The Barn
"High-concept."
Anthony Nix's voice boomed out of the darkness of his workshop as they loaded the final canvas into the pickup.
"That's what the faggot critics called it. High-concept art."
He was leaning against the frame of the wide doorway, dressed like the night before in denim work shirt and jeans. But now his hair was snaking loose around his shoulders, the leather cord lost.
Like his daughters, Anthony seemed quite comfortable bare foot, even outdoors.
"I think it's shit. Pure shit. She calls that striped crap 'trees,' for God's sake!"
Fusco turned towards the old man. Reese banged the tailgate shut. A scowl creased his face and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the edge of the gate.
"I guess the only true test is the market, isn't it, Anthony?"
Reese's voice was dangerously calm, but Fusco figured the old man wouldn't necessarily pick up on that.
"And I hear that Megan's forest paintings can go for ten thousand and up now that the stock market is surging again."
At that, Anthony Nix burst out laughing.
The noise was so explosive, ringing toward the barn's high rafters, that Shep was startled out of his day dreams. The dog barked sharply as his master kept on laughing, the two joining in a rolling chorus of piercing yelps.
When he finally gathered himself together, puffing and red-faced, Anthony spoke with a back-slapping sort of approval.
"You follow that art market crap, John? Then you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I'll give you that."
Waving both arms in a sweeping gesture, he invited them into the barn.
For the next twenty minutes Anthony gave the two men a detailed tour of his work shop, the benches with precision hand tools gleaming at attention, the racks of draped leather looking like tobacco set out to dry, the wooden shoe forms and the metal findings.
A bottle of red wine, three quarters drained, stood guard at one corner of the work bench. Rings of wine stains overlapped in intricate patterns along the edge of the table, some fresh, some faded.
As he walked around his spacious shop, Anthony drank wine from a plastic cup, but never offered any to his guests.
Spanning one long wall stood a rank of wooden pedestals, maybe twenty-five or thirty of them, all about four feet high, painted pale blue. On each pedestal was a single shoe, displayed like a work of art. On the wall above, wooden brackets, also painted blue, marched up toward the ceiling. Each of them had a shoe on it too.
Spotlights hung from the rafters, their cones of light trained on Anthony's master works.
"This is my gallery, my Guggenheim if you like. The display covers every decade of my career; it's a museum dedicated to my art as well as a reference library for research and inspiration."
Anthony paused, but when neither man said anything, he continued in a louder voice that echoed off the barn rafters.
"You know, I receive visitors from around the globe on a regular basis: Japan, Italy, France, Argentina. Each one a designer or artist, a craftsman or student, seeking inspiration through close study of my work. Their utter attention and devotion is really quite remarkable, I must say. Although not entirely unexpected."
He pinned Reese with a long stare, blue eyes on blue eyes.
"And so you can appreciate, John, why I cannot abide the inferior quality of the stuff churned out by my daughters. They are lovely creatures in their own ways, certainly. But they possess small gifts which are totally transparent and so mundane. There is no mystery to their art, no divine spark to their creations."
Anthony sighed then, as if accepting a great burden.
"Over the years I've tried to spur them on, to encourage them to expand and elevate their work beyond the ordinary. I truly have tried. But after many years of effort, I have come to the sad conclusion that they simply are not that talented."
Anthony stopped in front of a tall ladder which leaned against the wall of shoes, its upper arms fixed by hooks around a heavy brass railing which ran the length of the display.
"I got the idea from those grand old libraries in Fifth Avenue mansions, you know. Following through on the archive theme, if you will.
"Would you like to climb up to take a closer look at the shoes?"
This last question, more of a command really, was directed at Fusco.
"Sure, why not."
Fusco mounted the ladder while Reese held it steady. After a minute suspended twelve feet in the air, looking at a dust-covered brown shoe, Fusco glanced down at his friend.
Reese quirked his mouth, just missing an actual smile by a few millimeters, and began pushing the ladder along the railing.
"Hey! Cut that out! Whadda ya tryin' to do? Toss me for a tumble?" Fusco looked around the barn, but their host was nowhere in sight.
"Where's that goddam old man anyway?"
"I don't know, Lionel. Just relax and enjoy the view." Reese continued to push the ladder, picking up the pace a bit.
After a few hair-raising minutes of this carnival ride, they heard a thump from the front of the barn. Then another. And another.
The noise sounded like the dull pounding of Shep's tail on the ground, amplified by the echo chamber of the huge workshop.
"Hold still, will ya? Before I break my neck."
Fusco clambered down the ladder and the two men walked toward the blinding glare of the open barn door.
Reese's eyes must have adjusted faster to the daylight than Fusco's did, because when he reached the door, he sprinted through the double wide frame, running toward Megan's pickup truck, yelling as he moved.
When Fusco was able to blink his eyes clear, he saw Reese grappling with Anthony Nix in the truck bed.
The old man held a pitch fork above his head, waving it in two hands, his eyes starting from his skull in rage.
After a minute of silent struggle, Reese ripped the tool from Anthony's fists and threw it on the ground at Fusco's feet. Another minute and Reese locked his arms like iron bands around the old man's torso, pinning his hands to his sides and holding on until the grappling stopped.
