—After Martha by unknown artist*

The traveling painter pauses on a wooded trail, averting a foot-fall to avoid a mushroom. And with his foot still raised he looks upward. He hears a music that will not be played for him because he is deaf. Recognizes a difference in the air when there is music in it, much in the way the smell of bacon cooking can arrive from far away, along with thoughts of spirits in a jug.

He knocks. She opens as if she will decide what is there. His colors are under his black coat, the wood grain of their box protected from dew. His back is straight, as his easel is protected so too; if he had been a soldier it might have been his sheathed sword.

She invites him in. Hands him a drink of berry juice and water. He opens his coat as a grasshopper unships its wings, and states his case.

“This will do nicely,” he says, when she has led him to the library. He sets her in place without touch, positioning his hands as one might prevent a balanced object from falling.

Oh there will be books of the day, he thinks, and drapery, drapery, etcetera. Folds the color of a lava flow he once saw cooling on a mountainside, motes of ash in it that would grow larger until red was only black. And a window to master, a larger world quashed for closer focus—but still there in its ictus of details. As in a smudge just above the sill, that might be some painter leering in. Not that, though; it will be a vague chasm, an open pit washed out there by a river’s failed meander. A tree about to topple in, with livestock looking on. Waiting for the telling slump of earth.

But it’s the lace about her that takes his time. Each bit like ice flakes that will not melt. Again and again that minute pattern appearing. The same but not the same. A story repeated until its form cools to airy nothing.

She pays him. He tips his hat and leaves his card in a bowl by the door. Only later does she see it’s blank as a snowy field.

* Martha (oil painting on canvas, c. 1835), Accession Number 1958.9.11, by unknown artist is held by National Gallery of Art:
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.45862.html
(Link retrieved on 15 November 2023.)

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol