Duma Key

How to Draw a Picture (VIII)

Be brave. Don’t be afraid to draw the secret things. No one said art was always a zephyr; sometimes it’s a hurricane. Even then you must not hesitate or change course. Because if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art — that you are in charge — your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn’t always pretty. Sometimes the truth is the big boy.

The little ones say It’s Libbit’s frog. A frog with teef.

And sometimes it’s something even worse. Something like Charley in his bright blue breeches.

Or HER.

Here is a picture of little Libbit with her finger to her lips. She says Shhhh. She says If you talk she’ll hear, so shhhh. She says Bad things can happen, and upside-down talking birds are just the first and least, so shhhh. If you try to run, something awful may come out of the cypress and gumbo limbo and catch you on the road. There are even worse things in the water down at Shade Beach — worse than the big boy, worse than Charley who moves so quick. They’re in the water, waiting to drown you. And not even drowning is the end, no, not even drowning. So shhhh.

But for the true artist, the truth will insist. Libbit Eastlake can hush her mouth, but not her paints and pencils.

There’s only one person she dares talk to, and only one place she can do it — only one place at Heron’s Roost where HER hold seems to fail. She makes Nan Melda go there with her. And tries to explain how this happened, how the talent demanded the truth and the truth slithered out of her grasp. She tries to explain how the drawings have taken over her life and how she has come to hate the little china doll Daddy found with the rest of the treasure — the little china woman who was Libbit’s fair salvage. She tries to explain her deepest fear: if they don’t do something, the twins may not be the only ones to die, only the first ones. And the deaths may not end on Duma Key.

She gathers all her courage (and for a child who is little more than a baby, she must have had a great lot of it) and tells the whole truth, mad as it is. First about how she made the hurricane, but that it wasn’t her idea — it was HER idea.

I think Nan Melda believes it. Because she’s seen the big boy? Because she’s seen Charley?

I think she saw both.

The truth has to come out, that’s the basis of art. But that’s not to say the world must see it.

Nan Melda says Where yo new doll now? The china doll?

Libbit says In my special treasure-box. My heart-box.

Nan Melda says And what her name?

Libbit says Her name is Perse.

Nan Melda says Percy a boy’s name.

And Libbit says I can’t help it. Her name is Perse. That’s the truth. And she says Perse has a ship. It looks nice but it’s not nice. It’s bad. What are we going to do, Nanny?

Nan Melda thinks about it as they stand there in the one safe place. And I believe she knew what needed to be done. She might not have been an art critic — no Mary Ire — but I think she knew. The bravery is in the doing, not in the showing. The truth can be hidden away again, if it’s too terrible for the world to look at. And it happens. I’m sure it happens all the time.

I think every artist worth a damn has a red picnic basket.