Kicking Eternity

Chapter Five

Chapter 5

A blue jay twittered outside the window. Cal heard voices and the scuff of shoes on the dirt as the stragglers headed toward the dining hall for lunch. He stepped into the classroom, inhaling the lingering scent of paint and turpentine that marked the room as his.

Raine stood facing Day at the Beach with her back to him. Maybe she regretted freezing him out yesterday and came to apologize.

A board groaned under the weight of his foot and she spun around. Tears slicked down her cheeks and she wiped them away. “What does this painting mean?”

He braced himself against her tears and shrugged one shoulder as if she wasn’t getting to him. Raine wouldn’t like his telling her what the painting meant. But maybe he should. It would give her a glimpse of how people think who aren’t like her. But he wasn’t into baring his soul. Ever.

His usual response slid out. “The important thing is what it means to you.”

“What if I’m wrong?”

“You can’t be wrong. Everyone is entitled to his own interpretation.” He pulled a chair out and straddled it. Of course, sometimes people came up with certifiably crazy interpretations of his work.

Raine looked back at the painting and sank to the tabletop, still entranced. Cal’s gaze followed hers though he knew the painting, probably one of his best, without looking.

A figure with no distinguishing male or female characteristics walked on the beach casting a long shadow. Three boys and a girl strung out behind the figure. One of the boys was out in the sun, running for the water, hope etched on his face. One tennis-shoe-clad foot remained in the figure’s shadow. The faces of the children in the shadow couldn’t be seen. They appeared hunched. One carried a toy bucket and shovel. One wore an inflatable inner tube around his waist.

“It makes me think about my family.” Raine didn’t take her eyes off the picture. “Three boys and a girl. One child sees his dad casting an oppressive shadow over all their lives.”

Cal wanted her to say more. His gaze welded to the play of emotion on her face.

She turned to him. “I don’t think I ever realized how wrong a child’s view can be.” She looked back at the painting. “You make me see that the best place for the children is out in the sunshine—maybe holding the dad’s hand, looking up at him expectantly. Or dancing around him with expressions that say, ‘Look at me, look at me, aren’t I something special!’ ”

Cal was thrown off balance. He had painted God’s oppression of man, his mother’s oppression of the family. That was Cal, almost out of God’s shadow and into the sunshine, poised to run into the water. He didn’t want to hear this wasn’t how life shouldbe.

Raine had unknowingly pictured a relationship with God, one where the children got to play in the sunshine, interact with God, probably even swim in the ocean. But, for him, it was too hard to imagine.

 Raine fixed her eyes on him. “You disagree.” She tilted her head to one side. “So, tell me what you were thinking when you painted the picture.”

“We’re oppressed, and our only hope is to make a break for it.”

“Oppressed by what?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He stood and shoved the chair under the table. He wasn’t having this conversation.

“Where did you get such a bleak take on life?”

“Not everyone swallows the home-school-PC version of life. Look, I’m out of here. Enjoy the painting. Make it mean whatever you want.”