NATHAN LESLIE 

The Painting          

Despite the fancy frame, Wayne knew this could not possibly be the original. He knew that much. He was not an idiot. One day, Wayne scribbled down the title and the artist and later he Googled the name and the date was in the 1590s. This particular print, however, appeared modern and some of the colors had dissipated, it seemed – not that it was a colorful painting to begin with. It was a winter scene. However, something about this print of this particular painting hanging in the dull community center lobby surrounded by house plants and sunlight angling in from all directions – it was one of Wayne’s go-to places when he needed to lose himself, when he wanted to forget his troubles for a few minutes. Or when he simply hoped to immerse himself in the window of this world. 

 When he peered at this image and saw the pack of dogs with their heads hanging in the snow and the men in front of looking, to his eyes, like mules, Wayne felt a certain level of comfort – as if he could, for some reason, bond with this scene and even place himself in it. Maybe he was like the dogs? Maybe he was like the men? Maybe he was like the group clustering near the fire on the far left, huddling next to a building?

But what Wayne appreciated most about the painting, were the layers. The first layer was the triangle of men and dogs and trees on top of the hill – three trees, three men, three blackbirds above them hovering – a sign that they too should be wary? Some kind of warning for their future dangers? However, far below them in the village along the long canal, people skated. The second layer was the frozen village and secondary canals – everyone out skating. This was the most compelling component to Wayne since it illustrated the importance of family and fellowship, and it illustrated that though the hunters may be dissolute they also, at the end of the day, have a home to return to. Within this second layer, there was plenty to observe – little images of people skating, chimneys, birds, chores, twigs jutting. But what were those two doing on the ice? What about them? Are they a couple? And the third layer showed the mountains and the blackbirds and the encroaching winter – if it was still winter there. Wayne could lose himself in the uplift of the mountains. Where are they going? Where are they rising to exactly? What was beyond the horizon there?

 In school, Wayne did not love art – he found it too calculated, too fussy, too much of an elitist closed-circuit. But Wayne could sit in front of this particular image for hours. Eventually, he would have to physically tear himself away, recede back into his life. Eventually, he would order placemats with the image emblazoned on it and his son would eat his mac and cheese and his cereal bowl would topple onto the image and bits of salad and carrots would litter the image. The placemat would remind him on a daily basis of what he used to love. But he still drove to the community center to linger in front of and stare into the wintery scene. He wasn’t sure exactly why, but he was never bored by it.

One day, he asked a woman if she could take his picture in front of the scene. She happened to walk through the lobby during his lunch break when he sat in front of the print eating his tuna sandwich and his apple. She said she would love to and she took several pictures with Wayne’s phone and he checked them and they looked fine. 

“Do you know the name of this print?” she asked him. He told her. “That’s right, and if you haven’t already seen them you should take a look at his other seasonal paintings set in the surrounding valleys, mostly. They are lovely,” she said. There are layers, Wayne thought. The layers never end.

In his mind, he walked away with this woman. They absconded with each other into the snow and the ice and the mountains. Friends and family would ask years later, “Whatever happened to so-and-so?” and they would all shrug. “I have no idea,” they would say. Vanished into thin air. 

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