On one angst-filled night in December, 1968,
while listening to the Kingston Trio,
our female protagonist changes her name to Mariah.
Joining others in an old school bus,
Mariah heads for Mardi Gras, looking for the perfect place.
On Magazine Street she meets Blaine, who changes her life,
introduces her to jazz, and leaves her with a gift.
Then Mariah has a memorable encounter with Blaineâs brother, Cliff,
in the dark without introductions.
When Blaineâs plane crashes,
Mariah and Cliff each set off to find out what happened.
Will they find Blaine?
Will they find each other?
Suspense-filled scenes at a mysterious hacienda give A Cowardâs Guide to Oil Painting a south-of-the-border flavor, colorful characters provide comical moments, and beach scenes in Zihuatanejo provide that patch of blue where the eye can rest.
Instantly accessible, intelligent and nostalgic, itâs a different kind of love story, a feast of sensual delights and artistic insightâa sensuous bowl of pozole, tasty to the last drop.
On one angst-filled night in December, 1968,
while listening to the Kingston Trio,
our female protagonist changes her name to Mariah.
Joining others in an old school bus,
Mariah heads for Mardi Gras, looking for the perfect place.
On Magazine Street she meets Blaine, who changes her life,
introduces her to jazz, and leaves her with a gift.
Then Mariah has a memorable encounter with Blaineâs brother, Cliff,
in the dark without introductions.
When Blaineâs plane crashes,
Mariah and Cliff each set off to find out what happened.
Will they find Blaine?
Will they find each other?
Suspense-filled scenes at a mysterious hacienda give A Cowardâs Guide to Oil Painting a south-of-the-border flavor, colorful characters provide comical moments, and beach scenes in Zihuatanejo provide that patch of blue where the eye can rest.
Instantly accessible, intelligent and nostalgic, itâs a different kind of love story, a feast of sensual delights and artistic insightâa sensuous bowl of pozole, tasty to the last drop.
The subject of a work of art is not the most critical thing. The attitude of the artist is more important. And attention. For best results, youâll want to bring all your faculties to bear on the task at hand: your mind, your emotion, your freedom of movement. The work will take every bit of effort you can muster.
May, 1969
The windmill stood silent in the dead calm of morning. Two men walked through the pasture, kicking up a cloud of caliche, one man tall and crisp in slacks and white button-up shirt, the shorter man dusty as the Texas hill country, from the sweat-stained hat to the worn-down boots. A dribble of snuff leaked through the patchy stubble on his chin as he limped along the two-rut track, recounting events of the previous evening.
âI heard the sound of the plane. For a minute I listened, trying to get the direction. I knowed somethinâ was wrong. The engine cut out, then started again, like it was runninâ out of gas. I seen the glare as the plane banked and straightened up, headinâ this way. By then, I knowed it was cominâ in too low, so I run over to the bank there for cover, such as it is. I seen it pass in slow motion, like a dream. Read the numbers, N34TZ. Bullet holes in the fuselage. So close I could almost touch it.â
The two men stopped fifty yards from the crash site beside the windmillâs galvanized water tank. Across the track, a â55 Chevy pick-up sat rusting in the weeds. The rancher paused and lifted his hat to wipe his weathered forehead with a shirt sleeve, leaving a streak of ochre on the faded blue fabric. Then he continued, âI seen a flash and heard thunder. The earth shook, Iâm a tellinâ you. I hit the dirt flat out. A heat wave passed over me and I got the shivers. Iâd been holdinâ my breath. Run, I thought. No. Get help! Maybe someoneâs alive. I mustâve froze for a minute, maybe longer. When I stood up, I could see the plane had wrecked my house. Fire everywhere, hot as a pistol. Nobody couldâve survived that.â
Grayson, the tall man, slapped a horsefly on his neck and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to clean up the mess. He gazed beyond the scorched liveoaks to the pile of ashes where the house had stood. He wasnât eager to move any closer. The muscles around his anus clinched involuntarily, and waves of revulsion passed through his body as he processed the event that had taken place. Please God, he prayed, let it be someone else in that cockpit and not my sons. Blaine, the older one, had taken combat hits in Vietnam and never lost an aircraft. He wouldnât have screwed up like this.
 âMustâa been tryinâ to land on the highway up there.â The rancher pointed to the top of a low bluff across the creek-bed, then paused to pull a sand burr off his jeans and flick it away. âThe thing is, I got a look at that pilot when the plane passed. It was almost dark, and I only seen him for a second, but Iâd swear he was a Mexican.â The rancher spat on the ground and drifted away toward his pick-up.
