The Myth of Wile E

America's Foremost Painter of Waterfowl

Dougie gathered up all the pens and paints that Daddy had forsaken, and set about forging an art career of his own. (Actually . . . let's say embarked on an art career. Dougie is understandably a little touchy about the f-word.)

Growing up, painting had been Dougie's one great dream. Well, unless you count the summer he was obsessed with saving Princess Peach from the sorcerer-turtle. Or his chivalric knight phase—but of course that dream was brief and generally dismissed as Impossible. So, I guess, three dreams. One great, and two goodish ones.

Dougie's great dream was to be a painter. And not just any painter, but America's foremost painter of waterfowl. Now, this might seem surprising, given that Dougie was never really fond of birds, or wetlands, or nature at all for that matter. But how could he resist the thrilling allure of the Fish and Wildlife Service's annual duck stamp competition, by far the most prestigious—and I guess probably only—art contest run by the U. S. Department of the Interior?

It had all started back in Kentucky, the year before I was born, or possibly the year before that (Dougie wasn't sure, as he'd made no particular notice of my nonexistence at the time). Mama, Daddy, Dougie, and Gladys went to an Independence Day burgoo festival where Gladys was scheduled to make an appearance as part of her toddler beauty queen obligations. According to Dougie, it was all quite an ordeal. There was a parade with a marching band (which he described as "loud"), a barbershop quartet ("creepy"), carnival games ("rigged"), a carousel and Ferris wheel ("terrifying"), and a petting zoo with miniature ponies ("smelly," "menacing"). And of course there was the burgoo stew, which Dougie would not eat, because Dougie would never eat any foods that were "touching." But most fearsome of all (in Dougie's opinion), was the cotton candy. He said it "felt like eating spiderwebs" and turned everything he gakked on bright pink, including the white part of Gladys's star-spangled tutu. (Fortunately, by then Gladdy had already performed her public duties; namely, posing for photos with the 4-H blue ribbon animals. Mama still has a poster-sized blowup of Gladdy standing between a prize lamb and a prize goat. All three of them—lamb, goat, and Gladys—wear the practiced smiles of pageant winners.)

At some point, the crowd gathered around a gazebo so the mayor could introduce a few local celebrities. The first was some guy dubbed the "Kentucky Colonel," a title which Dougie was disappointed to learn had nothing to do with war, or fried chicken. The Colonel, in turn, introduced a local big-shot jockey who wore satin pants, and (Dougie noted) would have gotten totally stuck at the high end of a seesaw, if an average-sized third grader sat on the opposite end. This was a fate Dougie himself had experienced on quite a few occasions, and he'd never regarded himself as possible athlete material. But before Dougie could add "jockey?" to his mental list of great-and-goodish ambitions, destiny intervened.

Because that's when, in a probably less-than-booming voice, the jockey turned everyone's attention to acclaimed painter and hometown hero, J. Murgatroyd Jr., winner of that year's federal duck stamp art contest. He apparently cut a glamorous figure. Instead of a beret and a smock, he dared to wear a furry trapper hat ("in July," Dougie noted with awe), tall rubber boots, and coveralls in a water reed camouflage pattern. He began and ended his speech by cupping his hands over his mouth and quacking. Privately, Daddy once told me he thought "The Stamp Artiste" was a bit full of himself, but then, competitive duck stampery is a pretty cutthroat field.

After that day, Dougie threw himself into his art studies. His earliest training was in the school of happy clouds and friendly trees, under the tutelage of that TV artist whose hair was also a happy cloud. Dougie would tape every show and watch it over and over, trying to duplicate each painting with the precision of an art forger. When he was done, he'd tape over that episode with the new one, and paint over the finished painting with a new painting, because he only owned one videotape and one canvas. But by the time we moved to California, Dougie had started to question the teacher's methods, particularly the haphazard addition and subtraction of snowcapped mountaintops, tree "friends," and even tiny lakeside cabins. Happy accidents, the teacher called them. "It's like he's just making this up as he goes along!" Dougie would complain to the VCR. "I don't even think that lake in the woods is a real place!"