Earlier this year, I wrote a post about my “word of intention” for 2026, “venture.” I foolishly made it my theme word, and now for months I’ve been stuck constantly pep-talking myself out of my comfy cushy La-Z-Boy head space into various misadventures.
My latest? Submitting a short story to a writing contest. I’d sworn off entering contests a few years ago, but the Canadian Authors Association, of which I am an undistinguished member, announced a new contest, the Karen Gansel Short Fiction Award. Here’s the lure they dropped into the waters of my writer’s ego: “The challenge is simple, write a new original piece of fiction evoking Canadiana, no longer than 5,000 words based on the prompt provided.” Without knowing the prompt, I took the bait.
When the prompt was posted, I had two weeks to write a story based on it. This was on the dangling hook: a stamp reproducing Cornelius Krieghoff’s painting, The Blacksmith’s Shop. I had to write a story that somehow included this piece of Canadiana.
To be honest, I had a ball with this challenge. The result was “Saddle Up, Pilgrim,” which I dutifully submitted ahead of the deadline.
The result? Drumroll, please….
I didn’t win. I wasn’t even a finalist. Horror of horrors, I didn’t even make the shortlist. (BTW, congratulations to all those who did. Well deserved. You’re all winners. I’m not. I’m a loser. I’m not at all jealous or bitter about it, though.)
But something wonderful came of this. The contest prompted me to write another Evan Mulder story, one that let me respond to these crazy times we’re enduring. And you know what? With the rupture that’s happened this past week over trade and Trump’s attempt to blow up Canada’s sovereignty, now’s the time to share with you this inspiring story, “Saddle Up, Pilgrim.”
(In case you’re unaware, Evan Mulder is the main character in Milksop, my debut novel, and in Moonshine Promises, the 2021 collection of stories about his marital misadventures. I’m excited to share that “Saddle Up, Pilgrim” will appear in a new collection of Evan stories, The Healing Arts. Stay tuned for news of its publication.)
But for now, consider yourself invited to take some down time from your busy day fighting fascism to enjoy a loser of a story. I humbly submit it as my contribution to the resistance.
Saddle Up, Pilgrim
Evan Mulder is perched behind his wife Mae on their Spyder trike. She’s in the driver’s seat, as she has been now for more than forty years. They’re stuck on the eastbound 401 past Woodstock, trapped between exits with who knows how many miles of stalled traffic ahead of them—a long snake whose distant head has likely met with a tragic accident.
They sit in the late-June, windless heat—it’s June 30, to be exact—a heat compounded by what’s radiating off the asphalt and pouring from the idling cars and trucks around them at this mid-afternoon hour. Their trike is sandwiched between transport trucks in the slow lane, one in front carrying hogs, one behind carrying chickens, animals squealing and clucking on their way to Hogtown, where the residents eat anything and everything.
Until now, he and Mae were also headed there, to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the AGO. But what Mae’s called his “silly but necessary pilgrimage” isn’t looking a go at all.
In the heat, the fringe of their black riding leathers hangs limply from their arms and legs. He feels like a sausage cooking in its casing, his jacket stretched over the slight bulge of his stomach below his flat chest. His boxer shorts are growing swampy beneath his leather pants.
He summons the image of Cornelius Krieghoff’s The Blacksmith’s Shop—the snowy landscape, the road through the woods travelled by the horses and sleighs, les habitants alighting and climbing the stairs to the blacksmith’s home while one of them leads a horse to the shop. Evan imagines he himself is the blacksmith, with muscular arms and barrel chest, six-pack abs and a powerful back—pounding and bending iron to his will, working it to build a nation within a nation, Quebec within the great confederation of Canada.
Given the state of this road, he thinks, given the state of his own affairs, of the country’s and the world’s, wouldn’t that be so lovely. A lovely dream, not this current nightmare.
To top it off, his troublesome bladder is full. “We’re not going to make it, are we?” he says. “It’ll be closed before we get there. If we get there.”
