Van Gogh, Encore

By John Andrew Karr

Imagine Vincent van Gogh in our modern world. Suppose, during the last year and a half of his life, when he severs part of his ear and commits himself to the insane asylum, he stumbles into the very circumstance he has longed for his entire adult life -- a family. Would his life change for the better, or would his self-destructive tendencies again prevail? Van Gogh, Encore is a speculative novel based upon the last year and a half of Vincent van Gogh's life. Set in the United States, the tale presents an alternative dimension to the complex and fascinating artist who died impoverished and unappreciated ... while the images he created went on to have global impact, and can be found on everything from vodka bottles to vehicle dashboard covers, television commercials to t-shirts, and whose original works now sell for millions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Andrew Karr
• Release date: Jan 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9780463083352

John Andrew Karr

Seeking out the strange and spectacular, John Andrew Karr is a writer, IT worker and family guy residing near the southern coast of North Carolina.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The first indication of pending attack was anything but subtle. Obsidian bands eclipsed the outermost edges of his sight and grew inward. His vision narrowed, until it seemed as if he peered through the wrong end of a telescope at a writhing tangle of cadmium yellow, burnt orange, impenetrable emerald and cobalt blue that only seconds before had been a wheat field, cypress trees and haze beneath a relentless sun. One moment fused with the next and now the tangle of colors spiraled high, paused, dove and would have slammed into him had it not banked away at the last possible instant.

Oh my — look at him.

What on earth ...?

What is he doing?

Is he possessed? The way his head is movin’, it’s like he’s possessed. Do y’all see that? Oh my Lord in Heaven, the Devil has reached up and grabbed hold of this poor man.

Tension in the voices led the way out. As the painter regained his senses, it occurred to him his head had been listing this way and that as if the tendons of his neck had gone slack. He wanted to stomp and shout for added distraction but tremors and lightheadedness threatened to drop him. A grown man floundering about, scattering the sandy soil would not be a pleasant site.

Vincent wondered what they would do then — call 911 and shield him from the sun, or jump into that big-ass car and race away from a madman?

He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in air thick as soup, held it there while straining every muscle in his body. Only when his lungs threatened to burn through his ribs did he allow the air to gush forth. Purple and white dots blinked around him. He gasped and eventually caught his breath. Dots faded ... and were gone. Tension drained from his body. Limbs responded to his wishes once more. The obsidian bands vanished. The tangle of color became a wheat field with cypress trees and a blue haze and fiery sun once more.

A temporary fix. He should get out from beneath the overwhelming sky and punishing sun, run like hell to that thicket over there and huddle against a tree trunk until it passed. That would be the safe thing to do.

Color erupted from the canvas before him.

... but he had come so far on the painting. He could not abandon it now, not even temporarily. He would have to pay the price.

He gnawed the end of the paintbrush and eyed the half-empty bottle of tequila that lurked in the easel’s shadow. Another pull might postpone the inevitable long enough to let him finish.

The air around him swelled.

Too soon after the last. He’d kept it away this long by painting. If he continued, he might be able to handle it. He simply needed to keep —

The air crackled and hummed, as if he were surrounded by live wires ready to fry him with the slightest contact.

As was often the case, the act of painting had warded off its initial advances. He was nearly finished with this, his second canvas of the day. His faded blue t-shirt, smeared here and there with paint, clung to his upper body. His cutoffs were similarly smeared and just as wet, though the denim held true to its own form despite the loose fit at his waist and thighs. Willpower trickled from him as if carried through his pores by his sweat. Concentration slipped. Limbs took longer to respond, as if the sun had thickened the air around him into an invisible quagmire.

Some would say this was no more than the heat taking its toll on a man foolish enough to spend hours out in it, foolish enough to believe a straw hat could protect him from heatstroke. But though formidable, Vincent knew the heat was not directly responsible; he’d painted many times in the heat with far less trouble. Nor was hunger the culprit; more often than not his stomach was empty when he painted. No, this was the work of an adversary so familiar it was intimate, and one that grew stronger with the death of each day.

