About the Painting

carefully. He put on his fatigue jacket, reached into the ice chest for the two sandbags, and slipped them into his pockets. The electric starters whined insistently, like electric alarm clocks, and the startled engines awoke, roaring angrily. Dan zipped the jacket up to his neck, stepped up on the bow rail, and tottered there for a few seconds, looking out over the blue water. "Hey, kid," someone yelled, "get off that-" Dan jumped, entering the water straight up, scarcely making a splash, and the sea enfolded him like a giant amoeba. He sank slowly downward, helped toward the bottom by the obliging weight of the sandbags. He could hear the tinny burble of the boat's engines for a few seconds, then they died and he could hear the air bubbling out of his clothes. He exhaled, and watched the air bubbles jostle each other as they fled upward in a panic, and then he inhaled deeply, purposefully. Salt water and terror flooded into him, but he was determined not to resist, not to panic and scramble upward like the air bubbles. So he held his arm rigidly at his sides and looked upward defiantly. The bubbles were all gone now, and above him he could see the sun on the surface, a bright patch of light receding slowly as he slid deeper into the cold darkness. I About the Painting I will show you the snake ahead of time a young timber rattler. This is where I fell in love. This is a ripple, still expanding. It is Autumn, unfinished. This is a strange valley, beautiful. The water is the color of an eye and snakes live on the bluffs. Across the canvas is blue through it, black and yellow leaves flutter ceaselessly. — Daniel Dutton I 35 ...