Here’s what judge Allison Amend had to say about Bill Taft’s “The Special Artist”:
“The Special Artist” is the rare story that takes its inspiration from an historical figure—Winslow Homer, sketching the Civil War—to create a very contemporary portrait of longing, depression, and identity. The prose paints portraits as convincingly detailed as the protagonist’s drawings; it’s hauntingly convincing and beautifully resonant.
The Special Artist
by Bill Taft
On the good days, Winslow’s eyes were full of a power that rivaled the sun’s. But on the bad days, the eyes were no more radiant than a lamp just run out of oil—dim, the wick burning itself to nothing, a dull ember. On the good days, Winslow did not comb his grey, curly hair. He left it tangled like a crown of brambles in which he could stash a pencil. The bushy whiskers of his mustache stuck out like the bristles of a broom. On the bad days, he would wet the hair down, comb it into submission and secure it in place with an expensive pomade. He had seen undertakers give such attention to corpses, rendering them exquisite before their final farewell. The lemon smell of the pomade tormented Winslow, made him think of sailors with their stories of the Florida Keys. Despite what others said and thought, Winslow didn’t like sailors, or Florida. Oh, the people thought they knew him. They were wrong. On the bad days, he would threaten his mustache with shaving. There was one constant: on both good and bad days, Winslow dreamed of finding a way to rid the grey from his hair. He was only twenty-three, too young to look like his father.
Army of the Potomac
In July of 1861, the Union troops milled about Alexandria, Virginia preparing for the orders to move further south. Observing, watching, studying the men, stood Winslow Homer. A month before he had been given the title “Special Artist” by Hiram Harper, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, one of the nation’s struggling new illustrated newspapers. As a Special Artist, it was Winslow’s duty to move about the front lines of battle, sketching and drawing images of the war which Harper’s could then publish. And so Winslow moved, with steady and deliberate cunning through the streets of Alexandria, into the saloon of the Gersham Hotel.
Winslow stood at the bar, charcoal stick in hand, scratching away at a piece of paper until the likeness of Lieutenant Francis Channing Barlow of the 61st New York Infantry began to appear. His subject ignored him, choosing instead to focus his attention on the tumbler of Dutch gin in his hand. Barlow was clean-shaven, perhaps obsessively and vainly so, his way of saying he had so much hair on the top of his head, so much thick and lustrous jet-black hair that there was nary a follicle left with which to grow a beard. This was at least, Winslow’s assessment, for the job of the artist is to divine the character of each and every subject at hand. Winslow judged Barlow’s expression to be one of anger—clenched jaw, crooked lips. Not sellable. For every image Harper’s ran, Winslow received the payment of a twenty-dollar gold piece, true wealth. Other illustrated papers, Ballou’s or Appleton’s paid more, twenty-five or thirty dollars, but they paid in paper money, printed scrip of small worth held.
The lieutenant leaned back and raised his drink upwards, making a great show of the gesture, as if it were the last Dutch gin he’d ever know and that once he’d drained it, he would march out into the street and happily sacrifice himself in battle against a legion of lost pirates, or a hoard of wild cannibals, or an ancient tribe of pike-wielding Celts come to ravish the women of America. Much better. Winslow scratched away at the paper. The soft gaslight of the Gersham Hotel Saloon offered Winslow much in the way of shadow. The occasional sound of carriage wheels on cobblestones could be heard from the outside. The clatter of hooves grew louder, peaked, then fell away into the night. Sound should be in drawings. One day he’d make it so.
Barlow turned towards Winslow. “What are you drinking?”
“St. Charles Punch.” Winslow spoke while continuing to draw.
“A lady’s drink?”
“Just because a drink has ice in it doesn’t mean its not a man’s drink.” The lines in the image of Barlow became deeper, darker.
Barlow raised a hand to catch the barkeep’s attention.