His broad shoulders hunched forward as if he needed warmth, impossible on a day such as this. He raised his hand. The deep creases of his palm glistened with sweat and called to mind an aerial view of a river delta. The hand was broad and hard, seemingly more of a laborer’s tool than an artist’s. A slight crook inhabited the fingers, which betrayed him with a tremble that ordinarily would not have been there. He turned the hand over. Straight ridges of his ligaments shot from knuckles to wrist. A network of veins bulged beneath reddish skin.

He reached for the bottle, then froze.

Too late, he realized.

His adversary struck, but to his surprise not directly at him. This time it turned the air upon itself. Molecular bonds disintegrated. Billions of freed molecules, berserk with murder lust, smashed into one another everywhere around him. Silent repercussions rocked him as if he were pinned beneath a ghostly mortar barrage.

His adversary changed tactics. The air coalesced into clear, thin panes around him. Jagged fissures whip-cracked the panes, making him twitch and jerk. Whole sections broke free and shattered, one after the after, on the ground at his feet. He sat still for a moment, then tentatively reached out. The panes were gone, replaced with free-flowing air.

The first skirmishes were over.

But that’s all they were. Skirmishes as strong as this meant the real assault would not go well. No way to stop it. He could only hang on and try to make it through without too much damage. He had to get moving.

He slashed now at the painting, the brush tip steeped in red lake. Bold highlights sprang to life upon the canvas. In the next instant he snatched the bloodied brush up to his mouth. As his teeth sunk into the wooden handle, his hand dove for another brush. He plunged the tip into a gob of three parts cadmium yellow deep and one part alizarin crimson. The result was so rich and lustrous it was as if he balanced a nugget of pure gold on the palette. The brush tip became thickly impasted, so much so it appeared twice its normal size. He all but lunged for the canvas with it.

With any luck he’d finish before the true attack. 

... but what of the little matter behind him?

As if in collusion with his advancing, unseen foe, the voices behind his back — easily ignored until now — grew louder, bolder, the collective hiss of serpents roused by the scent of warm-blooded prey outside the den. Gasps and titters punctuated the whispering, with several  outbursts of "Honey, you sure can believe that! and Can you imagine ...?" Increased volume led to full, unbridled conversation. Words, phrases, and exclamations shot back and forth, rapid-fire, with scarcely pause for inhalation. Then came the quasi-passionate, almost heated exchange that churned and pressurized and finally burst into the historically predictable crescendo:

I’ll do it!

Sudden quiet reigned now, as if the sultry breeze that bent and swayed the sea of copper and gold before the painter had scattered the irritating voices as well. Nothing would have suited him more than to forge ahead and pay the cost in the ensuing silence, but he had been here too many times for that. Each situation was slightly different — the setting, the gawkers, the season — but the order of events rarely changed. He continued his efforts, but a dead man would be hard pressed to ignore the stares that bored into his back. He strained to hear sounds of departure; doors that slammed with finality, an engine that cranked and cranked and suddenly sprang to life, shocks that squealed in protest over uneven terrain, tires that kicked up pebbles to ping against the steel underbelly of the car as it traveled down the dirt road and away.

Away.

He didn’t give a damn where — just not here, not now, not near him. He needed to finish the painting before The Onset, and to do that he needed to remain absorbed in the moment, free of distraction.

Instead came the crunch of hard heels on sun baked earth and pebbles.

His jaw clenched.

Not now. I must finish. 

