Ancient Memories [Kindle Edition]

Ancient Memories [Kindle Edition] by Youngblood Hawke

D.C. was far behind her. So was Arlington, Virginia. The interstate unrolled ahead like some long, monotonous string, but Taylor enjoyed driving because some of her most creative ideas had come when she was behind the wheel of a car, prompted by a rustic-looking barn or a weathered fence. But in order to have that happen, she needed the more personal involvement with the land that rural roads brought, not the insulation of interstate driving. If time were important, she would have stayed on I-66, but she turned south at Front Royal into the Shenandoah. She had the entire day, if needed, so she went the slower way that she had used countless times before. Each time she saw something new, something different that she longed to paint. Sometimes she stopped to take photographs that she would later turn into a painting; sometimes she did not. But the important thing was that she had the option. The interstate never gave her any options unless she wanted to paint billboards. Taylor Hardin painted rural landscapes, accentuating the America of a bygone era by rendering old farmhouses, silos, rusted ploughs in a mythological fantasy that wove mystery and tension into shades of light and dark. There were some critics who called her a "barn painter,” but in spite of the patronizing label word of her paintings had spread, and she was somewhat of a celebrity by now. Being labeled a barn painter both caused her one of her greatest embarrassments, while at the same time giving her the biggest boost of her professional career. Even now, she felt a bit sheepish remembering opening night at Washington's famous Rowe Gallery a year ago.. She and three other rising artists were being introduced to D.C.'s art buying elite for the first time, and she was determined to stand out. She wanted to be noticed, to make herself special in some way that would separate her from her three competitors. So instead of dressing professionally like the other artists, she had come dressed as Cleopatra. Dressing outlandishly was not an original idea. She had heard a story of a contemporary artist who, on her first showing, had been even more outrageous. The woman, who had heavy long black hair, had donned a gaudy black dress and wore a high pointed witch’s hat. Then she created an appalling scene when she entered the room and jumped on a table, cackling and screaming as she jumped from table to table. The stunt had worked, and the woman was now a fairly successful artist. On the night of her shared exhibition, Taylor had come dressed in formal attire like everyone else, but carried a military style duffle bag. She walked quickly across the room and disappeared into the ladies’ room. She stripped to her panties, and pulled her Cleopatra outfit from the duffle bag. It was a mint green, flowing chiffon dress and as she slipped into it, it shimmered smoothly down her body and touched the floor. Then she took out an opulent diamond and pearl necklace that had belonged to her grandmother and which she had never worn. Pinning up her auburn hair, she put on a wig of long straight black hair, and placed a jewel-laced head cover over it. Synthetic emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds flowed in rows to her shoulders. Then she placed a gold-colored crown on her head and she was done. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt her heart beat faster. She was surprised that she actually looked like Cleopatra. The image she saw in the mirror was that of a beautiful, wealthy woman from long ago. But there was a problem. She nearly panicked when she saw her breasts nearly completely exposed in the dress, the front cut with a wide V exposing her flesh to her waist. Her nipples were barely covered and looked as though they would pop out at the slightest movement. She shook her shoulders and twisted like a ballerina, checking to see if she would fully expose herself. She didn’t, but she was still nervous. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. When she had tried on the dress in her own bedroom she hadn’t felt so naked. She stared wide-eyed at her explosed chest in the mirror She couldn’t do this. She was doing this for a purpose, she reminded herself. She was playing a game – the get-me-noticed-artist-game. Quickly, she stepped into the matching green sandals and the transformation was complete. She stuffed her evening gown into the duffle bag and kicked the bag into a corner. As she turned to the door, she was trembling in fear and embarrassment. The costume was all wrong. It was though there was something other-worldly about the dress, as though she knew something about it but didn’t understand. She looked at the people and wasn’t sure she could do it. Don’t stop now. She took a last deep breath, looked down at her own chest, then stepped boldly into the room. Many times she had imagined this moment in her mind. With a forced bravado, she began acting the part of a condescending, mighty Egyptian queen. Her smile was at once distant and haughty, and she entered the room with lofty grace. But inside the butterflies in her stomach were having a fierce battle. This felt all wrong. Heads turned. The room grew deathly quiet. All eyes were upon her as she forced herself to approach the closest group of people. Graciously, she held her hand out to the first random older man and said in a rich, husky voice that did not seem to