“McClellan is partial to lady’s drinks as well. His caution is that of lady’s. His lack of imagination is that of a lady’s.” Barlow spoke with increasing volume. “Tomorrow, we board ships. Mrs. McClellan is planning her summer offensive and the pleasure of our company has been requested.” The barkeep set another Dutch gin before Barlow. Eyes focused on Winslow, Barlow reached for his drink and continued, “You should join us. It’s sure to be a grand affair. The Army of the Potomac…” He turned towards the barkeep. “And you, sir, should come along as well. Bring your store of ice, and make a St. Charles Punch for Mrs. McClellan.”
The next day was a bad day. A hung over Winslow sat on the grassy bank of the Potomac. A steam whistle from one of the riverboats, docked on the opposite side, blew out low and long, its rumble forcing a flock of crows from the willow trees. Beyond the trees, troops advanced on horseback, towards the dock, each horseman carrying a long stick. Winslow reached for his spyglass then aimed it at the approaching column. They were carrying lances, long shafts of timber with steel points at the ends. Squadron colors, red and gold, tied around the head of each lance, billowed out in the breeze. Winslow set down his spy glass, pecked at his sketch pad and then gave up. The black stuff was on him. He had always been prone to bouts of melancholy, days spent a prisoner weighed down by dirty sheets. The usual cures offered no relief: extracts from henbane caused headaches, thorn apple and St. John’s Wort led to the runs. The Sumerians had praised the benefits of the opium poppy in the 3rd millennium, but Winslow could not agree with their verdict. The drug kept his face from moving. Death would solve the problem. But suicide was a sin, a vexing complication to the plot. Winslow packed his gear, set out to meet Barlow and claim a berth upon the ship. As he walked along the bank, he swore at his mustache, periodically stopping to pull out a mirror and comb his hair. The slick pomade stank like a rotten orange, and made his hair look wet, like the fur of a seal just risen from the sea to rest on a rock in the sunshine, or the hair of a drowned boy just dragged from the river. Of the two images, Winslow discarded the former and fixated on the latter.
The Vanquished Rest In Peace
Barlow’s men, Winslow among them, headed south upon the river toward fortress Monroe where they disembarked two days later and marched into battle against rebel forces, a fight full of musket and cannon fire, gut-shot men, and bloody horses impaled on the spokes of shattered wagon wheels, hooves moving as if clip clopping in the air. Winslow found himself to be elated by the conflict all around him. He went out seeking an image.
The rebel soldier lay sprawled out on the rocky high ground above the valley. A line of ants marched in and out of his ear, and in the stillness Winslow could hear the flies buzzing about the corpse, their wings beating furiously in the heat of the noonday sun. It was a good day. Winslow sat down on an overturned barrel and began to sketch the outlines of the body, the way the arm angled up, parallel to the rifle at his side. Winslow’s editor at Harper’s Weekly had demanded he give them something that would compare to the photographs of Matthew Brady. Now, Winslow regretted kowtowing to the aesthetic demands of Hiram Harper. The afternoon they’d met, Hiram had been sitting in his wheel chair on the seventh floor of the New York office, berating his amanuensis with demands to increase circulation and raise subscriptions, as if a mere amanuensis could achieve such a goal. Winslow had sat by the desk, staring at the elephant tusk upon it, thinking the assignment would be a blessing, a way to do great things, unlike his father who had done nothing.
Winslow tried emphasizing the dead soldier’s hand, but the image was too real. There was no music in it. A crow landed on the corpse and began to pick at a strand of grey fiber hanging loose from his jacket. Go ahead, build your nest, thought Winslow. I’ve no use for him. Winslow set his sketch pad down on his knee, flipped the paper back to a new sheet, then drew the face of Brady, fatter, the eyes rendered useless, blind, by the folds of flesh around them, and then, feasting upon it, a crow. The crows could have Brady, and his plates of glass, and tripods and cameras. That’s what those cameras were, birdhouses.
“Mr. Homer, sir, Lieutenant Barlow has sent me to inform you that we will soon be moving on and if you desire our protection you must leave with us.”
Winslow looked at the young solider, the coat too big, the pants too tight, the musket with a cracked shoulder stock.