Color pulsated on the canvas before the painter. For Vincent Van Gogh, color easily surpassed mere visual sensation. Color — and painting, of course — struck chords that could make him shudder, chords that resonated in the empty vessel some would call his soul. Long ago he embraced the idea of a soul and that a man’s contribution meant something, but time and hardship had schooled him in both. While the chords resonated, Vincent found enough satisfaction to plod toward his dream, but the chords invariably fell silent with the completion of the latest work. Then it was just Vincent, and he wearied of just Vincent. Day after day he repeated the cycle. For nine years now he labored like a coal miner, often achieving artistic satisfaction ... but scant monetary reward. It would wear anyone down, especially one with his temperament. A successful painter could support a family, and a family would help fill the emptiness. He had tried for the dream many times now. Now he was afraid it was too late.

Vincent wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

Had to be too late.

A sail of ghoulish pastel blue infiltrated his peripheral vision. Hovering over the dress was some kind of matching cloud that must have been a hat. A pale blur filled the void between the dress and the hat. Dark, expectant ovals blinked at him as he sat in the foldout stool. Like a curious emu the woman peered from himself to the canvas, to the wheat field, back to himself and back again to the canvas. Each movement was accompanied by an odoriferous assault of talcum powder and too much perfume and hair spray. The smell, overpowering though it was, suddenly called to mind his aging mother, though she had never laid it on like this.

The woman was not within conversation distance, but if she came closer, she would question his technique.

Vincent continued to paint, just as he would if she were truly disturbing him. 

She would ignore his ignoring of her by clearing her throat and questioning his  perspective, and pointing out items she deemed inaccurate.

Vincent assaulted the canvas with the paint-laden brush. The strokes were quick but sure. Each had a specific assignment, a specific purpose, but not all were known to him beforehand. Again and again and again the brush laid thick highlights of gold among damp copper.

The woman would try to gain his attention as grasshoppers and cicada chattered in the field that stretched all the way left and all the way right before him. Dragonflies darted and hovered and swooped, dark blips against the azure sky. A particularly large one, its body as long as the painter’s middle finger, alighted upon the pinnacle of the easel. It held its four blue-spotted wings straight out from its body, as if proud of itself for gaining such lofty purchase.

The brush halted its onslaught. Vincent pursed his lips and peered closely at the dragonfly.  He decided he must sketch them before he exited the field. Yes, a few quick sketches of the winged raiders would be excellent. That assumed there would be anything left of him by the end of the day.

Sweat streaked down the sides of his face, dampened trails through the short beard to drip from his jaw. The heat, though not quite as intense as at midday when he had first set up his easel, showed no sign of relenting. The devil’s breath that bent and swayed the wheat in the field did little to cool things off, despite the fact that it blew in from the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Periodically he had to gasp for an extra breath. During lulls, the air seemed thick as a salt-encrusted blanket.

The woman, the one who had volunteered as spokesperson for her group, would likely tell him she simply couldn’t understand the image on his canvas. 

Short, quick sideways slashes now at the painting. Vincent’s hand jerked in an almost mad rhythm.

She’d ask if he could hear her. Maybe he didn’t speak the native tongue, coming as he did from Canada ...? 

Vincent swapped the golden-tipped brush for the one in his mouth. He held four in his left hand. The thumb of the same poked through the hole in the modest-sized but brightly colored palette that rested on his forearm. He plunged the tip of the new brush into the scant remains of the red lake and smeared the last open space on the palette with it. Cadmium yellow joined in. A few circles with the brush, clockwise and then counter, and suddenly he had tempered bronze. He raised the brush. Like so many times before he reached out —

The brush tip quivered an inch from the canvas. Molten lava dripped and splattered the sandy soil between his dusty work boots.

Vincent stared, then jerked the trembling hand away from the canvas.

Breathing came harder now. The brush clunked onto the palette, splattering paint. His hand alarmingly empty, he kneaded the creased and furrowed flesh of his forehead and breathed deeply.

He drifted, fought at the confusion. Wanted the woman to keep her distance so he wouldn’t feel the need to shout her away. Reminded himself that while intrusive, she was otherwise innocent.

Vincent did no more than breathe deeply for a moment. Finally he controlled himself enough to gaze upon his painting. 

The woman would probably point out that he had an absolutely delightful French accent and smile in a motherly kind of way.

