The Long Way Home

The Inuit used to erect stone men as a navigation tool, to mark their path. To point out where they were going and where they’d been. The way forward and the way home. Inuksuit, they were called. Literally, a substitute for a man. When found by Europeans they were initially destroyed. Then they were loathed as heathen. Now they’re recognized as not only markers, but works of art.

That’s what Peter had done. These might be works of art, but more than that, they were markers, signposts. Pointing out where he’d been and where he was going. The route he was traveling, artistically, emotionally, creatively. These odd paintings were his inuksuit, recording not so much his location, but the progress of his thoughts and feelings.

These paintings were a substitute for the man. Peter’s insides, out.

With that insight, Gamache looked more closely at the six paintings. What did they tell him about Peter?

They at first appeared to be simply splashes of color. The most recent ones, on canvas, seemed to clash even more violently than the early ones.

“Why paint some on paper and the rest on canvas?” Reine-Marie asked.

Clara had been wondering that herself. She stared at the groupings. Frankly, they all seemed equally crappy to her. It wasn’t like the three on canvas were clearly better and worth preserving and the paper ones were disposable.

“I guess there might be a couple of reasons,” she said. “He either didn’t have any canvases when he painted the first three, or he knew they’d be experiments. Not meant to last.”

“But these were?” Jean-Guy pointed to the works on the floor.

“Sometimes the magic works…” said Clara, and Gamache gave a small laugh.

“Peter’s a smart man,” said Reine-Marie. “A successful artist. He must have realized these aren’t great. They’re not even good.”

Jean-Guy nodded. “Exactly. Why keep them? And not just keep them, but give them to someone else, let someone else see them?”

“What do you do with the works you don’t like?” Reine-Marie asked Clara.

“Oh, I keep most.”

“Even the ones you couldn’t save?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Even those.”

“Why?”

“Well, you just never know. On a slow day, or when I’m stuck for inspiration, I’ll pull them out and look again. Sometimes I even put them on their sides, or upside down. That can give me a different perspective. Jog something loose that I hadn’t seen before. Some small thing that’s worth pursuing. A color combination, a series of strokes, that sort of thing.”

Beauvoir looked at the paintings on the floor. Only a series of strokes would explain them.

“You keep the ones that don’t work out,” said Myrna. “But you don’t show them off.”

“True,” admitted Clara.

“Jean-Guy’s right. There’s a reason Peter kept these,” said Gamache. “And a reason he sent them to Bean.”

He walked over to the smaller images on the worn pine table.

“Where’s the one you said was a smile?” Gamache asked Myrna. “The lips? I can’t see them.”

“Oh, that. I’d forgotten,” she said. “It’s over in this group.” She walked him back to the floor show. “You find it.”

“Dreary woman,” he said, but didn’t protest. After a minute or so Myrna opened her mouth, but the Chief stopped her. “Now, don’t tell me. I’ll get it.”

“Well, I’m going outside,” said Clara.

They poured lemonades and went into the garden, but Beauvoir stayed behind with the Chief.

Gamache bent over each painting, then straightened up and held his hands behind his back. He rocked slightly back and forth, heel to toe. Heel to toe.

Beauvoir took a few steps back. Then a few more. Then he dragged one of the chairs over from the pine table and got up on it.

“Nothing from up here.”

“What’re you doing?” Gamache demanded, striding over to Jean-Guy. “Get off that chair right now.”

“It’s sturdy. It’ll hold my weight.” But he jumped down anyway.

He didn’t like the tone in the Chief’s voice.

“You don’t know that,” said Gamache.

“And you don’t know it won’t,” said Beauvoir.

The two stared at each other until a sound made Gamache turn around. Myrna stood at the door, the empty lemonade jug in her hand.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not at all,” the Chief said, and forced a smile. Then he took a deep breath, expelled the air, and turned back to Beauvoir, who was still glaring.

“I’m sorry, Jean-Guy. Get back up if you want to.”

“No, I’ve seen what I need to see.”

Gamache had the feeling he was talking about more than the paintings.

“There it is,” said Jean-Guy.

Gamache joined him.

Jean-Guy had found the smile. The smiles.

And Gamache realized his mistake. He’d been looking for one big set of lips. A valley that formed a mountain. But Peter had painted a whole bunch of them, tiny smiles, small valleys of mirth that marched across and deep into the painting.

Gamache grinned.

It didn’t make the painting good, but it was the first of Peter’s works that had produced any feeling at all in him.

He turned to look at the table. Even those paintings had created a feeling, though he didn’t think nausea was considered an emotion. But it was at least something. In the gut. Not in the head.

If this was the start, Armand Gamache was even more anxious to know where the smiles led.