I gathered up all the pictures and my collage and dumped them in the garbage pail.
“Hey!” said Dwight.
“Why not?” I asked. “What would be the point of letting Brad know we know? Of telling Janice? Or anybody, for that matter? There’s nobody else in these pictures. Who’s he hurt?”
I thought how terrified he must have been, but how brave, too, to come out to the carnival and strike up a conversation with Braz just to see if Braz would recognize him. I wished there were some way to let him know the pictures had been destroyed and his secret was safe, but I didn’t see how that could be managed without alerting him that someone had connected him to the pictures after all.
As if I’d spoken all this, Dwight said, “Yeah, you’re right. Dump ‘em.”
I smiled at him. “Where’s my ring?”
He fished the old-fashioned circle of gold from his pocket and slid it on my finger. The square-cut diamond flashed and sparkled in the kitchen lights.
“Want to stay over tonight?” I asked.
(
CHAPTER 20
MID-OCTOBER
The carnival left town in the small hours of Sunday morning to make the jump to Kinston for four days the following week before working their way back to Florida for the winter.
I got to see Tally a couple of times more before they left. The day after Skee Matusik’s arrest, she was numb with disbelief. “He killed Irene? And Braz knew? But he loved Irene. How could he keep quiet about something like that?”
She and Val were still wary with the rest of our family when they left. Too soon to tell whether they’ll actually move to the Hatcher place and become more familiar to us. She says that’s what she wants, but I’ve heard the ambivalence in her voice. There are reasons she’s with the carnival that have nothing to do with Carol or Andrew. I’ve listened to her talk about great dates they’ve played, the crowds, the excitement, the fun of keeping someone peeling off the dollar bills like that first evening when she had Reese going.
Arn? I think he could sublimate with his lockers and eBay, but I remember my own brief years of wandering in the wilderness, free as a leaf torn from the tethering tree and blown by a capricious wind, and I have a feeling Tally will always want to load up the trailers every spring with plush and slum and hit the road for Anywhere, USA.
We’ll see.
About three weeks after the carnival left the county, Dwight turned on the little television in my bedroom to catch the late-night news.
At the commercial, I went in to brush my teeth and was rinsing when I heard Dwight call, “Deb’rah! Quick! Come here, you gotta see this!”
I dashed back just in time to hear the news anchor say, “—Bascom Wrenn, who died in Colleton County this past spring. Outsider, or Visionary, Art has won growing recognition among serious collectors worldwide, and Joseph Buckner of the Buntrock Gallery just off Fifth Avenue in New York is here to tell us about this significant new find. Mr. Buckner?”
Mouths agape, Dwight and I watched while the camera panned over crudely painted boards and Mr. Buckner explained the significance of the stick skeletons and roaring flames, and rhapsodized over the Eye of God, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Biblical exhortations in ungrammatical white printing that covered every square inch of the scraps of plywood now hanging on the gallery walls.
He was aided by a large young black man chicly dressed in a dark suit and one of those black silk shirts with the banded collar and no tie that I’ve only seen on movie stars when they broadcast the Oscar ceremonies. It was Lamarr Wrenn, that erstwhile economics major, looking like a seasoned New Yorker as he fingered his small chin beard and spoke of his grandfather’s naive but utterly sincere attempt to paint the Rapture.
The camera caressed the ecstatic, semi-hysterical paintings, paintings Arnold Ames had planned to nail onto the outside of his haunted house. Validated by the cool ivory walls of a Fifth Avenue gallery, they had suddenly acquired an oddly compelling aura.
Back on the screen, the gallery curator was answering our local anchor’s question.
“It’s always difficult to put a dollar price on pictures that haven’t had their value tested in the marketplace,” he said. “But conservatively speaking, we’ll be surprised if this important body of work doesn’t bring at least two hundred thousand.”
“Conservatively?” I croaked.
Laughing, Dwight clicked off the television and pulled me down on the bed beside him. “Wonder how Arnold Ames feels about his quick dime now?”
GLOSSARY
