I leaned my back against the steel wall of my cell
and gazed at the picture painted on the wall across from me.
My cell partner had painted one hell of a mural. You got the
feeling you could walk right into it. It looked that real. I
smiled, remembering my cell partner had escaped and they
didn’t know how he got out. They ransacked the prison,
searching for him, and questioned me for hours. I stood
hands cuffed behind me, as the guards took turns trying to
beat the answers out of me. They did this until I fell unconscious;
then they threw me into my cell. Truth is, I didn’t
know and wouldn’t tell them if I did.
I kept looking at the painting on the wall, remembering
the first time I saw the old man painting it. It was
three years ago when I first moved into this cell with him.
He barely looked up at me as I entered the cell and threw my
stuff on the top bunk. I said “hi” and we exchanged names
as he put some last brush strokes on the wings of a sparrow,
then shook the hand I offered him. He had a strong, firm
grip for an old man. He looked like he was in his 60’s, with
long white hair and a beard to match. The cons called him
Moses. He had a penetrating stare and a glint of amusement
in his brown eyes. Nobody knew how long he’d been
locked-up—35, 40 years—they guessed. He never said.
People thought he was half crazy because he had been painting
that same picture for close to 20 years, always adding
something or changing something. It was like that neverending
story.
After I had been in the cell for a while, I asked him
about the painting. I saw him paint other pictures before. It
wasn’t like he couldn’t finish a painting. He was a damned
good artist. He sold paintings all the time. He just never
finished this one. He answered me with a smile and said,
“When I can smell the honeysuckles and feel the grass beneath
my feet. When I can taste the fruit from the trees and
feel the wind in my hair. When I can hear the birds sing,
then…and only then, will I be finished.” I asked him what
he would do then. He thought for a moment, then said,
“Well, youngster, I’m going to jump right into that damned
picture and I ain’t ever
coming back.” He
laughed and the more
he thought about it, the
more he laughed, until
tears rolled down his
cheeks. I couldn’t help
but smile myself at the
thought of that impossibility.
I mused over
that memory for a
while, looking at his
painting and damn if
you couldn’t almost
smell the honeysuckles
that lined the dirt road
leading to the lake
where an old man sat
fishing. An old mutt
lay beside him, sleeping
peacefully in the summer heat.
I stopped suddenly and looked back at the old man
fishing. That wasn’t there yesterday morning when me and
the old man went to work. He disappeared on his lunch
break and he couldn’t have painted it then. I looked closely
at the fisherman and did a double-take. It looked just like
my cell partner. He had a grin on his face as he sat there
fishing. The face was unbelievably real. If it had been lifesize,
he’d be mistaken for still being here in our cell. I
shook my head in disbelief at the thoughts that passed
through my mind. “He couldn’t have, there ain’t no way on
God’s earth he could have done that,” I was thinking. But
the words kept coming back to me of what the old man said
when I asked him what he would do when he finished the
painting, and the grin on his face as he said it. “I’m going to
jump into that damn picture and I ain’t ever coming back,”
and the laughter that followed those words.
Ten years later, I can still hear the laughter as I
stand here painting a picture that I would like to live in, the
rest of my life.
