An offering of fiction in which a young artist’s’ prodigious talent provides the key to a family members freedom…
by: Arthur Davis
Lucy Lawrence had been crying herself to sleep for months. Terrible dreams cursed her on the best of days.
After her father’s conviction, Lucy’s aunt Caroline became the child’s only guardian. Her aunt was a doting, caring, thoughtful woman who had managed to overcome the stigma of her race, and though she never married, remained a strong, supportive member of her community.
The only thing Lucy loved more than her aunt Caroline was to draw, so for the child’s tenth birthday in March 23rd 1976, her aunt took her to a local art museum. Lucy was captivated by the work of Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso, Braque and Pollock.
What she saw spoke to her heart and fueled a hidden passion. She felt connected. A kinship to the men she had come to revere. She knew instinctively what the painter was feeling, as life sprang from their brush to a blank cold canvas.
“I understand,” she would say hearing the heartbeat of the painter. “I understand.”
It thrilled her. She was part of another, very private world. All she needed was to understand. The rest she could do by herself.
By the time she was eleven, copies of work by Matisse, Gauguin, Picasso, and Van Gogh began appearing in a phantasm of stunning brilliance on her Easter eggs. You would have thought they were stroked by the masters themselves.
The only newspaper in her small Arkansas town picked up the human-interest story, which was reprinted in newspapers throughout the south. In one article, the child was described as a “rare visual savant.” She could absorb and translate colors and settings as well as emotions and feelings from one medium to another. There were only four others on record. They were all young girls, and all lived in the late nineteenth century, and all died early, unfortunate deaths.
Lucy loved her father dearly and knew that his conviction was a terrible mistake.
“A grotesque miscarriage of justice,” her father’s court-appointed attorney said many times during the trial when the child was nine.
Her father was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and picking up the gun at the scene where two bank guards were killed was the first thing the police saw when they arrived. Her father was a simple, uneducated Black man already in his late fifties and didn’t clearly understand how poorly he was being represented.
“I understand,” she seethed in a quiet fury when her father was arrested and convicted.
Lucy knew her father needed help. Lucy knew that she was his only hope. And Lucy had a plan.
After school Lucy spent hours in the library poring over newspapers, searching for prominent criminal attorneys and found one not far away in Little Rock. Lamar Dennison Black was one of the most celebrated criminal attorneys in the South. A massive six-two, three-hundred-pound combative litigator with an easy drawl and brilliant mind, Black went through a half box of the finest hand rolled Cuban cigars a day.
A ruthless litigator with connections to a legion of paid informants made his overturning convictions legendary. Lucy carefully wrote down what she wanted to say to his secretary, who would be charged with screening potential clients from deadbeats and the press.
She arrived rested and ready. She eased back into a large leather chair in his office and before he offered her a seat she announced, “I need you to get my father out of prison,” and set down a small box containing two eggs on his desk, a Renoir and her only Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — an uncanny reproduction of Lautrec’s 1889 classic La toilette, oil on board so lifelike the egg glowed with authenticity.
Black already knew dealers and private collectors were interested in the child’s Easter eggs and, of equal importance, what he saw on his desk could easily be overlooked by the IRS.
“I understand you,” she said to Black. “I hope you understand me.” It wasn’t a question.
Lucy pulled up a cold metal chair and sat before her father, who was as devoted as any parent could be to his only child. “You look prettier than ever,” he always said.
The child beamed with delight and sadness. She hated the prison. The guards. The rules and the room that smelled terrible and the mere few minutes she got with her father every month. She wanted to talk about school, the baby golden retriever she found last week in an abandoned construction site.
“I’m getting you out of here,” she said.
Her father held back tears. He was serving a life sentence and knew he was never going to see the daylight of freedom again. He understood what his daughter refused to accept and didn’t want to break her heart with his reality.
“How are you keeping yourself? And your Aunt Caroline? How is she? Is her hip still bothering her? And how are your tomatoes coming? You mentioned that you were planting tomatoes in your last letter.” His wife’s older sister had moved in to take care of the child and drove her to the prison every month. “God bless Caroline. The only decent human in that family,” he said to himself almost as a prayer before Lucy’s every visit.