French-Canadian, he’d correct her. And before she asked, he’d tell her the difference is akin to the one between English and American English. Similar, but one comes from dwelling in England, the other from America.

She would probably glance away, not quite knowing what to do with his sarcasm, but she’d come back at him. He’d try to send her on way without being overly rude. But she would deem his time infinite, and point out that, after all, he did not have a real job. The surge of irritation would be difficult to stifle, and would be even more difficult now.

Vincent would nod brusquely to the painting. Time for the painter to get busy, he’d say, so she’d have to go now.

Or he could use her as distraction ... for a while.

The woman wouldn’t leave yet, of course. She would point out that she’d studied art in so many ways and was a part-time artist herself. When pressed on just what part-time meant, she would admit to only finding the time once or twice a week, or perhaps a month; her schedule was very full, she would say. She would also point out that many art critics were not themselves artists.

An unfortunate truth, Vincent would say.

The woman’s eyes would grow wide. She would turn her head but her gaze would not leave the painter. She’d lean almost imperceptibly and observe him from the corners of her eyes as if unable to tear her gaze away. 

The painter arched a knowing eyebrow. He broke his stare and gazed down at the brush he had dropped to the palette. He’d try again in a minute. He always tried again.

Almost always.

Vincent turned. Despite her bold assertion that she’d do it! — the leader had traversed precious little real estate; in fact, she was still no more than arm’s length from her four cohorts. Evidently caution had mired her steps. It was as if she approached a python as it sunned itself upon a slab of obsidian. The serpent was probably dangerous, but attack did not seem imminent. Then again, who knew the mind of a serpent? 

All five women wore pastel dresses, and hats to shield their faces from the sun. When they noticed Vincent observing them, they froze. He looked them over a final time, grunted, and turned back to his painting.

Same old ... he muttered.

With a hand gone unsteady he picked up the fallen brush from the shingle-shaped palette. He dipped the tip in a cup of turpentine, then wiped it carefully with a rag gone chaotic from thousands of scattered paint markings. He scrutinized his tray of assorted brushes. After a moment he exchanged the medium-sized brush for a slender one.

In the lower left hand corner of the painting, among the thickly impasted, coppery gold brush strokes that descended and slanted away at opposing angles from another, the painter used the slender brush, the fine bristles dipped in a pulsating color somewhere between red lake and vermilion, and described, because his hand shook badly now, his first name.

Vincent felt the woman creeping near. Soon she would announce that his painting was simply not a true likeness of the field. Then they’d argue Impressionism vs. Realism and he would begin to smoulder. He would grit his teeth and invite her leave in a heavily strained tone of voice.

Gravel crunched some yards behind him.

Vincent cocked an eyebrow but bit his tongue. He stood abruptly, stepped back and observed his canvas. The sides of his blue t-shirt rippled in the breeze where it didn’t cling with sweat to his skin. After a moment he whipped off the yellow straw hat with the wide, flat brim and wiped his face with a scarlet handkerchief taken from the back pocket of his denim shorts. Ginger-colored strands of hair clung to the back of his neck, though the rest of his hair was cropped short. He stuffed the handkerchief back into the pocket and pressed the hat back onto his head.

He kneeled. His hand dove into a scuffed leather bag, scattered the plastic tubes of paint and clutched a small wooden pipe and a pouch of tobacco. Clumps of tobacco fell to the ground as he filled the pipe. He cursed the waste and clumsiness, though he knew the blame did not lie with something as simple as clumsiness. After several tries he lit the pipe with a match, which he blew out while clenching the stem of the pipe between his teeth. He puffed intensely on the pipe, bluish clouds of smoke drifting into the sun-scorched field that was the subject of his painting.

The woman would say his colors were too extreme, almost fantastic, and that his painting all but leaps out and grabs her by the throat.

If only it could, Vincent thought, as a bemused smile stretched his lips.

But your painting isn’t very soothing, the woman would say. Not soothing at all!