It was only at that point that Fusco could see the damage Anthony had inflicted.
He had driven the rusted pitchfork repeatedly into Megan's canvases, wrenching the tines violently to leave large gashes gaping in the center of each painting.
Five of her paintings were destroyed, the canvases flapping like blue striped flags on a ship mast. Another bore three ugly puncture wounds where Reese had blocked her father's rampage before the destruction could be completed.
"Fuck you, asshole!" Fusco snapped out the curse and reached for Anthony's boots.
"Throw him down here, John! I'll take it from here!"
The damn dog yapped at Fusco's ankles, trying to defend his master any way he could. Fusco kicked at the dog, then at the truck. Shep yelped and slunk away to cower in the shadow of the barn door.
Reese glared down from the pickup bed, where he still held Anthony. The old man's labored breathing showed how tightly the vise of muscle and sinew was pressing around his ribcage.
"Back off, Fusco!"
Reese's shout penetrated through the red cloud boiling in Fusco's mind.
"Get the sisters. Leave the old man to me."
Fusco did as he was told.
By the time he returned to the backyard with the women, Reese and Anthony Nix and Shep were nowhere around.
The four sisters wailed at the sight of Megan's destroyed art. Allison pressed Megan's head into her stomach, clenching her fists against her sister's blonde hair; Vivienne and Ondine knelt on either side of their stricken sister, keening in a circle of grief.
Their crying tore at Fusco's heart and he sensed the anger rising up again in him. He felt impotent, disarmed by the suffering and immobilized without a way to respond.
He wanted to beat in Anthony's simpering face, to cause him as much pain as he had caused his children, to ignore him as he wheezed for mercy. He hoped Reese was doing all of that and more to the old man in some secluded part of the farm.
After what seemed to him like an unbearable eternity of weeping, the four women climbed onto the truck bed. Silently they inspected each painting.
Of the twenty canvases, fourteen were untouched; one was punctured but otherwise intact.
Vivienne had orders, always.
"Help me get the tarp, Lionel. In Megan's studio."
When they returned dragging the waterproof cloth, the sisters had thrown the ruined paintings on the ground at the foot of the back porch steps.
Fusco helped Megan and Viv secure the gray tarp around the paintings with packing straps and hooks. They worked in grim quiet; the only noise accompanying their efforts was the clucking of the hens that had been disturbed by the earlier uproar.
"Are you going to be alright, Megan?" He thought the question sounded foolish given the gravity of the situation, so he was surprised by her mild response.
"Yeah, Lionel. Thanks for helping here."
Her eyes were dry now but red, her chin still quivering under the force of her emotions.
"That's a helluva thing to see. Destroying your kid's creations like that."
Megan's breath hitched into a sob and Vivienne put an arm around her shoulder.
He felt he was babbling like a fool, but he kept going anyway.
"I mean, I saved every one of those construction paper art projects Lee brought home when he was in grade school. Every last one. My ex still got 'em somewhere in a carton in storage."
He shook his head in sad amazement.
"Yeah, well. Welcome to the Nix family, Lionel." Vivienne's voice was low, bitter.
"This isn't the first time he's pulled a stunt like this. Two years ago Daddy spent a whole afternoon smashing every last pot and cup and platter Ondine had made during a twelve month period.
"He said they all were trash, not worth looking at or wasting shelf space on. Hundreds of pieces. He said she should be thankful to him for the chance to start over again fresh."
Megan spoke up as her sister dropped the painful story.
"We found Daddy standing in Ondine's studio, knee deep in a pool of white clay shards, ranting. It's how he is, Lionel."
She continued in a strangled whisper.
"Five years ago, he destroyed eight of my newest paintings, three of them already sold. It's how he is."
Silently, Vivienne held out her sister's two wrists to him, their blind slash marks turned upwards.
After that, the women joined their sisters in the farmhouse, letting the screen door slam. Fusco stood shuddering in the sunny back yard, the horror of it all washing over him.
For many minutes he remained in the yard staring at the slice of blue porch ceiling he could see from the spot where he was rooted.
He didn't notice Reese approach and jumped when his friend touched him on the shoulder.
"So what did you do with the bastard?"
Although his face was rigid with emotion, Reese's voice seemed calm, almost matter-of-fact in reply.
"Well, I didn't kill him, if that's what you were hoping."
"I would've, if I got the chance."
"Well, I guess I did give him a knock. Or two. Maybe three. Just to quiet him down a bit."
Reese didn't sound triumphant about the beat-down of an old man. When he didn't elaborate, Fusco pressed on.
"So where is he now?
"I left him in his bed."
"Fucking S.O.B."
"Lying with his dog on his chest. He was crying, Lionel. Holding onto the dog and crying."
Fusco shook his head trying to erase the image of a devastated man pinned to his bed by his only companion.
"You think it's the alcohol? Is he a bad drunk? Or is he just plain nasty?"
"Or both." Reese said it as a fact, not a question.
"Is he dangerous?"
"Yes, he is."
Another bald statement, though the facts seemed more slippery than that.