“Oh ye of little faith.” Mae revs the engine. “Hold on tight.”
***
That morning, Mae had finally had enough of his “ceaseless whinging” about the painting. He’d been hiding in his home office on the second floor of the old sandstone brick house on their hobby farm southeast of London—hiding from two of his children, Max and Arthur, and their partners Naomi and Sam, as well as his two granddaughters and his mother-in-law Doris. Given the cost of housing for young people and seniors, they’d all moved into what was supposed to be Evan and Mae’s empty nest.
Now retired, he knows his days in this office are numbered. The space will soon be needed for the next waif or stray or grandchild who comes along. For now, though, it’s his temporary sanctuary. Mae calls it his hidey-hole.
He sits at his desk, his stamp album in front of him. Wearing white cotton gloves, he opens it to the first page. He takes a pair of tweezers and cleans the tips with an alcohol wipe, then lifts the protective film and grips his most precious stamp by its corner. With his free hand, he brings a magnifying glass before the stamp. He reads across the bottom, “CANADA,” “Cornelius Krieghoff, painter/peintre 1815-1872,” and a large “8.” Imagine, he thinks, 8 cents for a stamp in 1972, back when I was just a kid and pennies were still a thing. Above the script, the bulk of the stamp is filled with a tiny reproduction of The Blacksmith’s Shop. The stamp, he’s learned, was designed by William Reuter and printed by the British American Bank Note Company.
Evan has taken up stamp collecting, a hobby he started in childhood but soon abandoned as being, well, childish. He tells others he needed a hobby in retirement, but he senses it’s somehow connected to the re-election of Donald Trump and the mayhem that’s followed.
In response, Evan is aiming to become a true philatelist, though when he first discovered the word he was disturbed by its sound, so like “fellatio.” He’s concerned there’s some Freudian connection, given that both involve a lot of saliva and a certain amount of licking. He’s joined the Royal Philatetic Society of Canada, which welcomes beginners like him. He’s even sat in on some Zoom “stamp talks” and “stamp panels.” He looks forward to each new issue of The Canadian Philatelist, savouring the articles slowly, not just the provocative pictures.
He gently places the stamp back on the sheet and smooths the protective cover over it.
Krieghoff has become one of Evan’s Dutch-Canadian obsessions. “Cornelius” he calls him familiarly, a first-generation immigrant like Evan’s parents, himself second generation. He thinks of Krieghoff’s life in the nineteenth century, his coming first to the United States, even serving in their military, but then very wisely marrying a French Canadian and moving to Quebec, where he did his greatest, most inspired work. Never mind that Cornelius eventually retired in Chicago. It’s probably what killed him so young, Evan thinks. And now that he’s sworn off travelling to the States, he’ll never make a pilgrimage to Cornelius’s grave. Sadly, so be it.
But he clings to Krieghoff’s Dutch-Canadianness, a link across almost two centuries. Plus, Cornelius married someone not Dutch, just as Evan married Mae, risking the ire of those who believe “if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much,” including his parents.
In his retirement, Evan has become obsessed with all sorts of Dutch-Canadiana. On a bookshelf behind him are the collected works of Hugh Cook, Aritha van Herk, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and John Terpstra. He was a bit confused by Aritha’s writing—it’s postmodern, he’s read somewhere—and he was mildly disappointed, after buying all Guy’s books and really enjoying them, to discover that his heritage is actually Belgian. Close enough geographically and culturally, Evan consoles himself. Beside these Dutch-Canadian classics are a growing number of volumes by a younger generation: Melissa Kuipers, Brent van Staalduinen, Liz Windhorst Harmer. Each time they come out with a new book, he supports them by pre-ordering it on Indigo, not Amazon, and posts a glowing five-star review, even before he’s read it.
He takes his stamp album and returns it to its desk drawer, removes his gloves, and grabs his laptop. The first thing he does is check Adam van Koeverden’s posts on Facebook and LinkedIn. Evan followed the Dutch-Canadian kayaker’s Olympic career for years. Now that Adam’s a Member of Parliament, Evan follows him on social media. Never mind that Liberal Adam represents hoity toity Burlington North, not Evan’s rural riding, which has been conservative forever. Adam is one highly cool, very fit Dutch Canadian.