Remains of the old farmstead were strewn over half an acre. The planeâs wings had been ripped away on impact and the fuselage had blasted straight into the single-story farmhouse, drawing fire along with it. A thin cloud of white smoke still lingered and the odor of burning leaves permeated the air. Beside a smoldering tree trunk someone was bent over a five-gallon bucket, peering inside. The man wore a Stetson and a white western shirt with a star pinned on.
He straightened as Grayson approached and held out a hand. âJohn Pierce.â
âWayman Grayson, sheriff.â
âI notified the FAA and FBI, Mr. Grayson. We have a crime scene unit on the way from DPS. The coroner is coming when he gets loose. Newspaper man will be right behind.â
âCan I see the bodies?â
âWhat with the intensity of the fire, getting an ID will be difficult. Iâll show you what Iâve found, but donât touch anything. Until the state boys arrive, my job is to protect the scene. Thereâs at least one crime been committed here.â Pierce turned to the wreckage. âIt looks to me like the plane hit the butane tank and flipped over, belly-up. The explosion drove it through the wall of the house and telescoped the engine into the cockpit. Whatâs left of the bodies is under there.â
Grayson followed the sheriffâs nod to the upside-down fuselage lying among the ashes alongside the remains of a blackened refrigerator and cookstove. The burned and crumpled piece of scrap-metal seemed incredibly smallâno protection for vulnerable flesh and blood. Imagining bodies burnt to a crisp, Graysonâs gut lurched, and he turned away from the other man to empty the contents of his stomach. After wiping his mouth and gathering himself, he sensed the sheriff beside him.
âSir, Iâm real sorry about your son, if it was him in there. You must be as wrecked as the plane.â The sheriff held his hat in his hands and fiddled with the brim. âI follow our Texas boys over there, you know. Across the water. Major Grayson was a fine airman. Someone to be proud of . . . an American hero.â At that point, Pierce ran out of gas for giving speeches and concluded quickly, âStay as long as you like. The coroner should be here any minute, and heâs bringing coffee and doughnuts. Looks like Iâll be around for awhile.â
Sheriff Pierce started to walk away, then circled around Grayson to indicate the remnants of a gunny sack. âSir, I found evidence of smuggling here. These bags of marijuanaâwhatâs left of themâwere still smoldering when I got here. Iâve hauled water for days trying to put out the fires.â
Grayson cocked his head at Pierce, thinking, days? and said, âI thought I recognized the smell of pot, walking down here. You just got here this morning, right?â
The sheriff seemed confused for a minute. âYeah, well it feels like a week.â He took off his hat and scratched his head. âThereâs one thing about those bags of dope that puzzles me. Some of itâs just hay. I donât know much about marijuana, but Iâd know Johnsongrass anywhere.â
_______
They say the part of the brain that stores memories is situated right next to the part responsible for the imagination. That must be why itâs so easy for one part to borrow from the otherâfor an axon or a thought to wander across that scant border in search of freedom or truth or fiction . . . Like a Oaxacan cook, say, crossing the Rio Grande to look for work.
My nameâs Clifford Grayson, or Cliff for short, but since I started flying under the radar, Iâve been going by CJ MacRae. This story is half mine. At the time of the plane crash in sixty-nine, Iâd just graduated from high school in Travis County, Texas, where I was a good student and a fair athlete. Iâd always been sheltered from most of the worldâs harsher realities, but that was about to change. And the troubles that were coming my way? I brought them all on myself.
Before I ever thought about telling a story, I painted, first in watercolor, then oil. Before that, I drew, with fingers, crayons, and pencilsâwhatever was at hand. Itâs all the same, really, making a picture, leaving a track. So here Iâm learning to paint with words, instead of brushes, looking to capture an elusive trail of light. I expect Iâll write the same as I paint, by plunging in and thrashing around until the words start to make sense. But I do know thisâbefore you begin a story, it helps to have a picture in your mind of how the story goes. Then the words just come, like prayers to a believer.
I wasnât there on the scene, so I must have dreamed it, what happened that Saturday in Texas with the rancher and my dad. Or maybe they told me the details later. After my brotherâs airplane crashed the night before, Mr. Cole the rancher had driven three-quarters of a mile to his neighborâs house. From there he called Sheriff Pierce, who told him to sit tight until morning and keep quiet. Pierce sent a deputy to guard the crash site overnight and had himself arrived at 6 a.m. and sent the deputy home. From the numbers Mr. Cole had seen as the plane passed, theyâd checked the registration and discovered the owner was Blaine Grayson, my brother.
