The Homeless Millionaire

Harry left for the mainland early next morning. It was a Sunday, and he wanted to spend it with his mother. He took the boat, but promised to return Monday evening so that I'd be able to see Chaz at the gallery on Tuesday, as arranged.

I had a shitload of stuff to do in the meantime. I'd promised myself that I'd take at least a dozen pieces to show to Chaz. That would involve drawing and painting twice as many on the optimistic premise that every second picture would be good enough to sell.

There was no way I was going to be able to do twenty-four pictures in two days while really putting all I had into each piece. I would be able to manage half that, if I got lucky. But maybe that was asking a little too much from Fate. The old bitch had been smiling and patting me on the shoulder lately, and I knew she liked variety. She was easily bored. Well, I'd have gotten bored too watching all those morons walking around and making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

My paranoid pal was bored and restless as well. He'd been forced to twiddle his thumbs all afternoon and evening the previous day, and he didn't like that. He was a hardworking guy. So he sprang into action the moment I'd finished breakfast.

He reminded me that I'd achieved next to nothing over the past month: my artistic output was limited to one good piece, the shotgun and the shells lying on the table. He gave me a small lecture about how important it was to paint or draw every day, just so that my hand worked well. This was precision work, as demanding as a neural surgeon's. My paranoid pal assured me that given my lack of practice, anything I produced that day would be shit, bad enough to inflict serious psychological damage on its creator.

It was another beautiful day, so I went outside to shut him up and check things out for landscape potential. But it was far too cold to do any painting or drawing out of doors. My hand would get stiff and my teeth would be chattering inside ten minutes. I retreated indoors, and it felt like a minor defeat.

My paranoid pal liked that. He was grinning when I went back inside and began looking around for something to draw. He'd already scored a small victory, and was looking forward to scoring more.

I couldn't see anything to catch my fancy, I really couldn't. So I ended up trying to draw Chaz from memory. My first attempt ended in disaster. So did the second one. So did the third. My pal loved that, he actually clapped when I fucked up for the third time.

"I'll show you yet, asshole," I told him. He spread his hands as if to say: be my guest.

I made another attempt and this time I succeeded, partly because I cheated by obscuring most of Chaz's face: I drew him chugging down a cocktail from a big glass. But it was good, maybe not good enough to sell but definitely good enough to give Chaz as a gift: he seemed to have a well-developed sense of humour. It was also good enough to wipe that stupid smile off the face of my pal.

I got myself a beer as a reward, so naturally I drew the beer bottle next—Chaz had raved about my beer bottles, hadn't he? He said they were better than anything Ludo could have done! And Ludo was the hot new darling of the art world.

It came out weird. The bottle I had drawn back at Roch's cottage had been dancing with the joy of existence. The bottle I drew now was full of menace. It was the kind of bottle you'd put on a poster warning people off booze. It was a bottle that was waiting to be picked up and smashed against a hard edge and pushed into someone's face inside some scuzzy bar.

I had let the way I felt about Ludo guide my hand, and it showed. So I got up and walked around smoking a cigarette. I decided that it had been a mistake to draw a bottle that was nearly empty. Empty bottles were depressing.

I got myself another beer and drank some and drew a half-full bottle. This time, it was really lazy bottle. It was a bottle that stood at grandpa's elbow while he dozed in an easy chair. I didn't like that bottle much, and I felt a twinge of fear. Daylight would be ending soon, with my total output so far consisting of a single piece that was just about good enough to give away.

I drew three more pictures: yet another bottle, yet another Chaz, and Harry. All three were shit. The Harry I drew was particularly bad. I gathered up all the drawings except the very first one I did of Chaz, and used them to start a fire in the fireplace. It was getting cold and dark.

It was also obvious I wouldn't get any more work done that day. I went to the kitchen and spent an hour peeling potatoes and cutting them into long, thin fries—good exercise for my hand. I fried them up in a pan, which involved turning over each individual fry a couple of times: lots of precision work. That was what I told myself, anyway.

I found a paper bag and put the fries into it together with a spoonful of salt, then shook the bag until it was all greasy and close to falling apart. I fried four pork chops while I was screwing around with that bag. They were about to turn bad.

I spent the rest of that day in a food-induced coma, attempting to read about the Jutland battle and failing. I made it an early night, and by the time the sun came up the next day, I'd already showered and shaved and was breakfasting on coffee and Scottish shortbread.

Then I went through all of my stuff and found three pictures I could safely show to Chaz. That made a total of four, not too many, and two of them were pretty similar: takes of the view from my bedroom window at Roch's house. This was pitiful, I needed more. My paranoid pal was full of anticipation.

Out of sheer desperation, I drew the bookshelf next, with the scoped rifle leaning against its side. It played nicely off the books. Someone had just walked up to that bookshelf and put away the gun and looked through the books, leaving them in slight disarray. There was a big gap where a fat volume had been pulled out and a book was leaning into that space as if it was pining for its missing companion.

After a bit of thought I added an imaginary pair of leather gloves lying on top of the bookshelf. A couple of glove fingers had flopped over the edge and were pointing down at the leaning book. This took me forever, because I was working from an image in my mind and constantly had to switch between that and the image that was taking shape on paper. And each time I went back to the image in my mind it would be altered, however slightly, because that was what happened when re-accessing a memory.

Time and time again, I had to sit still with shut eyes to refocus and fuck if it didn't get harder every time. But in the end I managed to pull it off. The glove finger pointing at the leaning book was the finger that pulled the trigger on that shotgun, very recently. That was another piece I could show Chaz.

