“Is this the only color you use—black?” I asked.
“It’s charcoal gray,” he corrected me. “And no, it’s not the only color. If you look closely at each of my paintings, you’ll find a little bit of pink in it somewhere.”
“Aha!” I said. “I thought so.”
Again, he made the look of a giant smelling a rat.
“We’ll never see the movie if we don’t get going!” called Margot.
“Be right there,” I called, and then realized that I was being presumptuous. I still had to pass the test: I still had to draw my favorite animal. I made a swipe at the canvas with the roller. It left a low arch of charcoal gray.
“Hm,” said Mr. Glynn.
I made another swipe and left an inverted arch under the first. Then I held the roller with both hands, like a broadsword, and dragged it horizontally, so that it didn’t roll at all, but left a thinner line between the two arches.
“Ah!” said Mr. Glynn. I think he liked my technique. He looked at what I’d done. He looked at me. He looked at my painting again. He stepped back from it, to the limit of the planking. He moved to the left. He moved to the right. He rubbed his nose. “What is it?” he asked.
“A clam,” I said.
“A clam? That’s your favorite animal?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Well, they don’t bite, for one thing.”
“Peeeterrrr!” called Margot, from far below.
“And,” said Mr. Glynn, with the raised eyebrow that, it seemed to me, he probably used to indicate an attitude of easy familiarity with his artist colleagues, “they’re easy to draw.”
“Yes, sir,” said I. I handed him the roller.
“You want to take my daughters to the movies,” he said.
“Um—they want me to take them to the movies,” I said. Then I immediately corrected myself. “Walk them to the movies.” He seemed not to understand the distinction, so I added, “I’m not going to pay.”
“Oh,” he said, “I see,” and he burst out laughing.
“Daaaady!” cried both girls. “Can’t we go now?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Glynn.
To this day, I cannot relive the moment of his saying that without a crushing feeling of defeat. I looked at my painting of a clam. Was it that bad—so bad that I wasn’t qualified to walk his daughters to the movies?
“I’m not going to let my daughters go to the movies with a strange boy,” he called, and he shrugged.
“He’s not that strange!” shouted Martha.
“You know what I mean,” said Mr. Glynn. He gave me what I accepted as an apologetic look.
“Then let us go alone!” wailed Margot.
“We’ve been through all that,” said Mr. Glynn. He turned to me. “When you grow up, you’ll understand,” he asserted. “A father likes to get to know a fellow before he’ll let him take his girls to the movies.”
“Walk,” I said.
“Yeah, well, even before he’ll let a fellow walk his girls to the movies.”
“Okay,” I said. I headed for the ladder. There was probably still time to catch most of Duel in the Dust, after all. Mr. Glynn followed me to the ladder and laid a hand on my shoulder before I began climbing down.
“Peter?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you come back and see me tomorrow? We can start getting to know each other.”
“Okay,” I said, and felt my heart leap up. Perhaps the fault lay only in my strangeness and not in my clam.
“Maybe I can teach you how to draw,” he added.
“Sure,” I said.
I descended the ladder with my head down, so that I wouldn’t have to look at my defective attempt.
“Nice try, Peter,” Martha said when we were at the door.
“I think it was the middle part,” I said.
“Huh?” said Margot.
“The line where the two shells join,” I explained. “It should have been—I don’t know—different—better.”
[to be continued]
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