“Tom, I want you to be a
“That don’t count,” he said. “You never saw me take that one. Look, Tom, those are three great paintings. Big paintings. Worldwide paintings. Fit to hang in the Crystal Palace alongside the masterpieces of all time. Except the first, of course, is a small subject. But we haven’t started yet. No reason why we can’t paint one to end them all. What do you think of this?”
He took a very quick one.
“Of what?”
He leaned over the bar so the others could not hear.
“Don’t shear off from it,” Bobby said. “Don’t be shocked by its magnitude. You got to have vision, Tom. We can paint the End of the World,” he paused. “Full size.”
“Hell,” Thomas Hudson said.
“No. Before hell. Hell is just opening. The Rollers are rolling in their church up on the ridge and all speaking in unknown tongues. There’s a devil forking them up with his pitchfork and loading them into a cart. They’re yelling and moaning and calling on Jehovah. Negroes are prostrated everywhere and morays and crawfish and spider crabs are moving around and over their bodies. There’s a big sort of hatch open and devils are carrying Negroes and church people and rollers and everyone into it and they go out of sight. Water’s rising all around the island and hammerheads and mackerel sharks and tiger sharks and shovelnose sharks are swimming round and round and feeding on those who try to swim away to keep from being forked down the big open hatch that has steam rising out of it. Rummies are taking their last swigs and beating on the devils with bottles. But the devils keep forking them down, or else they are engulfed by the rising sea where now there are whale sharks, great white sharks, and killer whales and other outsized fish circling outside of where the big sharks are tearing at those people in the water. The top of the island is covered with dogs and cats and the devils are forking them in, too, and the dogs are cowering and howling and the cats run off and claw the devils and their hair stands on end and finally they go into the sea swimming as good as you want to see. Sometimes a shark will hit one and you’ll see the cat go under. But mostly they swim right off through it.
“Bad heat begins to come out of the hatch and the devils are having to drag the people toward the hatch because they’ve broken their pitching forks trying to fork in some of the church people. You and me are standing in the center of the picture observing all this with calm. You make a few notes and I refresh myself from a bottle and occasionally offer you refreshment. Once in a while a devil all sweating from his work will brush by us hauling on a big churchman that’s trying to dig into the sand with his fingers to keep from being put into the hatch and screaming to Jehovah and the devil will say, ‘Beg pardon, Mr. Tom. Beg pardon, Mr. Bobby. Very busy today.’
“I’ll offer the devil a drink as he passes, sweating and grimed, going back for another churchman and he’ll say, ‘No thank you, Mr. Bobby. I never touch the stuff when I’m working.’
“That could make a hell of a painting, Tom, if we can get all the movement and the grandeur into it.”
“I believe we’ve got about all we can handle outlined for today.”
“By God, I think you’re right,” Bobby said. “Outlining a painting like that makes me thirsty, too.”
“There was a man named Bosch could paint pretty well along those lines.”
“The magneto man?”
“No. Hieronymus Bosch. Very old-timer. Very good. Pieter Brueghel worked on that too.”
“He an old-timer too?”
“Very old-timer. Very good. You’d like him.”
“Oh hell,” said Bobby. “No old-timer will touch us. Besides the world’s never ended yet, so how the hell does he know any more about it than we do?”
“He’d be pretty hard to beat.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby said. “We’ve got a picture that would put him out of business.”
“What about another one of those?”
“Yes, damn it. I forget this is a bar room. God bless the Queen, Tom. We’re forgetting what day it is, too. Here, have one on me and we’ll drink her health.”
He poured himself a small glass of rum and handed Thomas Hudson the bottle of Booth’s yellow gin, some limes on a plate, a knife, and a bottle of Schweppes’s Indian Tonic Water.
“Fix your own damn drink. The hell with those fancy drinks.”
After Thomas Hudson had made the drink and shaken a few drops of bitters in it from the bottle that had a gull’s quill in the cork, he raised his glass and then looked down the bar.