that one did but the same genius drove them. They'd have as much power for the right viewer.

"He was crazy," I murmured.

I couldn't hear anything well but it seemed the horses below were restless.

I went around again, checking the paintings behind the ones displayed.

Most seemed less maniacal, more illustrative, yet there was no doubt they portrayed places beheld by the same eye that had interpreted the war in the others. One I recognized as a view of Full Harbor contorted into a hellish dreamscape, more proof that Snake had put his memories or haunts onto his canvases.

Snake hadn't been just a painter of places. The first portrait I encountered was of Jennifer, I'd guess, at the time the General had come home. She was indefinably younger and maybe more beautiful—yet interpreted by mad eyes.

I studied it hard but couldn't figure it out. Yet Snake had done something with Jennifer that gave me the creeps.

There were portraits of the others, too. Kaid looked old and tired and worn out and you got the feeling that death was watching over his shoulder. The General had some of the creepiness that illuminated Jennifer and something of the fox about him. Chain looked plain mean. Wayne looked like a greedy burgher. I got it! Part of it. Part of the interpretation was how Bradon had clothed them. That was the crude statement. But there were the faces, too, painted like the man had been able to read the bones and souls beneath.

There was a later portrait of Jennifer, crueler than the first but with the lady more beautiful. Then a couple of guys I hadn't met, presumably among the missing. Then one of Dellwood that reminded me of a basset hound. I guess Snake saying he was a faithful old dog without a soul or mind of his own. Then one of Peters, either a failure for the artist or observer. I couldn't read anything into it. Then one of Cook that must have been romantic excess because she came off like a saint, like a mother to the world. Then still another of Jennifer, almost repulsive in its portrayal of the dualities, beauty and horror.

Once I got over being startled, I examined it more closely. Part of the effect came at a subconscious level, almost. I don't know how he did it but he'd painted two faces, one over the other, the outer one of blinding beauty and the other the skull face of death. You didn't see that one without staring long and hard.

The horses were excited downstairs. I wondered why but was preoccupied with the magic—yeah, the sorcery—of Snake Bradon's artistry.

If it was a sin that Jennifer's beauty should be hidden, it was the crime of the century that Bradon's paintings should go unseen, certain to fall victim to mold and moisture.

Before I left Jennifer, I vowed I'd find some way to bring the paintings out. Snake Bradon wouldn't go unremembered.

Had he been in love with Jennifer? She was the only subject he'd painted more than once, excepting a scene that looked like a before and after of a nonhuman holy place that had had the misfortune to stumble into the middle of a human battle. The later painting reeked of defilement by the corpses and ravens and bones. It felt like a parable of the world.

I blew my nose, hit the motherlode. Before it watered up again, I caught a whiff of a new odor. What? I shrugged and went on.

"Damn! Ah, damn my eyes!" That was no curse, friends. That was a squeal of triumph.

Snake had painted my lady in white. He had caught her as the incarnation of beauty—yet she, too, had some of the creepiness he'd put into his portraits of Jennifer.

She was in a wind, running, frightened. A darkness lay behind her. You knew it was in pursuit, yet you could not define what it was. The harder you looked the harder it was to tell it was there. The woman looked right into your eyes. The artist's eyes. Her right hand was just starting the motion of reaching out for help. Her eyes said she knew the person she was looking at knew what was behind her.

It transfixed me. It had the impact of the swamp painting. And this time I couldn't figure out why, because this one couldn't be explained in terms of my own past.

I blew my nose again. I got another whiff of that odor. This time I recognized it.

Smoke!

The damned stable was on fire! No wonder the horses were excited!

I scrambled out of there, to the edge of the loft.

Flames roared at the end where Peters had been working. The animals had gotten out and run. I heard shouting outside. The heat was savage.

I wasn't trapped—yet. If I moved fast I could get clear.

I knew the mileage Morley would get out of the gesture as I dove into the hole leading to Snake's cache. He'd be on me for a year, risking my life over some daubs on canvas.

I slapped a dozen of those daub-hickeys into a pile as big as I could manage and dragged them out. The fire was spreading fast. Flames were almost to me when I burst out. The heat beat at me. I felt my eyebrows curl, my eyes dry out. I staggered away. The flames came after me.

"Damned fool," I muttered to myself. The heat seared the back of my neck. Now my eyes watered, nearly blinding me. My chances were slim enough without the damned paintings.

I couldn't let them go. They were that important. They were worth risking a life. Part of me already mourned those I'd had to leave behind.

The fire had spread below faster than it had up top. It was ahead of me now, at the end where Snake had lived. I wasn't going to get out that way.

I could see daylight through cracks between the vertical boards that formed the outside wail, rough-cut timber that had shrunk with the years till some of the gaps were half an inch wide. It was like looking through the bars at the gates of hell. From the inside. That close. And so far.

As panic closed in, I threw myself that way.

The stable was old and damned near falling down, and, if it was half as rotten as it looked, I might be able to bust out. I hit the wall with my shoulder, low. Both creaked. Neither broke but I figured the wall had the edge. I got down on my back and shot my feet out. One board gave an inch. That gave me hope and maybe some manic strength. I let fly again. An eight-inch-wide board tilted outward, then fell away under its own weight. Mad as I was, I flipped Bradon's paintings out before trying to make the hole wide enough for me.

The smoke almost overcame me first, but I made it. I jumped.

I lay around panting a while, vaguely aware that I was out there alone, away from the hollering on the other side of the barn. I climbed a fencepost and got myself upright, looked around, counted limbs to make sure I hadn't left any behind. I was still alone. I gathered my priceless salvage.

If there are gods, they agreed with me about those paintings. They hadn't been damaged. I got them together, limped over to the cow barn, hid them in the hayloft. My fuddled sense of humor told me that was appropriate. Then I stumbled back around the far side of the stable.

The whole gang was running around like chickens, doing the hopeless, bringing buckets of water from the wellhouse. Only the General and Peters were absent.

"Garrett!" Jennifer squealed. "What happened?"

I'm such a handsome devil, they just go to pieces when they see me. "I was taking a nap in there," I lied.

She got a little pale.

I gave her my heroic grin. "Not to worry. I just busted through a wall and here I am." A coughing jag hit me. Great timing. Damned smoke. "Can't stop the true of heart."

"You could've been killed."

"I could have. But I wasn't. Too light on my feet."

Kaid said, "Somebody tried to kill you, boy," as he staggered past with a five-gallon bucket.

I looked at the growing inferno. That hadn't occurred to me, though it should have.

No. You don't kill somebody by setting a barn on fire. Too easy for him to get away. Maybe you start a fire to flush him out, but... That wouldn't have worked here. Too many witnesses.

Even in my fuzzy state, it was obvious the arsonist had wanted to get rid of the stable and whatever contents he'd been unable to find during a hasty search.

Wonderful. Snake's information had escaped me again.

Even Cook was out lugging water. But no Peters. I worked up a case of the suspicions before I recalled why he wasn't around.

Hell. Saucerhead was overdue. I said, "You guys are wasting your time. Just keep it from jumping to the other buildings."

"What the hell you think we're doing, dipshit?" Chain growled. "If you're not going to help, get the hell out of the way."

Which was just the advice I needed. "I'm going inside to treat these burns." I had a few but didn't know how bad they were. Not too bad, I hoped. I didn't need them distracting me. The cold was bad enough.

I stumbled away. The others didn't pay any attention.