“Do you think I’m an old man crippled by gout, waiting to tell my grandchildren about the battle of Buena Vista and the senoritas of Monterey? Don’t let my grey hair fool you. I am a Special Artist. I need no protection,” said Winslow.
The boy solider blinked, coughed, nodded, blinked again. “The lieutenant has received orders to march on towards Mooresville.” The boy turned around and left.
Winslow sought a new sheet of paper, sketched the boy’s face, close up, the hint of a mustache, the cheeks a mother would never kiss again. The slain boy-soldier. A sacrifice. Must put the weeping mother in the frame somehow. Montage? Very sellable. I am the hack. I am the hack. Must hack off, I.
In the distance, the dull thuds of mortar fire echoed across the river valley. Winslow walked over to the dead rebel, felt around in his pockets for any money, tobacco, a clue of some kind to his personality, and found nothing. Still, a good day all around.
A Night Reconnaissance
A month and a half before, as Winslow had received his letter of Special Artist status,
Hiram Harper had been specific in his opinions about his countrymen, his readers.
“The people are corrupt. They are vile and cannot be trusted with power. They are lost, confused sheep milling about the railroad tracks, blind to the locomotives vomiting smoke, bearing down upon them. You will not find me on the wrong side of the locomotive.” Hiram paused. “Which side will you be on?”
Before Winslow could answer, Hiram gave him precise instructions: “You will illustrate the story I want to tell the people.”
Now, after two months in the field, Winslow began to be ashamed of his work. He’d sold four pictures, had them couriered back to New York, but he’d sketched the obvious, the trite. A voice inside him grew louder, challenging him to see something different, to at least put his point of view into the work.
Lieutenant Barlow led a small squad of soldiers up an embankment towards the edge of a corn field and the beginning of a pumpkin patch. Stars flickered in the black night above. There was no moon. Barlow parted the green stalks of corn to reveal a Confederate encampment two to three hundred yards away. The rebel campfires backlit peaked tents, the men on guard, a horse tethered to a post, causing them to cast strange shadows. Winslow crouched down a few yards away from Barlow’s men beside a big fat orange pumpkin. Winslow liked the pumpkin, ran his finger along the gnarled stem. If he bashed the pumpkin over the head of Barlow—who did not wear a hat while on patrol!—then what? Laugh at the lieutenant and his new head of orange hair, stringy sticky hair of flat white seeds. Where is your lion’s mane now, lieutenant? A unique image. The noble soldier with a gourd head. Pumpkins and corn laid out in neat endless lines, rigid furrows, a bullying geometry, like soldiers on parade. Vegetables, march! Pumpkin army, attack! Must draw right away. Winslow began cutting the image into the pumpkin surface with his thumbnail. The more animated he became, the more his knees pressed into the dried leaves around him. His rustling sounded like a grizzly bear rolling about on a cage floor full of discarded, crumpled drawings. Barlow removed his saber, aimed its tip at Winslow, whispered a single word: “Silence.”
An Unexpected Reversal
The Union advance was stopped and forced to retreat by a Confederate counter attack full of whooping and yelling, and femurs cracked by minnie balls, and chins torn open by shrapnel, and spines made useless by slugs of lead shot from rifled barrels.
“We’re heading to the rear,” said the boy soldier, the one Winslow thought would surely have perished by now.
“A rather stunning reversal of the situation,” said Winslow. He packed his bag.
“Barlow says you are not to join us,” said the boy.
As Barlow’s men retreated, so did Winslow’s bravado and confidence. He preferred to reject, not be rejected. A tide had turned. The good days gave way to bad. He plastered his grey hair to the top of his head with pomade. The smell of lemons made him gag. He called his mustache terrible names, shaved off half of it, and set out in the opposite direction of the retreat, towards what he hoped would be his own end. But death is fickle, it is not a servant one can order about, it is not like the Gersham Hotel, a place where one can book a room in advance, for a specific day and hour. Death is a locomotive, chugging down a track, locked into a predetermined schedule. The train would choose him when it was time, he could not choose it, unless he bought a ticket, in advance, like a hotel reservation. Bad analogy. Stop, he told himself. Winslow lay down in the leaves of the forest floor, certain of one thing: he had become his father. A coward. A fraud. A hollow gourd.
