The first thing that catches your eye is the light, or rather two lights angled toward a single focal point, becoming a figure-eight flare at the center of the canvas. It is big, this painting, eight feet long and five feet high, the once white tarpaulin transformed into a smoky gray glitter. Or maybe what you see first is calamity, two dark rectangles slicing the frame, jackknifed, their metallic skeletons glowing in the moonlight. There are flames on the edge of the picture, as if the story doesn’t end just because the painting stops, and people who view the image have been known to walk to the far edges looking for more information, microscoping the framing wood for even a hint of added drama.
The lights that flare out the center of the image are the headlights of an Amtrak passenger train, its caboose having come to rest almost perpendicular to the twisted iron track that bends and waves below it. The first passenger car has disconnected from the caboose and now makes the trunk of a T, having maintained its forward momentum and smashed the engine dead center, bending its bread-box contours into a vague V.
As with any bright light, the headlight glare here obscures much of the image, but upon further examination a viewer might discover a single passenger—in this case a young woman—dressed in a black skirt and torn white blouse, her hair tousled across her face, matted by blood. She is wandering shoeless through the jagged wreckage, and if you squint past the illusion of light you can see that her eyes are wide and searching. She is the victim of disaster, a survivor of heat and impact, cantilevered from her resting position into an impossible parabola of unexpected torture, her once placid world—gently rocking, click clack, click clack—now a screeching twist of metal.
What is she looking for, this woman? Is it merely a way out? A clear and sensible path to safety? Or has she lost something? Someone? In that moment, when gentle rocking turned into a cannonball ricochet, did she go from wife and mother, from sister or girlfriend, from daughter or paramour to refugee? A fulfilled and happy we to a stunned and grieving I?
And so, even as other paintings call to you, you can’t help but stand there and help her look.
Chapter 11
Storm Clouds
The life vest is so tight it’s hard to breathe, but Scott reaches up and pulls the straps again. It is an unconscious gesture. One he’s been doing every few moments since they got on the helicopter. Gus Franklin sits across from him, studying his face. Beside him is Petty Officer Berkman in an orange jumpsuit and glassy black helmet. They are in a Coast Guard MH-65C Dolphin racing over the wave caps of the Atlantic. In the distance Scott can just make out the cliffs of Martha’s Vineyard. Home. But this is not where they’re going. Not yet. Sneeze, the three-legged dog, will have to wait. Scott thinks of her now, a white mutt with one black eye. An eater of horse shit, a connoisseur of long grass, who lost her back right leg to cancer last year and was climbing stairs again within two days. Scott checked in with his neighbor after he got off the phone with Gus this morning. The dog was fine, his neighbor told him. She was lying on the porch panting at the sun. Scott thanked her again for watching the dog. He said he should be home in a couple of days.
“Take your time,” his neighbor said. “You’ve been through a lot. And good for you. What you did for that boy. Good for you.”
He thinks of the dog now, missing a limb. If she can bounce back, why can’t I?
The helicopter bucks through chunky air, each drop like a hand slapping a jar, trying to dislodge the last peanut. Except in this case Scott is the peanut. He grips his seat with his right hand, his left arm still in a sling. The trip from the coast takes twenty minutes. Looking out the window at the miles of ocean, Scott can’t believe how far he swam.
Scott was at the barbecue joint sipping water for an hour before Gus arrived. He drove up in a white sedan—company car, he told Scott—and entered the restaurant with a change of clothes in hand.
“I took a guess at the size,” he said and threw the clothes to Scott.
“I’m sure they’ll be great. Thanks,” said Scott and went into the bathroom to change. Cargo pants and a sweatshirt. The pants were too big in the waist and the sweatshirt too tight in the shoulders—the dislocated shoulder made changing clothes a challenge—but at least he felt like a normal person again. He washed his hands and pushed the scrubs deep into the garbage.
On the helicopter, Gus points out the starboard side. Scott follows his finger to the Coast Guard Cutter Willow, a gleaming white ship anchored in the sea below.
“You ever been on a helicopter before?” Gus yells.