Someone knew he was the son of a State Representative from Travis County. The DPS was called in and Hal Watkins, the director, made a phone call to Wayman Grayson, his old college football buddy. Grayson, my father, had taken the call in his office near the State Capitol building in Austin, where heâd gone in on a Saturday morning. He was hoping to get away before noon.
âWayman, I have some bad news,â Watkins had said. âWe had an airplane crash yesterday evening down near Pearsall, by the state highway. Two jets from Lackland Air Force Base confirmed the location after dark, when the fire was still burning. It looks like your sonâs plane. Thereâs not much left of it. Iâm sorry. There are two bodies . . . I.D.âs going to be difficult. You might want to get hold of your sonâs dental records.â Watkins went on, âWeâre trying to shake loose our unit that deals with crashes. Normally weâd be right on it, but my people are slammed, and the FAA is busy with two situations right now, one in Hebbronville, and one near Houston. Donât know when theyâll get around to us . . .
âThereâs one more thing,â Watkins said. âThe aircraft was loaded with marijuana. Probably came from Mexico. The FBI will be involved, so I thought youâd want to get down there. The county sheriff is there now. Heâll need to ask you some questions.â
My father was already packing his briefcase and planning his next moves while he listened to Watkins. He checked his watch at 8:30 am, made a quick call to his wife, Martha, then called the airport to ask for a plane and pilot . . . Then the dentist, to have records sent. By 10:30 AM, my father had landed at the tiny Pearsall, Texas airport. The deputy who was waiting drove him to the crash site where they met the rancher, Mr. Cole.
_______
It feels like getting my wisdom teeth pulled, exposing this part of my life, with all the remorse around my carelessness and the dire way it affected other people. My nature is to keep secrets, not to spill the beansâthatâs how I stay safe and maintain control. But at the same time, I feel the urge to lay down my burden, come clean, and tell it all. Maybe not the truth, exactly, but a truth.
Earlier that same week of the crash, Iâd had a minor scrape with the law, and to let things cool off, Iâd persuaded Blaine to take me with him to Mexico. Weâd flown to Acapulco and checked into a fancy hotel for a short vacationâbody surfing in the Pacific, eating enchiladas, playing volleyball in the sandâand I tried to forget about the incidents that led to my departure from Texas. Well, not all the incidents. There was a girl . . . a woman, I mean. No chance Iâd be forgetting her after what happened at the waterfall that night.
If I could have time-travelled backward three months from the day the plane crashed, and landed in New Orleans a week or so before Mardi Gras, I might have wandered along Magazine street, stopped at Joeâs Po-Boy Shop and ordered a bowl of gumbo. If my timing had been right, I might have seen her thenâhazel-green eyes, dark blonde hair, spirited and strong.
I know her as Mariah now, but I knew her before I knew her name, and before that I didnât know her at all.
_______
The phrase âa picture is worth a thousand wordsâ takes on a new meaning when an accomplished artist such as this one decides to paint with words. This multi-layered coming-of-age story blends genres under the skilful hand of the writer. The result? A combination of mystery, murder, romance and adventure that is certain to entertain.
The story is set in the late 60s and early 70s, and starts with a bang when an airplane loaded with marijuana crashes on a farm in West Texas. The owner of the plane, Blaine Grayson, is presumed dead. We learn more about him through Mariah â the woman he had a brief encounter with in New Orleans â and his younger brother Cliff. They alternate in telling the story as they both set out on their own to find him. This was a time marked by hatred of war, free love and free spirits, and the fight for civil rights. Not to mention the experimentation with drugs to create alternate realities. It is against this backdrop that Mariah and Cliff search for their own places in the world. Mariah poses nude for art and sculptor classes and tries her hand at farming. Cliff learns to paint under the tutelage of a mentor in Mexico. The writer uses terms and descriptions related to painting at the start of each chapter as signposts of whatâs coming.
I like the visual nature of the tale. You can picture the landscape, and you can smell and taste the spicy Mexican food. You can hear the music and feel the breeze flowing over the lush vegetation. Yet, its greatest strength is also the novelâs weakness as the attention to detail slows down the pace of the story. After the dramatic start, the characters get lost in the angst of their relationships and new environment. It becomes tempting to pause and set the book aside. But then, luckily, the story picks up speed and rollicks on to its dramatic and open-ended conclusion.
This award-winning debut novel will appeal to baby boomers nostalgic about a bygone era. It is also a great read for anyone who enjoys the scenery as much as the journey of the story itself.