For decades, Evan hadn’t really been interested in his heritage, but that’s changed in the past couple of years. He’s studied the war against fascism his parents lived through as children, read how Canada hosted and protected Crown Princess Juliana and her children until Canadian soldiers liberated Holland. He’s proud of the enduring gratitude of the Dutch, shown in gifts of tulip bulbs for the nation’s capital. When he thinks too long about it, all this catches in his throat and brings tears to his eyes. He’s researched the tulip varieties sent to Canada by the Dutch government and has planted a large bed of them at the centre of his front lawn.
He responds to Adam’s posts with likes and happy face emojis, then checks the latest Substack post of The Resistance. Charlie Angus is a bit far left for Evan, who’s a man of the muddled middle, but Charlie’s been the proverbial canary in the coal mine when it comes to alerting the world to the rise of fascism south of the border, not to mention in Canada itself. Evan has a free subscription to The Resistance. He’s considered upgrading to paid, but he holds back by telling himself he can’t afford it, he’s retired and on a fixed income. Besides, starting one paid subscription on Substack is the thin edge of the wedge: pretty soon, he’d be draining his RRSPs to support all those poor bloggers.
That said, he does his best to keep his elbows up, though it can get tiring. He and Mae have joined an Elbows Up Buy Canadian Facebook group, but he feels himself in an ethical pickle being on the platform. As a barnacle attached to Meta, this whale of an American tech company, is he part of the problem, or is this don’t-buy-anything-American group actually the underground resistance, a virus even, in the war against Trump and American oligarchy? He’s caught in a web of paradoxes, trapped inside a conundrum. Still, he’s considering starting a subgroup within the buy Canadian group: Elbows Up Buy Dutch Canadian. Little Dutch stores across the country need support, too.
Having checked on Adam’s and Charlie’s posts, along with Arlene Dickinson’s (he’s smitten with the dragon, to be honest), he closes his laptop and looks out the window across the farm fields to the woods in the distance. Past that, he knows, is Lake Erie. He imagines the vast expanse of water, America on the far shore, and at some further distance the White House where Trump sits at his desk in the Oval Office salivating over Canada, positively drooling all over a pile of executive orders as he plots to turn it into his private vassal state. Not on Mark Carney’s watch, thank God!
Evan turns away from the window. He hasn’t been out of the house for several days now, having self-diagnosed with the help of Dr. Internet that he’s agoraphobic, brought on by Trump and the doomscrolling that’s taking up way too much of Evan’s limited headspace. He feels Trump perched beneath his skull like a troll.
For relief, he turns his attention to the painting above his desk, an authentic reproduction in oils of The Blacksmith’s Shop. He got it on eBay from an American painter for a ridiculously high price, for a fake, of all things, says Mae. When it arrived, though, he noticed that the painter had played a joke on him. Above the entrance to the blacksmith’s shop sits the Canadian Tire logo. Evan was incensed, but he couldn’t get his money back from the American jerk. When he did some digging, though, he discovered the artist was not a real American but an ex-pat Canadian living in Tampa, Florida, originally from Brampton. A traitor. But, Evan wonders, did the purchase then qualify as “buy Canadian”?
He tries to enjoy the painting but is distracted by the dicey repair he made with Canadian Tire’s cheapest paint. He’s been staring at the splotch for several minutes, getting more and more incensed, when Mae pushes his door open. It bangs against the doorstop.
She stands in the threshold, arms crossed. “Again with that damn painting! Enough. You can’t hide in here forever staring at it like a zombie.”
“Why not?” he says without moving his eyes from the splotch.
“Don’t think I haven’t caught you wandering around the house sighing and wishing you could see the real thing. Your constant whinging is getting on my nerves. Obviously, nothing will change until you see it, so I’m mounting an intervention. I’ve put the kids in charge of prepping for Canada Day. We’re free of it, so come get on your riding gear.”
