Watercolors by Philip Wendt (the two towers ebook .txt) 📖

Watercolors

By: Philip Wendt

I only brought out the watercolor sets when the four major holidays rolled around, as they were quite messy. It was on the sylabuss and part of the curriculum that i send the kids home every holiday with a piece of manilla paper splattered in different shades of paint, their portrait of whatever holiday was at hand. Four times a year i would climb my stepstool to the top shelf of the art cabinet, moving aside an assortment of stencils and crayons to reach the paint sets behind them.

I bought fifteen sets, from the Art and Craft Corner, a small shop now turned nail salon after the death of it's owner Ms. Gertrude Wilson. The purchase was made back in 1990 when i was new at teaching, and a great deal more eager and outgoing towards the profession. I looked for quality and quantity when i purchased the paints, and what i bought surpassed my wildest expectaions. Up until my recent retirement the paints were still being used. A few of the more popular colors had begun to run low, the children were always attracted to reds and blues, but the sets held up nicely. The manufacturer of these immortal watercolors is as long gone as Ms. Wilson and her craft shop. After a quick internet search i found the company had went under in 1992. Sunshine Playtime Inc. had manufactured crayons and paints out of a small factory in the nearby commuity of Jesup, Florida. The company advertised their products as "100% natural", and you would think I was buying fresh oranges. The paints and crayons were made using minerals, plant pigments, and seawater all gathered from the local Jesup area. Each set had on it a small sticker, now faded with age, reading "Florida Proud" just below the companies logo.

Shady Acres day care is the twenty by thirty foot metal building from which all the pain and suffering was born. It stood at the end of Whipporwhil Street in the lazy seaside community of Cherona, Florida. Its walls are painted a bright blue and yellow color, stenciled with purple flowers and neon green monster trucks. The unusual coloring of the day care set it apart from the five houses on Whipporwhill street, as did something far and away more unique than purple flowers and monster trucks.

Exact to within a few inches the building sits atop one of the three proposed points of the Bermuda Triangle. One of it's points sits over a taqueria in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Another point occupies a gift shop in the Island Breeze Motel on the island of Bermuda. And the last point lays within the walls of Shady Acres day care in Cherona, Florida where i taught and entertained four to five year old children for fifteen years.

I never knew much on the mystery of the bermuda triangle, and now even after the countless nights gone sleepless, staring at my computer screen, I feel like I still know very little. I think beyond all the information on the surface, all the books, the articles, and websites, beyond that I feel the triangle holds secrets well beyond the grasp of our human minds, information our brains just cannot process. The subject on which I write this manuscript is one such secret, and all I can do is write down what I have seen. The courage to come forth and disclose what I know took years to gather, and to be safe I am writing these words thirty-thousand feet above the Pacific en-route to South Korea where I will live my retired days out in a suburb of Seoul. When I send this manuscript to it's proper keeper and they publish it soon after, I will be well out of the country. You see, I fear the last decade of late April tragedies will be blamed on myself. I fear that societies finger will point directly at me, holding me responsible for those countless lives now lost.

April, 19

That morning was unusually cool for southeast Florida. My nine students had all arrived on time and gathered by the front door of Shady Acres where I instruct them to remove their shoes before class. My memory has faded over the years and i could not tell you any of those children's names except for the young boy that painted the terrible picture.

Scott Sears was a hyperactive red head with a learning disablity. I recall sending his mother many letters on my concern for Scott's learning progress. His usual hyper and sporatic personality were absent that week, as if his soul had left. Perhaps it was tirelessly searching for his father in the downtown traffic of Oklahoma City. The Monday prior to the day i am writing on was when Scott's father was struck by a speeding van in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City where he was attending a business meeting.

