“At first, I didn’t like the way you told the story, Bud,” Harry said. “But when I settled down and reread your version, I didn’t think it was so bad.”
He paused. Buddy waited. Decided not to lighten things up with a faint praise quip.
“Then I slept on it. Read it again in the morning and found myself liking the way you put things. I started seeing stuff I hadn’t noticed when I was telling the story myself.” He glanced at his journal on the coffee table then eased back into his pink, wing-backed chair by the fireplace.
“What things?”
“Not so much actual things, as…” Harry frowned thoughtfully, “…as ideas about things. The way you wrote it up takes me back to where I was, but with fresh eyes. It’s still me in that forest, but a more insightful me, if you know what I mean.”
“So you like it?”
“Yeah. Guess I do…
“Not that I’d want the whole town knowing what’s going on inside my head when I’m looking at those murals. Least ways, not while I’m still around to be gawked at,” he hedged.
“I see,” Buddy held Harry’s gaze for a moment. “But after…?”
“Can’t stop anybody from doing whatever they want once I’m incinerated, so long as Bernice gets the final say on anything that’s in my estate, right?”
“Right,” Buddy agreed.
They sat for a while, Just being. Until Harry leaned forward, grunting as he shifted his reluctant limbs into a conspiratorial pose. “And I think there might be a way for us to make these stories of ours even better,” he offered.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The way things stand, you’re sort of telling them secondhand. It’s you, trying to figure out what it’s like to be me inside those murals.”
“Okay?” Buddy allowed doubtfully.
“Don’t get all panicky, now,” Harry soothed, putting his hands up like a traffic cop. “I’m not asking you to do any voodoo or anything like that.” He paused, gauging his companion’s state of mind. “I’m thinking, if you could get inside them murals too, you’d be able to tell my stories better.
“Now, don’t go getting all fidgety on me, Bud,” Harry admonished again. “Give me a chance here.”
“I’m not saying ‘no’, Harry; I’m just asking, ‘How’s that going to happen?’”
“You mean, you’re not crazy enough to think—like this old coot, sitting here—that you can walk through walls?”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly like that, but…?”
“Bernice has been coaching you.” Harry eyed him suspiciously, then laughed, rocking precariously on the edge of his cushion. “That’s just the kind of thing she’d say, and exactly the way she’d say it.” He slapped his knees and squinted at Buddy.
“Well, Harry, you can understand me being a bit doubtful, can’t you?”
“Course I can! All’s I’m asking is that you give it a chance. Listen to what I have to say, then think it over.”
Buddy nodded.
“All you have to do is sit beside me for a minute or two when Bernice sends you out to fetch me. Nothing more. Sit and stare at those murals like they’re not paintings at all, but coloured mist. Let them surround you like fog, and before you know it, whoosh! You’re in.”
“And if it is just paint on a wall for me?”
“Try again next time.”
Harry paused, thinking. “No,” he corrected. “Don’t just try, Buddy, believe! Let yourself go. Let that fog roll in. Feel it, like a shiver in your bones. Keep believing and letting go, until… something happens.”
“Is that how you first got inside the murals, Harry?”
“No, no,” Harry shook his head. “The first time I was drawn in like a bug down a drain. That Steam Donkey picture turned liquid and started swirling, and next thing I knew, I was on the other side. One last look at what you call ‘the real world’ and—whoosh!”
“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you think it’s real, your world inside murals—realer than this real?” Buddy scanned the room. “Or is it imagined?”
“Does it matter?” Harry shrugged. “All’s I know is, I can’t help going into those pictures, and once I’m there, trying to figure out what it is I’m seeing.”
“Well, if I’m going to join you, Harry, what am I supposed to sit on?”
“Huh?”
“Can’t leave my body standing around in a public place with nobody home.”
Harry winked. “Have to give it to you, you’ve got a nifty way of putting things, Bud.” He pretended to ponder for a moment, then said, “Check the coat rack in the front porch. You might find what you’re looking for out there.”
Buddy left his mentor sitting in his favourite armchair, looking smug, and made his way down the hall into the glass-encased porch: Jackets, hats, scarves, Mr. Beasley’s leash, canes, a tote bag, coats—the rack was draped with a rummage sale collection of items that defined coming in and stepping out. At the very end, Buddy recognized what the old man had sent him to fetch: a walking seat. He took the contraption down, opened the little canvas saddle, manoeuvred it round to his rear end, and leaned into it. Then he relaxed, become a human tripod.
I can do this, he thought happily. I can do this for Harry.
“So wha’d’ya think?” Harry asked when Buddy returned to the living room.
“Works just fine,” Buddy beamed. “But I have to wonder what kind of sling I’m getting my ass into!”
“It’s yours,” Harry laughed. “And, believe me, you’re going to go places standing on three legs you’d never see walking on two.”
Could be, Buddy figured.
“Oh!” Harry remembered. “Bernice mentioned you might want to get the Looner Module off its high horses?”
“We touched on it, yeah,” Buddy confirmed. “Just thinking.”
“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Harry said. “Think about it some more. There’s still time this season to take her out to our favourite place, Nixon Creek. I can help you get her onto the pickup.”
“You mean you can boss me around while I put her into the box?”
“I s’pose,” Harry grinned. “How ’bout this weekend? Say Saturday morning?”
“Okay.”
“Bright and early?”
“Not too early!”
“How’s about eight o’clock?”
Buddy nodded reluctantly; Harry grinned some more.
Next: Chuck it!