“We’re going to the city? Now? On the trike? But my agoraphobia.”
“Agora-bullshit, you mean. Move it. You need to make this ridiculous pilgrimage, and I’ll have to be your guide.” She turns away, heading to their bedroom.
He takes one last look at his marred authentic reproduction and gets up. Mae won’t put up with his usual delay tactics.
In the bedroom, she’s pulling on her Lululemon leggings and leopard-print tank top to wear beneath her leathers. Hot mama! thinks Evan. He momentarily imagines he’s the blacksmith and she’s his habitant wife. Every night when he’s finished working with iron, he goes from the fire in his forge to the fire of her body in bed. She wants his iron-hard habitant body, especially his iron-hard habitant member. Could be a great plot for a Canadian historical romance, he thinks, even a snowy bodice ripper.
“Come on. Get moving,” Mae says. “Don’t think I can’t see what’s happening in your pants while you stand there. That’ll have to wait until after you’ve visited Krieghoff’s shrine. Which, by the way, closes at 5.”
He pulls himself out of his fantasy. Unbuckling his belt, he considers putting on the Stanfield underwear he inherited when his dad died from a stroke. After ten years, though, they’ve worn thin. He worries about chafing. Instead, he chooses his lucky boxer shorts, the black ones covered with smiling red lips showing white teeth and saying “Kiss me” in front and “Bite me” in back. After pulling them up, he dons the Roots T-shirt Mae bought for him online. Next, he squeezes into the leather pants he and Mae picked up at The Bay’s liquidation sale, then retrieves his Roots Moto leather jacket from its hanger. To give more flare to these leathers, Mae added the fringe. Thankfully, she resisted the urge to bedazzle them.
In the barn, they pull the tarp off their Can-Am Spyder, the RT Sea-to-Sky model in “Mars red” for luxury touring. Evan’s embarrassed by the luxury. They’ve only ever bought sensible compact cars, but here they splurged. They picked it up a few months earlier, dumping the Harley trike they’d purchased before the pandemic—part of their retirement plan until COVID put a spanner in all three wheels. He did his research. The Spyder’s not just Canadian-made. It’s made by Bombardier, a company from Valcourt, Quebec. Heck, Bombardier likely started from that habitant blacksmithery in the painting! Evan imagines that the Spyder plant is sitting on the same spot, though he knows the landscape was simply something conjured from Cornelius’s imagination.
“I’ll drive,” Mae says.
“What? But your sense of direction sucks.”
“Control issues, much? You can navigate.”
They put on their riding goggles, don their helmets, and adjust the microphones to sit in front of their mouths.
“Testing, testing,” says Mae. “Saddle up, pilgrim.”
***
Sitting behind her, stuck on the 401, Evan considers whether he’s getting saddle sores. His Roots T-shirt clings to him, the beaver on it now at home in his swampy torso. His boxers too are drenched, whether from sweat or his leaky bladder or both, he’s not sure. “What do you mean, ‘hold on’? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to live a little.” She revs the engine again, then turns the trike to the shoulder. She opens the throttle, accelerates into the ditch, and climbs out into a cornfield, passing a large “No Trespassing” sign. It’s not quite the fourth of July, but the corn is definitely knee-high. Mae plows through it, blazing a trail of bent and broken stalks.
At the other end of the field, they launch out of another ditch onto a gravel road. Mae brakes to a stop.
“What now?” he says. “Should we figure out how to get home?”
“You’re kidding, right? After all that, you want to give up?”
“Okay, but I’ve got to pee. I drank too much tea this morning. My prostate’s not happy.”
She takes her phone from her jacket pocket and checks the time. “Make it quick.”
He stumbles off and turns back to the ditch, where he sees another “No Trespassing” sign posted in front of the field. His stream starts but then stops. He’s waiting for it to restart when he hears a tractor drawing near. It’s pulling a wagon filled with hay. Mae moves the Spyder to the edge of the road.