Looking back on my long monotonous years at Shady Acres I can recall many events I tried to ignore, or brush away out of my thoughts. Scott was one of these things. Scott sat on his little stool calmly putting his brush to the paper. I assume it could have been the lighting , or maybe my eyes toying with me, weary from a bad nights sleep. Whatever it was Scott's little body sat embraced in a blackness, surrounded by an aura that glowed with a shade of black my eyes had never before looked on, a color I cannot explain with this pen and paper. The boys head hung low as he waved the paintbrush over the paper slow and methodically. I approached him with a tone of empathy in my voice and asked him what sort of easter portrait he had come up with. He replied low and softly, "It's my daddy's work," he replied. Gazing over his shoulder i noticed the picture was suprisingly well painted. Half of a large building sat on the paper, it looked as if it's other half was ripped off, like Scott forgot to add it. At the top of the structure, to my amazement, the words Alfred P. Murrah were crudely spelled out in the handwriting of a five year old. Fine detail was given to the vehicles parked in front, I could easily make out an el camino, a Ford pickup, and the one I can still see in my mind to this day, a orange and white U-haul moving truck. Scott scribbled his name at the bottom of his canvas and handed it to me "Are you all done," i asked him. He had a faraway gaze in his eyes when he looked to me, well beyond the gaze of a boy who just lost his father "In a few more hours, Ms. Lockhart."

My assistant relieved me at noon as she always did, allowing me to grab a lunch and relax for an hour alone. That tearful day on my lunch break i walked into the Ram Burger, placed my order and watched the news media report the recent tragedy in a frenzy. I sat and nervouslly switched through every news channel. I saw every angle of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building being broadcast at that moment. The bomb concealed within a U-haul truck detonated only an hour prior to me walking into the Ram Burger, ashes and debris still hung thick in the sky above downtown Oklahoma City. This thick fog sickened me, it was as if I was looking at the souls of the recently deceased as they rose from the rubble to whatver afterlife awaited in the clouds. Amidst the ashes and emergency workers the Alfred P. Murrah federal building stood desemated, only half remained, it's other half lay in the streets below.

April 20

The crisis of the branch dividian cult in Waco, Texas had been spiralling out of control for two weeks then when I unlocked the door to Shady Acres that spring morning. I arrived extrememly early having paperwork to finish from the night before. The early morning hour brought with it another one of those experiences i spoke of , my mind has ignored it and i forced my conscious to forget it ever happened. The sun had not yet made its daily appearence in th dark and clouded eastern sky. I left all lights off but the reading lamp on my desk, where i sat focusing on next years reading schedule. It was around the middle of the six o clock hour when i first heard the children singing from a dark corner where the art tables stood. Two to three voices at first, young girls. Looking towards the art tables I saw nothing but the abscence of light, and all doors i knew were locked from the night before. It was a bible hymn i heard, "Jesus Loves Me" filled my ears, the voices distant and removed. The song grew louder and more children joined in. I was truly terrified, a dull coldness came from within my body, I trembled as waves of fear washed over me. I lost count of the number of voices now singing from the darkness just ahead, and i knew nothing else but to close my eyes and hope it passes. For thirty minutes i sat, the egg croissant i had put in my stomach hours earlier tried desperately to free itself, spraying over all my paperwork in front of me. But that didn't happen, I heard the tires on the gravel parking lot outside, my first student had arrived. The doorknob turned and before the door had time to crack open in the slightest the singing ceased, as if it had never even started. I have never heard it since.

I put the invisible children and their distant song out of my thoughts and went about my day as best i could. Little Haley Lamen's painting was not done nearly as well as Scotts from years before it. My other nine students painted the usual easter objects, pink bunny rabbits, eggs, family portraits in egg hunts and churches. Haley's painting was done in one color only, a bright and flashing orange. I asked her to explain the artwork and I was ignored as she softly hummed under her breath. I eased closer to her and recognized the tune, "Jesus Loves Me." the same haunting melody from earlier that left me shaking and in a cold sweat. It was the same bible hymn a group of children i could not see had sang to me for half and hour. Haley had drawn a rough portrait of Jesus, a crown atop his head and a dismal look on his face. There were ten or fifteen children painted at his side, some appeared to be screaming some crying. Among the suffering children, stick horses and plump images of cattle grazed on green pastures. A flagpole held a small Texas flag above some unknown building, engulfed in flames.

I didn't leave for lunch that day, so i didn't learn of the saddened conclusion to the branch dividian compound and it's faithful followers until i arrived home. David Koresh put his own unique twist on Christianity and led these poor souls into a death of flames. I saw the compound on the world nightly news, it burned intensly amidst the hay bales and stray cattle of the barren Texas plains. The news was posting photos and names of the children i watched burning inside...... I wept.

April 17

Years later i was reviewing the letter C with my class, it was neatly printed on the blackboard and my class sat in a neat row in