Winslow’s father wrote religious tracts—flowery treatises celebrating Christ and free love—that no one took seriously. His father wrote, but did not act. The man lived in a fantasy world. The butcher, the printer, the blacksmith all thought he was a crank, poor and unable to contribute to society, a man who couldn’t take care of his children, one of whom had spent a lot of time drawing in the dirt with a stick. Winslow’s father was frequently overtaken by periods of deep despair, leaving him pale and bed ridden. The man would lay about until a vision came to him: a demon-child made of flames, dancing in the corner of their farm house; or, a giant skeleton-horse wearing a harness of silver bells. Strengthened by the vision, Winslow’s father would return to the active world and begin again the printing of religious tracts.
The birch trees, white like leg bones, surrounded Winslow.
“Where is my illumination?” Winslow asked of the forest.
Finally, after two days alone, without food, without drink, he had his vision: a large crystal bowl full of water hung over a bonfire made of books and papers and paintings and his father’s corpse. In the bowl, a large fish, with a head of grey hair and a thick mustache swam about. The flames engulfed the bowl. The water boiled.
A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty
Armed with a new certainty, Winslow left the forest and began traveling with the Union Army’s colonel Berdan and his sharpshooters. Berdan struck Winslow as rat-like, not to be trusted. Despite the blue uniform, the epaulettes and the gold brocade, Winslow quickly saw Berdan’s true inner being: a self-righteous man of contradictions, unable to heed his own advice, probably married three times. Berdan possessed vanity. A scar on the right side of his face forced him to forever offer Winslow the left side.
Berdan was not pleased with Winslow’s presence.
“Couldn’t Harper’s have sent Brady, or Gardner?”
Berdan organized teams of men to make use of recent innovations in firearms: telescopic sights, precision-tooled rifles. Berdan’s men could hide in the trees near the front line and shoot down Confederate pickets or gunners at a range of three hundred yards. That afternoon, in an apple orchard outside Titusville, Winslow looked though one of the telescopic sights at a Confederate solider, a mere boy leading a mule towards a paddock. The ease with which Winslow could have killed this boy became a source of torment. How is this not murder? he asked himself of the sharpshooter’s trade. The sharpshooter, a man from Indiana by the name of Chubbs, took his rifle back from Winslow. The rebel boy lived that day only because Berdan had ordered Chubbs to show Winslow the basics of selecting a perch—tall trees were preferable to the low-lying trees in the orchard—rather than demonstrate the lethality of the new long-range rifles.
“It ain’t easy for us,” said Chubbs. “The rebels scan the tree tops for the tell tale puffs of smoke. We’ll take a shot and move like hell hoping to be out of the way if they return fire.”
On the way back to Berdan’s encampment, Chubbs let forth a volley of sarcastic comments about his commanding officer. Berdan will not drink to excess, is always singing the praises of vegetarianism and water cures, says accuracy will be greatly improved by sleeping with heads propped high by pillows, rich pastries and greasy foods are to be avoided as they lead to build ups of phlegm in the heart—as if pastry feasting is a big problem here!—Berdan says follow first impressions in all the affairs of life, but especially when on duty and a target is in range. Do not hesitate, boys, let God speak through you and your rifles.
“Don’t be fooled. Berdan’s face tells the true story. He’s a drunk, or a warlock, a worshipper of Satan,” said Winslow.
“Are you saying I’m a liar?” asked Chubbs.
To regain his authority, Winslow showed his latest sketch to Chubbs: the sharpshooter up in the tree, a canteen dangling from a branch, rifle aimed. All had been rendered in precise detail, but then, rapidly erased by Winslow, smearing the black of the charcoal across the paper, leaving only ghostly outlines of what had once been there. This had been the meaning of Winslow’s vision: unlearn everything, or become a boiled fish.