Vincent would tap his teeth with the pipe stem. It’s about intensity of thought, he’d counter, not tranquility.

But the field isn’t like that! she’d protest.

His eyes of green and blue would study hers. Maybe the field isn’t like that, he would say, but the artist is.

Oh, but it would be so much better if done realistically, she’d say.

The trail that led to this point was well trampled.

The painter frowned and puffed on the pipe. Might as well use a damn camera, he said, to the field. It would prove just as soulless.

The woman would look to her buddies for support.

Against his better judgment, Vincent turned.

The leader of the small troupe froze again. He studied them as an artist for the first time. Pastel blue and yellow dresses extended downward until they nearly covered two sets of plump and one set of rail-thin ankles. Hats with felt brims matched the dresses. To Vincent the women were like odd summer flowers sprung up from the white of the sand and dirt road. Tassels bobbed and swayed beneath hand-held fans. Lacy umbrellas were open to block the sun that was reddening and just beginning to sink into the purple and ochre horizon. Eyes were hidden within the shadows of their hats. Dark rouge lipstick contorted as the women smiled and murmured approvingly at the wisdom of their leader.

He thought it wouldn’t make for a bad painting. But not today.

Have you ever strived for anything? he shouted. Pampered, all of you!

The women gasped. The painter frowned at the ‘O’ shapes of their mouths. He gave them his back. Sweat dripped profusely from his chin. His vision blurred at the edges, and now his canvas merged perfectly with the field of wheat.

There, he had captured its essence. It fell short of nature’s glory, but it was not bad. Not too bad.

The woman retreated to the long dark car with her disciples. They chattered in dismay and cast nervous glances at the painter.

Ignorant hens. What did they know of art?

The field undulated before him, then became still. A heartbeat started out there. And then another, and another. Clumps of wheat expanded and contracted. Others rose and fell. Still others seemed to churn inwardly upon themselves. The entire field swelled larger and larger as if filling with helium. Waves glided over the surface, raising and lowering the throbbing, churning sections. Now the field swelled outward, impossibly large. The pressure threatened to blow out the painter’s eardrums.

The field exploded. Ragged pieces shot out in every direction at once. The pieces slowed, floated and twirled and eventually merged into the original field again.

His painting paled before it.

In comparison with the field, his painting was dead.

No, Vincent said, as the pipe dropped from his mouth. No — I had it.

Clawed fingers dug into the sides of the canvas. Saliva sprayed from his lips.

Behind him car doors slammed shut. The engine cranked and started but the car did not pull away.

Turpentine splattered onto the freshly worked canvas. Brushes careened off it. The canvas hemorrhaged fresh paint. 

Dancing fingers tore several matches at once from the book. Again and again Vincent flicked the lazy son-of-a-whore sulphur sticks over the strip. Finally the bastards lived up to their potential and hissed to life like the fire imps they were supposed to be. Vincent snapped them at the oozing painting. The brilliant orange and yellow on the canvas flickered and rose turned three-dimensional. 

The scarlet orb above the horizon glared at the painter and his blazing canvas.

Look what he’s doing! one of the women cried from the idling car.

Oh, my Lord! He’s burning it! Burning his own painting!

He’s out of his mind — he can’t do that! said another.

The straw hat crumpled in his fist. He submitted both to the flames. Slowly he opened his hand and withdrew it. The hat sank to the ground, one half pristine, the other eaten by fire.

Moving deliberately as the flames worked themselves into a frenzy, Vincent capped his paint tubes, grabbed his brushes and pipe and shoved them all into a leather sack. A quick jerk and the drawstrings became a garrote. Bungee cords pinned the bag and the foldout stool to the grill behind the Harley’s sissie bar. More Bungee cords snaked around the wide metal case that harbored two canvases, one finished and the other blank, along with his palette. He cross-hooked the cords so the case was held tightly against the sissie bar as it rested on the passenger seat. From the handlebars he liberated a black helmet that sported a network of scratches and a shallow, saucer-sized dent. The helmet was somewhat conical, like a medieval pikeman’s, except that it left his ears exposed. He jammed it on his head.

