“Come in,” commanded a booming voice.
Sarah pushed open the door, saying, “Daddy, this is Jamie, the Portraitist.”
“The Portraitist!” repeated a man standing behind a desk. He was shorter than both Jamie and Sarah and very stout, as pink as a pencil eraser but much shinier, with a prodigious salt-and-pepper mustache. The room, as all the other rooms had been, was crowded with art. “Come in, Portraitist!” Sarah’s father reached across his desk to shake hands. He gestured at the jumbled paper on its surface. “I never mean to work on the Sabbath, and then I always do. Hopefully God will forgive me.”
“I’m sure he will, sir.”
“Are you? That’s reassuring.” He looked searchingly up into Jamie’s face. “Who taught you to draw, boy?”
“No one, really.”
“But Sarah told me Wallace Graves is your uncle. He must have taught you.”
Jamie started to say something agreeable, then stopped. Had Wallace taught him? Jamie couldn’t remember any actual instruction, only scattered praise from long ago. All of the puzzling and experimenting, the criticism and despair, the leaps forward and moments of exultation—all of that had come from himself. But of course he had learned from watching Wallace. What would be simplest to say? “I suppose so.”
“Do you paint?”
“Watercolors sometimes. I’ve never tried oils.”
“It’s my opinion that oils prove the artist,” Mr. Fahey said. “You ought to enter the arena sooner rather than later. See what you’re made of.”
Sarah made a small sighing sound, the faintest of protests.
“I don’t have anything against oils,” Jamie said. “Just that they’re expensive.”
“I saw your picture of Sarah,” Mr. Fahey said. “Impressive, although not everyone who can draw can paint.” Getting up from his desk, he gestured to an unframed canvas propped facing the wall. “Let’s have a look at this. I believe it’s one of your uncle’s.” He picked up the painting and turned it around.
Homesickness punctured Jamie. There was the Rattlesnake, well upstream from Wallace’s house but unmistakable, on a day bright with summer haze.
“Yes, sir,” he said. He cleared his throat. “That’s his.” He leaned closer. Surrounded his whole life by Wallace’s paintings, Jamie had ceased to notice them. He thought Wallace might have chosen a more interesting composition, but he had captured the feeling of the landscape, its balance of harshness and softness.
“Nice little scene.” Mr. Fahey swung the painting around and held it at arm’s length, studying it. “What’s your uncle doing now?”
He drinks. He stews in his own grime. He scrapes together a few cents to lose at cards. “He still paints.” A lie. “He teaches drawing and painting at the University of Montana, in Missoula.” Another lie.
Mr. Fahey set down the canvas. “Stroke of luck to have an artist for an uncle, and one who took an interest in you. Not everyone gets that kind of help.”
Jamie didn’t know how to explain without appearing to argue or seeming ungrateful. He remembered he was supposed to seem confident. “True,” he said. “Not everyone.”
“Jamie lives in Missoula, too,” Sarah said. “He’s only here for the summer. He’s staying with relatives.”
“That so?”
Jamie stopped himself from glancing at Sarah, surprised at how easily she’d lied. “That’s right. With cousins.”
Mr. Fahey didn’t appear overly interested in Jamie’s relations. “Here’s the thing. I didn’t want Sarah to say anything until after I’d met you myself, but I have a job that needs doing, if you’d be interested in some extra employment. Are you?”
Hope strong enough to lift him like a wind. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t even know what it is, but you know you’re interested.”
Jamie dipped his head. “I am, sir.”
“Fair enough, hard times. Everyone’s got to start somewhere. I started from nothing, myself.” He cleared his throat. “What I need is for someone to help me catalog all this.” He gestured at the walls, the patchwork of art. “Everything on the walls, everything in the attic, everything in the basement. It’s a lot, and there’s another storage room full at my office. Most of it’s not labeled, to be honest. I have boxes of receipts and old auction catalogs and some of those might help you match things up. I’ll warn you, it’s a real mess.” He gestured at his desk. “As you can see, I don’t have a knack for organization. All I want’s a big list, but it’s still a task for Hercules. I just want to know what I have. Take stock. I don’t care how you go about organizing things except someone from UW might come take a look, so keep out anything you come across you think might be worthwhile. Sarah’s sister Nora is studying art history—I would have thought she might be interested in sorting through everything, but she was more interested in spending the summer in Europe. I’ll pay you three dollars a day, five days a week. Nine to five. The cook will see you have lunch. How’s that?”