The Pretty People

Back when she was still able to go to school, Mandy loved art. No one needed to teach her how to draw. Drawing was something she just did, like breathing. She had assumed everyone knew how to draw like she did.

Before she began school Mandy didn't have any friends other than Granny, Uncle Mitchel and the cows. Granny was a wonderful artist who painted scenes from the bible on the blades of saws. She sold these painted saws at the county craft show every year before Christmas. When granny wasn't milking cows she was listening to Reverend Lundy on the radio and painting the saws. Uncle Mitchel didn't paint, or draw, because Mitchel didn't have any hands.

Mandy had asked Uncle Mitchel if he had been a soldier. He told her no he hadn't been no soldier, but that he had a bad accident when he was young. That's all he would say about the matter of the missing hands. Granny said the same.

Mandy liked to draw birds, flowers and trees. She also liked to draw the pretty people she saw in her dreams.

       The pretty people had been there as long as she could remember. They liked to dance under the sky and swim without their clothes on. They moved like the water, or like she imagined the wind would look if it wasn't invisible. Mandy liked the way she felt when she drew the pretty people. She could feel them. The way they felt under the sun and in the water. It made her heart shine and her skin tickle when she thought of them.

All these drawings she kept in a secret drawer up in her bedroom. They didn't talk, but somehow she knew the pretty people didn't want Granny or Uncle Mitchel seeing what they looked like. So while granny listened to Reverend Lundy and painted saws, Mandy drew.

She drew mainly out in the open air, out in the woods by the lake. It was her favorite place in all the world. She went there so many times that she could see it all inside her head. The way the branches of the trees grew, the ripples on the water and the wildflowers in the grass. It was her sanctuary away from the weird man on the radio who spoke like he was pinching his nose. Mandy thought it funny the way he talked, but what he talked about wasn't funny at all.

The Reverend Skip Lundy was born with his face split down the middle, and back in 1932 there wasn't the money to have that fixed. Not fixed right. They had tried, but the stitches never lined up, and so Reverend Lundy did all his preaching on the radio and not the TV.

He preached twice a day and in between there was music where people sang about Jesus, sins being washed away and heaven. Mandy didn't like the music either, it made her feel sad inside. Granny loved the music and would hum the songs all the time.