The farmer pulls up beside them and throttles down his tractor. “You folks having some trouble.”
Evan’s stream begins again. “Not anymore.”
“He’ll be fine in a minute,” Mae adds. “Prostate trouble.”
“Looks like you had some trouble coming through my field there. Couldn’t read the signs?”
Evan’s stream stops again. While he struggles to restart it, Mae apologizes for the damage and offers to make Evan pay for it. She explains the crisis he’s going through and the mission they’re on to resolve it.
The farmer says to Evan, “You have my sympathy, Pops. Good luck. Let’s forget about the field.”
Evan half turns and waves his free hand. “Thanks! Sorry for the trouble.”
The farmer gives a thumbs up, throttles up his tractor, and heads off.
Evan’s stream recommences, dribbling onto his riding boots as he finishes.
Before they head down the road, Mae pulls out her phone and takes a selfie of the two of them in front of the corn field, making sure the “No Trespassing” sign and the trail they blazed are in the frame. She shares it on the family chat and posts it to Facebook. “Open Google maps and start navigating us, pilgrim,” she says. “Stay off the 400s. Take us cross country.”
With that, they’re off, zipping down country roads. Mae goes well over the speed limit up and down hills, slowing only for curves before accelerating down straightaways.
He holds his phone in one hand while clinging to her, shouting directions when he grabs a glance at his screen. At the edge of every small town, Mae pulls over the Spyder, takes a selfie of them with the town’s sign in the background, and uploads it. Each time they stop, she updates Evan on the growing number of likes and encouraging messages they’re getting. He’s no longer alone with her on this pilgrimage; family and friends, acquaintances and strangers are now his digital companions.
One town has posted before a bridge a “Wildlife Crossing” sign with a snake and a turtle on it. Across the bridge they find a riverside park occupied by an army of Canada Geese, among them many goslings. Three families begin crossing the road, forcing Mae to a stop. She puts on her hazards and begins filming the parade. One pair of geese doesn’t take kindly to their presence. They honk loudly and flap their wings before attacking the Spyder. Mae’s forced to perform an evasive manoeuvre—but not before the geese snap at Evan’s leg, pulling off some of his fringe. A chorus of outraged honking follows them as they speed away.
Outside the town, they get stuck behind a tractor with double-wide wheels pulling three loads of hay. Mae has him videotape it. She does the same when on a winding road through a forest they follow a parade of Amish heading to town in a convoy of horses and buggies. When he stops to pee again, she uploads all three videos and adds a fourth of him, giving it the caption “Evan marks his territory. He came, he saw, he peed.” Much later, she’ll show him that this video gets 557 likes, most of them laughing face emojis.
By then it’s pushing 4 o’clock. In the comments on Facebook, people are taking bets on whether he and Mae will make it to the AGO before it closes.
Soon after, he and Mae penetrate the beast that is the GTA, choosing one orifice among the thousands available. Everywhere, the monster’s circulation system has slowed. It’s rush hour, even worse, the rush hour before a holiday, but no one can rush. Lanes multiply. The more there are, the fuller they become.
Now bike lanes appear, the number of buses explodes exponentially, sometimes three or four in a row—double buses with an accordion fold in the middle. Then there are streetcars and streetcar tracks, entrances to subway stations deep in the ground, buildings rising to the sky and blocking the sun.
Evan clings tighter to Mae as she navigates this tumult of vehicles filled with impatient drivers. He offers directions as quickly as he can, often not fast enough. She finds herself in the wrong lane for the turn she needs to make or in a bike lane or on the streetcar tracks with a streetcar coming toward them. She endures the honks and yells and finger flips with perfect composure, flipping drivers off in return.
After a lot of willy-waggling into the belly of this beast, they’re on St. Patrick Street travelling up from Queen West. “When you get to Dundas, turn left,” he says. “The AGO will be up Dundas just a couple of blocks.”