belong to her, “Greetings. I am Taylor Hardin.” At once, the man was besotted. This was easier than she had thought it would be! She spoke to him briefly about the painting he was interested in, then moved to another group of admirers. Before long, there was a cluster of older men following her around the gallery. She was soon very much in demand, particularly among the male patrons, and she knew it wasn’t entirely because of her paintings hanging on the walls. This was not surprising to her, for she was tall, attractive, and her face had once been called angelic by her dead husband. At 34 she was available, and only she knew she would never fully recover from the terrible death of her husband. As the evening progressed, her popularity grew. She was surrounded at all times by at least a dozen men, who expressed an interest in both her and her work. All of her admirers were respectfully polite, except for one man, a Brazilian whose name to this day she could not remember,. He was younger than the rest, closer to her age, and his smoldering dark eyes did not leave her alone for a moment. They traversed her body from her face to her breasts to between her legs with a rude, hot stare. She wished she had worn a turtleneck. After satisfying himself with the visual inspection of her intimate areas, his eyes more or less permanently affixed themselves to her breasts. Even when he spoke to her his eyes would only leave her breasts for the briefest of moments, lock onto her eyes, then return to her chest. She tried to ignore him, but then, his eyes still focused on her chest, he spoke in a jeering, condescending tone: "Your paintings are reasonably adequate, given the type they are. I know there are those plebians who are entertained by your kind of craft, but I personally have never liked barn painters." Barn painters! Taylor felt the red heat of anger flush her cheeks and she knew her face was now nearly the color of her auburn hair. How dared he? The group around her fell into an uncomfortable silence, but no one came to her defense. The Brazilian continued to look smugly at her breasts. She looked into the man's eyes and for the first time since he had joined the group his eyes met hers and held in a victorious gaze. "I can appreciate criticism, sir," she said, in the strange, loud, queenly voice that did not sound like hers. . "As an artist I can assure you that I am accustomed to it. But as to ignorant people like you, who criticize things you can't even begin to understand, let me say that when I die, I'll see that they put me in my coffin upside down. Then you, sir, can come by and kiss my ass." Every person in the group surrounding them was shocked speechless. Then the Brazilian angrily turned and stalked away. The people left behind laughed uneasily, but Taylor was mortified at having lost her temper. It wasn’t like her at all. As soon as she could she excused herself from the group, changed back into her street clothes, and returned to her hotel for the night. She was certain that the incident had cost her any hope she’d had of being accepted into the elite world of successful new artists. But she was wrong. One of the witnesses to her snide remark was an art writer for the Washington Post. The following morning, her outburst was a headline story in the newspaper's art section, and was accompanied by a color photo of her Cleopatra, with breasts mostly visible. By the time she finished reading it, she was ready to return to the Shenandoah and hide. But the notoriety that the event caused gave her instant celebrity status. The AP picked up the story, and a national art magazine contacted her for a feature. Instead of hiding in the Shenandoah out of embarrassment, she was sought after by art writers who wanted to feature her and her paintings. Her work was more in demand than ever, the price of her paintings soaring to heights she had only dreamed of. One magazine even titled a story about her: Bob Timberlake, Watch Out. Never had she imagined that she would ever be compared to Bob Timberlake, the most famous barn painter of them all. When the checks started to roll in, being labeled a barn painter didn’t seem so bad after all. Ahead she saw the U.S. 29 exit that would get her off the interstate and onto a real road. Thank goodness. She slowed for the exit, and then headed southwest toward Warrenton. The outskirts of Warrenton were ahead, and she pulled into the McDonalds for a rest stop and a Coke. Then she drove out of Warrenton on U.S. 211, still a four-lane road until it turned to two lanes as it entered the misty Blue Ridge Mountains and weaved its way toward the Shenandoah National Park beyond. The majestic views were beautiful with mountains rolling away into the distance like a misty green ocean of cascading hills. She felt finally at home. This was the country she loved to paint. This was where she belonged, the old farmhouses, barns and rusting equipment from a bygone era. She drove through the mountains and the park during the shimmering heat of a summer noon, crossed Skyline Drive that rode the ridges north to south, and finally dropped down into the valley. Nearly home, she turned north onto 340 toward Front Royal, and in a few minutes she was in Willow Barre. She turned into the gravel front of Purvis' Grocery to pick up some milk. "Morning, Taylor." Mrs. Purvis was stocking shelves, putting canned vegetables on empty shelves. Business must be good, Taylor thought. She stopped when