The Burnt Orange Heresy

Too much light means unbearable truth, and too much truthful light sears a man's eyes into an unraging blindness. The blind man can only smell the crap of his life, and the sounds in his ears are cacophonous corruptions. Without vision, the terrible beauty of life is irrevocably gone. Gone!

And as I thought of all Debierue's lost visions, never to appear on canvas for the exhilaration of my eyes, scalding tears ran down my cheeks.

I took my time.

What I had to do had to be done right or not at all. Once I committed, although my concern for Berenice (frightened and waiting for me in the tall grass by the highway) did not diminish, it would have been foolhardy to rush. I might have overlooked something important.

I looked in the kitchen for string and wrapping paper, but there was neither. There was newspaper, but it would have been awkward to wrap a canvas in newspaper when there was no string to tie the bundle. There were several large brown paper grocery sacks under the sink, and I took one of these back to the studio to hold the art materials I would need. I took a clean sheet from the hall linen closet and wrapped one of the new canvases from the plastic rack in it. I then filled the brown sack with several camel's-hair brushes, a can of turpentine, one of linseed oil, and a halfdozen tubes of oil paint. With cadmium red, chrome yellow, Prussian blue, and zinc white I can mix almost any shade or tint of color I desire (this much I had learned in my first oil painting course because the tyrannical teacher had made us learn how to mix primary colors if he taught us nothing else). I added tubes of burnt sienna and lampblack to the others because they were useful for skin tones (there were no compositional ideas in mind at the time, just nebulous multicolored swirls floating loosely about in my head) if some figures became involved in the composition. The palette knife was also useful and I dropped it into the sack, but I didn't take the expensive palette. It was too expensive and could be traced, and I wouldn't want to be caught with it in my possession.

These art materials could be purchased anywhere, of course, as could the prepared 30" x 24" canvas, but I needed Debierue's materials in the event the authenticity of the painting was ever questioned. Mr. Cassidy, who had purchased everything for Debierue, would have a bill from the art store listing these materials, their brands, and so would Rex Art. My mind was racing, but I was clearheaded enough to realize how close a scrutiny the painting would receive when and if it were ever painted and exhibited.

I put the wrapped canvas, the sackful of supplies, and the hammer and tire iron into the trunk of the car, and returned to the studio.

I ran into trouble with the fire. Turpentine is flammable, highly flammable, but I had difficulty in getting it lighted and in keeping it burning once it was lit. I finally had to take the remains of the Miami Herald, crumple each separate page into a ball, and partially soak each sheet with turpentine before I could get a roaring fire started beneath the Early American Harvest table.

Once it got started, however, the fire burned beautifully. I poured most of the last can on the studio door, and dribbled the rest to the blaze beneath the table. I then tossed the new canvases into the fire, and backed out of the room. Because the fire would need a draft, I left the studio door and the front door standing open. Whether the house burned down or not was unimportant. The important thing was a charred and well-gutted studio. I wanted no evidence of any paintings left behind, and the crackling prepared canvases, sized with white lead, burned rapidly.

Satisfied, I turned out the living room and kitchen lights and got into the car. When I reached the highway and stopped, Berenice was gone. I shouted her name twice and panicked momentarily. Had she hitchhiked a ride back to Palm Beach?' If she stuck out her thumb, any truck driver who saw it would stop and pick her up. But I calmed down by puffing myself in her place, turned toward the drive-in theater instead of turning left for Palm Beach, and found her waiting for me in the gravel road of the driveway, standing near the well-lighted marquee.

"What took you so long?" Her voice wasn't angry. She was too relieved to see me, happy to be in the car again. "I thought you were never coming back."

"I'm sorry. It took longer than I expected."

"Did you stea- take a picture?"

"Yeah."

"What were they like?' The pictures?"

"I'll turn over here U.S. One. There're too many trucks on Seven."

"How long do you think it'll be, before he misses the picture?"

"I've got to go back to New York, Berenice. Tonight. So as soon as we get back to the apartment I'll pack- you're still packed, practically- and then I can drop you off at the airport. Or, if you'd rather, you can stay on for a few more days. The rent's paid till the end of the month, so . . ."

"If you're going to New York, so am I!"