“That’s not me at all,” said the soldier. “You’re the liar.”
Deep in Winslow’s heart, a little voice could be heard whispering in a high-pitched voice, That’s right, Winslow. You’re the liar, a Revenant, a solider in the legion in of the undead. You have no soul. You have no heart. You are lower than the leeches that cling to the legs of cattle as they ford shallow rivers. You are as unclean as the worms and maggots that devour the flesh of the slain. You’re a load of chain hanging from the back of barge, dragging along the muddy bottom of the river, holding back the steady progress of America.
“I have had my vision,” Winslow said to the voice, the voice of his father trying to disguise his voice, trying and failing, yet again.
“You are all slick talk,” said the sharpshooter. “You draw as bad as you shave.” As a final sign of his disgust with Winslow, Chubbs tossed the drawing into the ditch by the side of the road. Later on, Winslow would redraw the picture in the conventional style and Harper’s would print it.
One evening, Winslow sat with Berdan outside the officer’s tent. Berdan never looked Winslow in the eyes when in conversation. Instead, he stared off into space, into the distance as if the enemy might be lurking there, taking aim, or even worse, as if worshippers of Shakespeare were approaching, quoting Hamlet and King Lear. Berdan had to be ready—to knock their Englishness into the dust with a blow of his fist. Berdan hated the British and saw their machinations at work back in ’58 when Oregon was a free territory. The sharpshooter’s rifles were all American made and like the rifle, Berdan favored all things free of the taint of Britishness.
“Do you know what figgy pudding is?” Winslow was not sure and Berdan tore into the answer, his cheeks reddening with a sudden fury. “It’s a British desert, yet we all sing its praises come Christmas time. ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’? Nothing but propaganda for the doomed royalty of the English. It’s one of their traditional carols.” A tone of disdain caused the vowel sounds of “traditional” to curl as if warped by decay. “Out with the British. Our Union deserves new ways of thinking. New tools like the camera. New blessings of industry like the long range rifle. New blessings of science such as phrenology and mesmerism. All of Europe is sick with rot. We will fire Chaucer bullets from the Swiss, but only rarely, if no proper American ordnance is to be had.”
The Officer and His Men
The next morning, Berdan addressed his men, reminding them of their duty to always be in fighting shape. The troops stood stock still like posts pounded into the ground, but Winslow knew, inside, the men were beginning to boil, for a man doesn’t like to be told what to do by a know-it-all.
“And the drinking shall cease,” Berdan ordered. “And, like the drinking, so shall cease the whoring. And more importantly, so shall cease the acts of onanism. You shall not cast your seed into the sandy banks by the rivers, nor into the grass of the field, nor into the blankets upon which you sleep, for such a casting of the seed is a waste and shameful act, right up there with surrender. No, men, you shall save your seed and this will be your strength. And it is this strength which will see you through the battles to come.”
Winslow didn’t understand how an occasional onasistic endeavor could be a sin. It wasn’t like Winslow tied himself up in ropes the way he’d seen some men do in the sketches of the book his older brother had shown him. Berdan continued to speechify and the men continued to stand at attention. But Winslow walked away. To see the men abused, and to be unable to stop it, made him feel weak.
That evening, Private Chubbs began to pester the other men.
“I sure never did cast my seed out for no reason. Never. Not once. Not at all. Never will. And you watch how I kill. Why I’m so full of seed and courage and what not, I could start my own regiment.”
A Letter from the Editor
Dear Mr. Homer,
Do not believe the reports of Harper’s imminent bankruptcy. The publishing industry may be in a state of great upheaval and some may say that the day of the illustrated magazine’s success will never come, but fear not. We are a fully solvent publishing concern, able to duly pay all debts, fees and salaries. Your payment is secure and will be tendered upon your return in two weeks. Your work gains much praise. Stay with the story.
H.H.