Taylor entered, always ready to strike up a conversation with her customers. "Good morning, Miz Purvis." When she was in the Shenandoah she ran her words together and spoke slang like the locals. She was local, almost. She had spent her childhood summers there with her aunt and uncle "I've just got to pick up a few things on the way home. I've been to town." Mrs. Purvis smiled, but she seemed anxious. "You been out selling more of your paintin's to the diplomats?" Taylor laughed. "Yeah. I guess they buy my pictures because they have to live in the city and move about in their high society, and they have to have paintings so they can see what America used to look like. I'm glad they're willing to pay the prices they pay. It puts food on the table and bought me that new Subaru outside. But I'll tell you, I would never pay what they pay for a picture. Not even for one of Bob Timberlake's." "Who's that?" "He's an artist, real famous." "Not too famous, I reckon. I never heard of him. I know about Van Gogh. He cut off his ear." Taylor smiled stiffly and tried to edge away from Mrs. Purvis so she could concentrate on what she needed to buy. Everybody knew about Van Gogh's ear, just like everybody seemed to know about kissing her dead ass, lying upside down in a coffin. “Did you hear the latest news?” Mrs Purvis hovered at her shoulder as she debated buying ice-cream. Diana loved butter pecan. She was anxious to have her daughter safely with her. Dreadfully she knew what Mrs. Purvis was going to say. "Guess you heard there’s been another killing," Mrs. Purvis said. Her voice held fear now, and that explained why Taylor had thought her a bit edgy when she had first arrived. Taylor looked at her blankly. “What?” The fear was creeping through her body now, because her little piece of the world was being turned upside-down. The week before, while Taylor was preparing for her two-day trip to The Rowe, an elderly couple had been found stabbed to death in their bed, apparently killed in their sleep. When a neighbor had missed them and gone to check on them, they had been dead for several days. The Phillips’ murders had been the most horrific thing ever to happen in Willow Barre, a small community where everyone knew everyone else. The Phillips’ home was less than a mile from Taylor’s farm, but then, no one lived far away in their tiny community. “Who was killed?” Taylor asked, her voice trembling. “Tom and Ina McDonald,” Mr. Purvis replied. “I knowed ‘em well.” Taylor knew them too. Ina had sometimes baby sat with her when she was small and had been there to offer any help needed at her husband’s funeral. She was scared now. “Any idea who did it?” she asked. These were neighbors of hers, people she had know all her life. Mrs. Purvis shook her head. “I guess the sheriff’s pissing his pants about now. The only law he’s had to enforce up till now is the speed limit.” “This is so awful. So no one has any idea?” “No. Better lock your doors tight, though. That’s pretty much all the sheriff recommends.” Taylor knew Cameron Wade well. He had been sheriff for nearly sixteen years, and during that time there might have been a couple of domestic killings. But that was it. T he sheriff’s department wasn’t equipped or experienced to handle something as major as two double murders in less than a week. Was anyone? She gathered some bread and milk along with a few other essentials and laid them on the counter. Mrs. Purvis came over and rang them up. "That be all?" Taylor nodded. Mrs. Purvis bagged the few groceries, took the money and made change. She obviously would have liked to have gone on talking, but Taylor was anxious to get home. She continued down the mountain towards town and as she came to a tight curve she slowed down and began to pull off the road before she could see what she knew was there. Off the road just past the curve the dense line of trees suddenly opened onto a beautiful glade. A little unpainted shack sat well back from the road. It was the type of unpainted, seemingly rundown house you saw so often in the rural south. It had a yard full of junker cars sitting around and the large green leaves of kudzu creeping down to the building edge. Kudzu was the scourge of the South. Imported by some idiot farmer over a century ago as an experiment in fast-growing cow feed, it had literally taken over the southern mountains and so much of the rural roadside. Its vine-like tentacles crept across so much of the countryside, smothering and killing every living plant in its path. Its growth rate was so fast, it had been known to grow across a two lane mountain road overnight. Taylor was the only person in the area who liked kudzu. It was an encroaching leafy plant that completely covered the ground and killed everything beneath it. It was not uncommon to see acres upon acres of the pesky plant. But still, Taylor thought it was beautiful. She pulled her car off the side of the road in front of the deserted kudzu house, reached to her camera in the seat beside her, then slipped out and began snapping pictures of the falling down old farm house that would soon be covered by her favorite awful plant. She spent ten minutes there and would have stayed longer but she couldn’t get the murders off her mind. She shouldn’t have left Diana with a friend after the first murder. Suddenly there was panic in her mind, and she knew that, until this ended she would never again leave Willow Barre without her daughter. Never. Continues...