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TICKETS ON SALE NOW PORTTIX.COM 207.842.0800 San Diegos Civic Organist MERRILL AUDITORIUM PORTL AND ME WWW.FOKO.ORG Tuesday Nov 17 730 PM Sunday Mar 6 300 PM C E L E B R AT I N G R AY C O R N I L S 2 5 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y Y E A R P O R T L A N D S M U N I C I P A L O R G A N I S T Ray Cornils Portland ME Festival Brass Oratorio Chorale Parish Ringers Tuesday Dec 22 730 PM Peter Krasinski Boston MA 94 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine Fiction It has been reported there are over a hundred of your large lost dog paintings and as many studies. You are prolific. How do you do it I dont consider myself prolific at all. I wish I had a voice like Basquiat. He could rip through canvases roll around on them on the floor and they sang. It took me about ten days to do a large dog painting and I had five or more going at once. I averaged a finish about every two weeks. A study took me a day or more. Three years of lost dogs is enough. I have to ask did you lose a dog when you were a kid I had a dog who was taken from me by my mother. I could have made that up to make this interview interesting but it happens to be true. An autobiographical nugget for graduate students. I did the dog series be- cause I want to run away but Im too scared. The old man walked toward the screen like he was going to walk through it and then stopped. Im Billy Haig the man said a friend of your fathers. Im here to take you to him. To Tom Walter said squinting down at him. That your stepfather Billy said. No your real father. Robert Rhodes. We dont talk. Howd you find me We dont For Christs sake Bil- ly said. Like its a mutual thing. Hes writ- ten to you hundreds of times. Okay. I have to keep in mind youre a little special. You told people where to find you in here. He rolled up the magazine and pointed it at Walter. Not many places on the Dead River like you described. I brought it to make sure I got the guy in the photo and I do. Pack some clothes. Well be gone for a few days and Ill bring you back safe and still nutty. Im not going anywhere. I get sick. Im a doctor and youll be fine. Invite me in. Billy pulled the screen door open and pushed past Walter into the house. Looks like a flea market. Nothing in here a good fire wouldnt fix. Get your tooth- brush whatever. You leave. Yourecomingwithmetosaygoodbyeto your father who is dying and never stopped caring about you. Because you want to. Bil- ly was walking toward a chair and lowering himself as he approached it. He was almost fully sitting before his rear hit the seat and he dropped the magazine to the floor. No Walter said. Yes. Because I have something you want. Actually many things youll want to add to your fuck-all collection in here. You come with me and be kind to your father and youll get them. Walter was standing at the screen door turned only slightly sideways to watch Bil- ly and because he could very often accurate- ly predict the next note in even the most dis- sonant of compositions a grimace seized his face like rock lichen. I have your graduate thesis paintings Billy said most of the work on wood pan- els that sold at Holmes and a good portion of yourearlyNewYorkcanvases.Afterthatyou were selling on your own well enough so I could stop buying. Couldnt afford to contin- ue anyway. I drove the prices up too high. Walter felt displaced. Thats what a ther- apist had called it long ago Displacement. Hefloatedaroundinananxiousdreammost of the time. Nothing he could do about that. But this this was knees sickly weak mind crashing through possible outcomes all of them painful. He set his feet wider apart. Your father is the best man I have ever known Billy said. You have no idea what he has done for you. It wont kill you to say goodbye to him to let him see your face. I never had kids so I dont know why the hell he gives a shit about you but he does. Now get your stuff and Ill explain in the car. But no explanation was necessary was it The one thing that lifted him above his peers at the Institutethe one solid undeniable ar- tistic truthwas that Walter Rhodes sold paintings. One after another. Anonymous collectors. Private buyers on the phone. Strangers walking in the gallery and walking out cash-and-carry. Gallery owners looked at him and turned their heads sideways as if hearing a tone others could not. He had the farm the studio time to work all due to that phenomenon. He should be grateful or mad or something but instead he felt an acidic hunger. He wanted his paintings back and the man who had them was sitting slouched in his favorite fat armchair watching him. Walter walked into the bedroom and pushed underwear socks and shirts into a pink princess backpack. The rhinestone spar- kles gave it a calming tinkling melody. He slung it on his shoulder and walked through the house toward the rumbling Jeep. Good boy Billy said. n