When she gets to the corner, she turns right.
“Your other left,” he says.
“Oh, right. I always get that mixed up. I’ll go around the block.”
He checks his phone. “We don’t have time. Do a U-ee.”
“Are you crazy? In the city?” But at University Ave, she hits a police blockade, cruisers angled across the street, lights flashing. She pulls out her phone to record the scene. “What’s happening, officer?” she yells.
“It’s an Elbows Up protest.” The officer standing outside her vehicle shouts above the chants and horns and whistles as placards stream by behind her. “Marching from Queen’s Park to the American consulate. Giving Trump a piece of their mind.”
“Would you mind if I performed a U-turn here, officer?” Mae uses her country manners voice.
“Go ahead, ma’am.”
It’s 4:45 when they arrive at the AGO, where no parking is available. Without hesitating, Mae brings the Spyder up onto the sidewalk and parks beside a bike rack. “Close enough,” she says.
Once off the trike, he rushes toward the entrance. “Wait, wait,” she calls after him. He turns back. She’s waving her phone. “Selfie.” He leans his head against hers as she takes a shot of them in front of the AGO, light glowing off its glass facade like a halo. Mae quickly uploads the photo to her feed as he rushes to open the doors for them.
Inside, when they go to pay, the young man at the entrance says, “You do realize we’re closing in ten minutes.” A security guard behind him monitors the situation.
“I know, I know,” Evan replies, the sound echoing. “But there’s a painting I absolutely must see. It won’t take long.”
“Which painting?”
“Cornelius Krieghoff’s The Blacksmith’s Shop.”
As Evan says the words, a tall woman in an elegant cream-coloured pantsuit appears from a corridor, red heels clicking on the floor, the red matching her short-cropped hair. “I’m afraid that painting is currently in storage.”
“No, no, no! I must see it.” Evan feels his insides collapsing.
“You must, must you?”
“You see, I’m a descendant of Cornelius Krieghoff.” Mae gives him the side-eye.
“Really?”
“Well, I’m a distant relative.” Mae faces him with a hand on her hip, then raises her helmet to her shoulder. “Okay, not a relative in the strictest sense, but he was Dutch Canadian, and I’m Dutch Canadian.”
“Okay, but you need to see this particular painting why?”
“Because I’m terminally ill. Because it’s my dying wish.” Mae’s eyes at this point turn positively feral. “Tomorrow, in fact, I have an appointment with a doctor who will offer his assistance in ushering me into the great beyond. So I must see the painting today.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mae says. “He’s sick alright, but there’s nothing terminal about it, unless I kill him.” She proceeds to explain woman to woman the source of Evan’s obsession, his need for this pilgrimage and her slim hope for its healing power.
The curator takes Mae’s free hand in hers. “Enough said. I get it. I’m married.” She turns to the clerk. “Brendan, let them through. No charge.” She turns back to Evan and Mae. “Follow me.”
Their riding boots boom through the gallery as they follow the melodious clicking of the curator’s heels. She pauses to let Mae come up beside her. “By the way, please call me Sanneke.”
“That’s Dutch!” Evan says, trailing them.
Mae laughs. “You Dutch are everywhere.”
“Hidden in plain sight,” Sanneke says. “An invisible minority more than a million strong in Canada. Evan’s Dutch-Canadian sob story actually clinched it for me.”
Sanneke leads them through a series of doors requiring her to flash a badge, punch in a key code, or do both. Any moment, Evan is expecting that she’ll need to use a retinal scanner.
But they pass through just one last door. As Sanneke turns on the lights, she says, “Apologies for the temperature. This storage room must be carefully climate controlled.” She pulls three pairs of gloves from a dispenser on the wall, then passes one pair to Mae and another to Evan.
He says, “You don’t use cotton gloves?”
“Not anymore. These are powder-free nitrile. Better protection, and they leave no lint behind.”
He makes a mental note to get some of these for his stamp collection.