There really wasn't anything left in the room to inspire me, so I went to the kitchen and got a few potatoes and a knife and tried to draw that. I was attempting to duplicate the bookshelf gimmick in a way, with the knife instead of the rifle. The knife was supposed to be on the verge of jumping at the potatoes to cut them into pieces, and of course the potatoes should have been terrified. But it came out so lame I tore it up the moment it was finished.

I had planned doing a couple of watercolours that day, to put some variety in my offering to Chaz. Unfortunately, my string of failures had made me too jumpy to handle a paintbrush. So I put away the potatoes and the knife and looked around and finally got a few apples and fucked around with them on the table until they seemed to be talking to each other, huddled in a jolly little group. I did that it in charcoal and it came out so well that I decided to try a watercolour. I really needed colour to do justice to those apples.

It took me three fucking hours to paint them. At one point, I was close to giving up because my hand was hurting badly. But I gave it some relaxing exercise by using it to drink beer for twenty minutes, and returned to painting.

I was done with it in the nick of time: the light was fading. But it was still bright enough for me to see I'd done a good job, this time. Those apples really were alive.

I was starving by then and pigged out big time on eggs and bacon and baked beans and bread; I went through two cans of beans. I washed up and cleaned the stove and then relaxed with a coffee and a cigarette. I was just about to make myself another coffee and maybe treat myself to a shortbread when I heard Harry come in.

I'd left my artistic output strewn around on the coffee table and the sofa, so I assumed he was looking at that when he didn't enter the kitchen right away. Maybe I was right, and he did look at my stuff. But he definitely wasn't thinking about it when he finally joined me in the kitchen.

He was carrying a huge bag of shopping in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He put the newspaper on the table and said:

"There's an article in there that you should read."

I looked through the paper while he was putting away the stuff he'd brought. I didn't have to look far. Page Three was taken up by Peter Schmidt, with yet another picture of his fat mug. The main article on that page was the mix of fact and speculation that I'd read before. However, there was a sidebar that made a big difference.

The sidebar described a hitchhiker Schmidt picked up at a gas station in Calgary. The two guys at the station store had remembered me well: it was a good description. If Stan and Barbara who had dropped me off at that gas station read that description, they'd be on the phone to the cops within minutes, telling them about the guy they'd picked up in Winnipeg. The trail would end there, thanks to my second-hand train ticket. But that was little consolation, because anyone who'd read and remembered that description would give me a long second look when they saw me.

I put the paper away, and found that I was already on the receiving end of a long look from Harry. There was no use trying to beat about the bush. I'd told him I'd picked up a ride in Calgary. And I'd even lied that I saw Schmidt there, nearly hitched a ride with him as a matter of fact.

I could see in Harry's face he knew now that I'd lied about that. So I said:

"Sit down, Harry. There's something I need to tell you about."

He nodded, and said:

"I'd appreciate that."

Over the next few minutes, I told him everything. I gave him a straightforward account of what had happened, fact after fact: he did this, I did that. I didn't talk about how afraid and desperate I'd been. I just stuck to the facts.

When I'd finished, Harry said instantly:

"What I don't understand is why you didn't just run away. He wouldn't have a chance of catching you, with his weight. You could have forced a car to stop, and get the cops."

"I had left my bag in the cab," I said. "It contained everything I had. Including some drugs."

My lie worked. Harry nodded, and was silent for a while. I was beginning to feel really uncomfortable by the time he said:

"You know you did the world a major service. I know you did the world a service. But the system won't see it that way. The system hates anything that happens independently of the system. The system hates you, right now."

"As long as you're not part of the system," I said.

"No, I'm not. I might be even prepared to swear in court that it couldn't have been you who killed that asshole, because when that happened you were already here. But we both want to eliminate the possibility of it ever coming to a court case, don't we."

"We definitely do, yes."

I grinned when I said that, because it was clear Harry was firmly on my side. He wouldn't shop me to the cops, he was even contemplating perjury on my behalf.

He said:

"You've got to lay low for a while. People have short memories, and in a couple of weeks almost no one will remember all that shit. But all the same, you should consider a few changes. Different hairstyle, ditch that duffel bag of yours, it stands out. Get something else to carry your stuff in. And don't wear that jean jacket."

"But everyone's wearing jean jackets."

"No matter. You kind of cut a characteristic figure in that jacket. Wear your nice new Canadian Tire jacket instead."

"Okay," I said.

"This won't go on forever. A few months from now, you can look however you like without a care. But right know it's best that you stay here. Out of sight, out of mind."

"But I'm to see Chaz tomorrow. And what about those guys that tried to steal your pot plants? They saw me, all right. I even did some gun-pointing."

Harry pondered that for a while.

"I don't think they're going to be a problem," he said eventually. "If they go to the cops, they'll have to explain how they met you, and why you were pointing a gun at them. And you know, Peter Schmidt was a major asshole. Everyone in their right mind is applauding what you did. But the system does not have a mind. You need feelings to have a mind, and the system doesn't have any. So it's best you hide away for a while."

"I have to see Chaz tomorrow. I promised that I'd bring some stuff, and I'm supposed to sign a contract."

We went over that back and forth a couple of times. Harry could take the pictures for me, but he sure as hell couldn't sign a contract in my name. So in the end, we decided that I'd go with him into Vancouver next morning.

It definitely promised to be an exciting day.