He swung a leg over and kick-started the bike. Rode slowly past the horrified faces of the women in the car and down the hard-packed dirt road. 

The canvas and easel crackled. He watched them burn in his side view mirrors. The wind had faded and black smoke belched and undulated sideways like a Chinese dragon through the thick air. It drifted over the wheat field and now the field seemed more like the black moors and peat bogs he’d grown up with. Even the legs of the easel burned now.

Vincent planted his foot, goosed the engine and cut the handlebars all the way left. The engine snarled. Tires spun, kicked up a dust cloud. The turn completed, he stopped and faced the burning painting dead-on. Squeezing the front brake, he throttled down. The rear tire spun and the back end of the bike drifted sideways. As if casting a spell he opened his hand and released the brake. With a growl the motorcycle spat dirt and gravel and rocketed forward. 

The easel seemed to tremble as he bore down upon it.

The women in the car cried out. Hands pointed out the windows and covered open mouths.

Vincent gunned it again and again. The toe of his work boot pumped up and down almost continuously, working the bike into ever higher gear. The bike roared and the front popped up. The spinning tire was centered dead-on with the painting.

Canvas and wood exploded in a thousand directions at once. Blazing embers streaked in red and yellow trails through the air and drifted downward like spent fireworks. He shot through the pocket of heat and smoke.

Man and motorcycle tore down the dirt road while dust devils spun behind. At the first intersection the Harley fish-tailed and threatened to roll high, bike over rider. Instinctively Vincent swung wide and came out of the turn upright. Had there been an oncoming vehicle, the emergency crew would have had to pry his remains from a mass of twisted chrome and burnt rubber.

Four seconds out of the turn the speedometer needle glided past eighty. 

Vincent cursed the blood-red orb that smoldered just out of reach before him. It taunted and mocked him with its unconcerned, unwavering stare. Despite his speed he couldn’t close the distance, but he wasn’t going to give up.

He could catch it. Yeah, he could catch it. Just needed to go a little faster and he’d catch it. And when he did he was going to smash through it.

Just like the painting.

CHAPTER TWO

The chalk-white road had been a straight shot earlier today. Now it darted from side to side like a snake prodded with a hot poker. Vincent struggled to keep it sighted between the handlebars while beneath him seven hundred and fifty cubic centimeters of chrome and steel screamed in wicked joy at being turned loose into the prevailing winds. Air blasted between his gritted teeth, rushed down his throat and filled his lungs with the fiery soul of summer. Tears traveled laterally from squinting eyes to his ears, where they pooled and muffled the wind and even dulled the roar of the Harley.

Vibrations rattled his spine. Arms, legs and back strained, grew numb as he forced more out of the bike. 

Limited hearing. Loss of touch.

Behold, the vanishing painter.

Just as well, he decided.

The wind helped shut his eyes. 

Something inside protested.

He questioned it. 

He’d stuck it out this long. How could he just give up?

Tired.

Fool.

Vincent opened his eyes.

Wheat and corn and tobacco rows blurred past.

The sun roiled in a mass of burnt sienna at the edge of the Earth.

Let it cremate this rock and everyone on it and start with one worthless painter. Burn, you bastard. 

He glared at the sinking star that could not even begin to register his insignificance. The road skewered it through the center — the mouth of Hell. He forced the Harley ever faster but could not close the distance. His quarry was escaping.

Vincent threw back his head and roared.

The snake of a road seized the opportunity. It faked left and cut right and by the time Vincent understood what had happened the road vanished. The Harley caught air over a drainage ditch. Vincent pushed down on the pedals and hauled back, forced the rear tire to hit first. Nearly went down but kicked out on the skid and broke into a cornfield.