“Yes, Lucy, please come in, and how is your father?”
“What’s this about?” Lucy wanted to know in a tone more demanding than curious. Lucy remained suspicious of Lamar Dennison Black, as she was of most white men.
“I know we haven’t spoken recently, but I wanted to be sure of some issues before I brought you in to discuss what I’ve found.”
“Then, let’s get to it,” she said.
“There were two key witnesses whose testimony convinced the jury of your father’s guilt,” he said. “I want to read a few sentences that I believe were at the heart of why the jury turned unfairly on your father.”
“And?” was all Lucy could muster, breathless.
“Oscar Riddle put your father at the scene of the crime. I was able to get my hands on his sealed medical records. Oscar Riddle is color blind. Has been from birth. His testimony detailing from across the street what your father was wearing and his actions is inherently invalid. That in turn calls into question what he actually saw of your father’s participation at the scene of the crime.”
Black paused as though to reflect, then set aside the document he was reading from and slowly picked up another document from on his desk.
“Bethany Lewis, who was half a block away when the incident went down. At that time, Mrs. Lewis, a near destitute mother of two children with no husband, managed to show up in court every day well-dressed and looking far beyond her means. I found out a year to the day after your father was convicted she purchased a three-bedroom furnished home in the Vista Ridge community. If you’re not familiar with the location, Vista Ridge is an upcoming middle-income neighborhood. According to my contact at the bank, it was an all-cash transaction.”
Lucy listened quietly as the large man spoke slowly and thoughtfully, emphasizing each word as though her father’s life depended on it.
“We can’t do anything about the fact that your father’s brother, a man he hasn’t seen or spoken to since childhood, was indirectly involved in that robbery. That’s an unfortunate coincidence any jury will consider with suspicion.”
“I’ve cursed his brother every day since my father was convicted,” was Lucy’s immediate and often used response.
“However, there is ample reason to believe your father’s conviction could be reopened with these new findings. We know the jury was split on the third day of deliberation when the conversation began to turn on Oscar Riddle’s and Bethany Lewis’ testimony. Without them, your father more than likely gets a hung jury with more questions for the prosecution than answers.”
“Please explain? I need to understand the next step?”
“To secure the information, prepare the necessary documents, and start an appeal I am going to need a Klimt.”
“I don’t paint Klimt. He’s a narcissistic fraud,” she said, repeating what one of the reviews a famous art critic made of Klimt’s work.
“Ms. Lawrence, to be perfectly frank, what you’ve paid me so far is insufficient. The Klimt, any Klimt you choose, well, it’s not for me.”
Lucy realized what had to be done regardless of her artistic preference. “I’ll need three weeks. You start your work and I’ll start mine, but mark my words, I hired you for results. To get my father out of that stinking shithole.”
Lamar Dennison Black admired the child. She was focused, understood every detail of her father’s case and the law involved, and made her expectations clear. Black sensed she would make a fine litigator. He reached out and shook the young girl’s extended hand. “I will have him out on bail by Christmas pending a retrial. You have my word on it.”
When Lucy got home, her aunt prepared dinner, which the child raced through then stormed into her bedroom.
Lucy Lawrence knew about Klimt and wasn’t impressed. An Austrian symbolist painter and prominent member of the Vienna Secession movement, Klimt’s primary subject was the female body. He was a master of symbolism, painting rich, lavishly decorated figures and patterns that Lucy found cold and shallow.
Lucy raced through the volumes of art books she had taken out from her library until she came to Klimt’s 1908 masterpiece, The Kiss.
She shook her head thoughtfully, finding the confidence she needed to get her father out of jail, and whispered to herself. “You’re still a narcissistic fraud, but I’m going to paint you better than you could ever paint yourself.”
Byron Lawrence was released on bail on December 5th 1976 and celebrated the holidays with his daughter, aunt, and a swarm of friends and neighbors who blessed the old man’s return as though it was vindication itself.
Arthur Davis is a retired management consultant who has been quoted in The New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. He was featured in a single author anthology, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. Additional background at www.TalesofOurTime.com, the Poets & Writers Directory, and Amazon Author Central.
