Page 38 of Statler

* * *

When Eliza finally reached the place she called her own, satisfaction filled her body as she took it all in.

What she saw was an affirmation of her talent. She knew it was decent.

The huge, rocky outcropping; her natural canvas with its many faces, cracks, and fissures, stretched before her.

It stood fifteen feet high, and extended for hundreds of feet into the trees, and it was filled with years’ worth of her work.

Some of the paintings she’d created were old; huge landscapes that blended in seamlessly with the natural environment. Some were simply brightly colored splashes or muted, abstract designs that reflected her emotions at certain junctures in her life. Others were the many faces of the two people she’d loved most; her mother and Holden.

There were even a few renderings of Granny that were life-size and extremely detailed. In one of them, Granny held a pie that looked so real, you could almost smell the apples.

Today, however, Eliza had a different mission. A new one.

She felt giddy with anticipation.

She was going to paint Statler.

Unloading her bag on the flat rock she always used as a work-table, she carefully laid out her brushes, her pots of paint, and the spray can of special coating that would seal and preserve anything she deemed “keepable”.

Not that she left the majority of her creations stay for long.

No. The rocks were a living canvas for her.

Ever changing, ever evolving.

In the end, when she departed town, what remained would be a testament to her creativity…until eventually it all faded away to nothing.

CHAPTER NINE

Statler decided to run alone on Sunday.

He needed some space, as was sometimes the case when working so closely with the team.

Sure, these were the people he loved most in the world—along with his sister—but being up each other’s asses, twenty-four/seven was not always healthy.

They each needed lives that didn’t involve the crew, and Statler had made that clear to all of them, especially during their down-time between missions.

They still hung-out a lot; barbeques in his back yard, hitting the local bars, meeting at the gym for workouts during the long Maine winters, but Stat also encouraged them to find things to do that they enjoyed, solo.

For instance, Tonka volunteered at a dog rescue. Blue skied—on both water and snow— belonging to several clubs. And Sherbert, when he was free, offered classes at the local Vo-Tech, teaching computer programming.

Dizzy and Pipes lent their plumbing and electrical skills to various habitat projects, free of charge. And Hazard? Well, Haze was a secretive son-of-a-bitch, and nobody knew exactly what he did when he disappeared for days on end.

Every one of them knew, however, that Stat’s outlet was his studio/workshop in back of his house.

Creating art.

With all forms of media.

Lately, he’d begun messing around constructing sculptures out of old tools and bits and pieces of cast-off metal from jobs.

But his true passion?

Painting.

Watercolors. Oils. Acrylics…