A green mob charged. His front tire and handlebars cut them down, but others sprang up in place of fallen comrades. They slashed at his eyes with ribbon-like leaves and rapped his knuckles as sharply as Sister Regina’s ruler in the parish school whenever he had dared contradict the penguin. 

He hung on as the Harley bucked wildly over the rows. Constantly threatened to go down but he fought back and kept going.

No stopping. This was combat.

With the remaining strength in his wrist, the painter-turned-knight jerked down on the throttle. The motorcycle shrieked its battle cry. The handlebars sliced the stalks in half as cleanly as a sword while the crash bar left them crushed and broken in the motorcycle’s wake.

But now the mob turned into an army, with seemingly inexhaustible reinforcements. For each one he slew, several more leaped to the fore. They attacked the enemy in their midst, and now a mesh of ribbon leaves sliced like paper cuts at his hands and legs and cheeks as he charged into them.

The front of the bike surged upward, tire in his face. He lunged to force it down and after a sickening moment of uncertainty the wheel bit into a gap of soft soil between two rows and did not move. The handlebars twisted and nearly shattered his wrist. With a final scream the bike went down.

Vincent kept going.

The emerald green stalks, the blood and orange sky, the ashen hue of the ground that could have been the color of death itself — all of it fused into a savage mix as he catapulted through the air. Time slowed. Surprisingly, he was filled with a sense of exhilaration, perhaps even a measure of freedom. Gravity had been overcome. There was fear, but not as much as should have been.

Exhilaration vanished when his flight came to its inevitable conclusion. Shoulder hit first. Crunched the way the corn stalks did as his body mowed them down. Immediate flush of pain. Helmeted head struck the ground next, with jarring impact, followed by the rest of him. Images of the ground and stalks and sky flashed and tumbled, too fast for his mind to separate.

At some point the world came to a halt.

Now he floated. 

Dismissed were anxieties and shortcomings.

Blackness descended. And with it, peace.

He drifted in it the way a boat does when carried along by a favorable current. At some point his world turned a shade lighter, and then lighter still. Gradually it brightened into charcoal grey.

Vincent protested.

But the greying continued. The returning pain informed him that his spirit had not departed his body.

Now was not the time, then. Perhaps there was more painting to do. It wasn’t a family, but it was something. He couldn’t support himself, much less a family.

His left shoulder was buried in the soil of a corn row. His right pointed up into a blood-red sky. A mesh of ruptured stalks served as a bed sheet.

For some time he remained this way, gasping and blinking and spitting, until finally he hauled himself up to a sitting position. Slowly he moved the arm with the throbbing shoulder. 

It hurt, but did not seem broken. How Theo would handle the cost of a broken wing, he did not want to imagine. But even with it broken, he could still hold a palette and that’s all that mattered. As long as he could can reach the paints with his right —

The paints!

Spitting sandy dirt and blood, Vincent crawled over the row mowed by his own passage  to the lifeless motorcycle. Whum-whum-whum .... The concrete block atop his neck was slow to respond as he glanced at the sky for a helicopter. He could not find it, then realized the sides of his throat and his chest throbbed in unison with each sound.

Blood pressure’s a bit ... elevated, he murmured, between hacks and spitting fits. 

He crawled on. The bulging saddlebag was still strapped to the grate behind the passenger back support, or sissie bar. Trembling fingers hooked into the mouth of the bag and jerked it open. Scattered about inside were half-squeezed paint tubes and wooden-handled brushes. All appeared undamaged. Three tries later he re-cinched the bag.

Canvas case? he said, or thought he said.

He chuckled.

Normally he strapped it to the sissie bar so his body blocked it from the wind. The Bungee cords dangled, but the case was gone. Through a thinning cloud of dust he saw it, a few feet behind the bike. Dirt choked the coarse hemp mesh that covered the large aluminum case. It stood  propped by stalk stumps, handle ready to grab and go.

Okay ... I’m ... coming.

Coughs. Gasps for air. Quivering