Sanneke invites them to sit at a table while she retrieves the painting. As she disappears into the bowels of the storage room, they sit quietly and place their helmets gently on the floor, not the table. Some kind of religious hush comes over him. He turns to Mae, takes her hand, and squeezes it. He whispers, “Thank you for this. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Why are we whispering?”
He looks around. “It seems the thing to do among all this art.” He squeezes her hand one more time, lets go, and folds his hands in front of him on the table.
The click of Sanneke’s heels grows loud. She appears with the painting, held within a protective envelope. She places it gently on the table, removes it from the envelope, and peels back a piece of tissue paper over the canvas. She holds it up by the frame and studies it, then places it on a large easel. Only then does she turn to Evan. “There you are. There it is. Given the size of the painting, I recommend that you view it from a distance of two metres. That will allow you to fully appreciate the image and its power. I also recommend that you be patient. Take at least ten minutes to let the painting speak to you.” She turns to Mae. “Do you want to see it, too, or shall we give Evan some privacy?”
“This is between him and the painting.” She gets up. “But would it be okay if I took a picture of him standing beside it? I want to post it on Facebook.”
“Of course.”
Mae checks her phone. “Holy cow! There’ve been almost 10,000 views of our selfie in front of the gallery. People are waiting to see how this ends. Honey, you’ve gone viral in our little corner of the Internet.”
“This could be a great feel-good publicity story for the gallery,” Sanneke says. “Take the picture, Mae, and let’s discuss it.”
Absorbing what Mae and Sanneke have said, Evan stands stiffly beside the painting. Mae says, “Loosen up, dear. Think happy thoughts.” He imagines Cornelius standing before this very canvas, brush in hand, bringing the scene to life. Evan feels himself just inches away from that creative energy. Warmth washes over him, and his face arranges itself in a smirk. “Perfect,” Mae says.
As Sanneke leads Mae to a corner of the room, Evan turns to the painting. He makes sure Sanneke isn’t watching, then touches the frame. He hesitates, then touches the painting itself, choosing of all the details the solitary figure at the well. Is he somehow that man?
He lifts his gloved finger and studies the brush strokes, each one of them a trace of Cornelius that he’s left behind. Evan is struck by the materiality of the oils, the mystery of Krieghoff’s residue in them.
He steps back from the painting two paces, and the whole scene comes into focus. Standing still, he feels the scene come alive. It’s vibrant and moving—the forest, the horses, the dog, the people. Then he sees it. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? The people, les habitants, they’re all arriving at the blacksmith’s. No one is leaving. They’re coming together, greeted by a dog, with a man drawing up water from a well for them. Will they eat and drink together while the blacksmith works?
They’re birds of a feather flocking together.
The image blurs as his eyes fill. “Thank you,” he says. To whom exactly? To Sanneke and Mae. To Cornelius. To this bloody marvelous world and the mysterious artist who made it?
***
Outside the AGO, the early summer sun is still bright. Mae plucks a parking ticket off the Spyder and passes it to Evan, along with Sanneke’s business card. “Here. These are for you.”
He tucks both in a jacket pocket without looking at them. “I think it’s time to commit.”
“Commit? To what?”
He thinks about it. “Maybe I mean both commit and re-commit. To you. To life. To everything.” Perhaps in the next election he’ll sign up to be a polling officer, a frontline defender of their beleaguered democracy, their beloved country. Heck, he’s not too old to join that civilian defence force Charlie’s been talking about. He pulls out his phone, opens Substack, and upgrades to paid on The Resistance. “Can you show me those Facebook posts?”
The two of them huddle over her phone. “Look at the responses to those videos. And to that picture of you beside the painting: more than 25,000 likes. Crazy!”
“Can you show me how to ‘love bomb’ all those people?”
After, he says, “Let’s go check out that protest.”
They find a nearby parking lot for the Spyder, then walk a couple of blocks to join the throng of fellow habitants in front of the American consulate. He raises his elbows, and his fringe begins swaying as he and Mae dance to the beat of a protest song he doesn’t know but begins to learn.