The River Shall Bring Us Home
Haunted by the high-pitched voice of his father, stuck giving Harper’s exactly what they wanted, faced with the reality that Harper’s may cease to exist by the time he returned home, (the true meaning of Hiram’s dispatch? Harper’s was doomed and the editor was now rolling about town in his wheelchair, insulting his amanuensis, spending the gold of others) despair once again engulfed Winslow. He set out to end the sadness, once and for all. He held the pomade in his hands, smeared the goop into his grey hair. He stole Chubbs’s rifle and headed to the river.
The cold water of the river barely moved, like it had nowhere else to go.
Winslow stepped into the blackness of the water, barefoot, his toes tapping at the muck of the river bottom, making sure there was something solid to plant the rest of his foot on. Silver shards of moonlight speckled the river surface and all around him, Winslow could smell the dank rot of dead leaves slowly turning into the dirt from which they had once grown. When the water came up to his belly, he stopped, checked the rifle one more time. Loaded. In his other hand he held a stick. Winslow pulled the rifle up, barrel towards his head of grey hair. He wished he’d stolen a pistol. The rifle was heavy; his arm began to grow tired and he feared the stick idea was not such a good one. What if he lost control of the gun? The bullet might only carve a ridge down the side of his head leaving him permanently maimed, scarred. What if the bullet didn’t kill him instantly and he became paralyzed in the water, sinking down into it, drowning? Worse than being devoured by tongues of fire. Worse than being a boiled fish. That wasn’t the plan at all. The plan had been press the stick with the trigger, die quick like a lightning strike and then, float away with the current. The end. No one would ever know what happened to him. He’d become an enigma. The rifle barrel was slick with oil from cleaning. Winslow didn’t think it would be right to shoot himself, quite possibly not fatally, and then drop Chubbs’s clean musket into the river where it would sink into he muck, the filth his own feet now stood in. No. A bad business all around. Winslow walked back to the sandy bank, put his boots on and walked slowly to camp. Not sure what he’d say if Chubbs asked why Winslow had gone off with his rifle. But when Winslow returned, everyone was asleep, excerpt for Berdan. From the officer’s tent came the glow of lamp light and the mumbled repetition of prayer.
News From the War
“You’ve changed,” said Winslow’s father, upon his son’s return home. “You look…”
Winslow played dumb, acting as if he had not noticed that his hair had returned to its youthful warm chestnut color; not letting on that deep inside, for the first time since his mother’s death two years ago, he felt happy, like a dairy maiden with strong arms, jumping up and down with joy in the cheese cellar because it was hot outside, and she was inside, in a safe dank place surrounded by her wonderful dairy products; like a rosy-cheeked dairy maiden with a half-bushy mustache and a pencil stuck in her hair.
The father lay in bed, staring at Winslow. “How was your journey?”
Lame pleasantries are the last refuge of a scoundrel, thought Winslow. And then, he told the old man the truth: “The tour was fine. I almost shot myself while standing in a river but then chickened out. I got paid in New York. My editor introduced me to an important gallery owner who commissioned new work. Everyone thinks that my future greatness is assured—everyone except for me. In New York, I heard a fugitive slave talk about slavery. I drew this man’s picture. While drawing, we spoke, and the man confessed that he’s not a fugitive slave at all. He’s a freeman from Ohio, but white folks treat him like a slave so he figures, to hell with it, he’ll give the white people what they want—and get paid. The man makes good money, working with the abolitionists, telling tales. White folks eat it up. But, the man’s sick of the charade. Said the man: ‘Abolitionists are the meetingest folks in America. All they wanna do is talk talk talk. I say it’sa time to get along. I’m ready to fight. Give me a gun. Give me an oath to swear to. I’m not talking about burning no one down south. I’ll shoot ‘em. But, nah, I’m not gonna go for burning.’ And there’s more: the man, after hearing me complain about my grey hair, gave me a recipe for a soap that rids the grey from all hair. I made the soap, mixed up the sulfur, bear grease, lye and brilliantine, in the washbasin of my New York hotel. And, so, here I am.”
“I am not well,” said his father. He pulled the bed cover up around his chin.
Some things never change, thought Winslow.
The next day, Winslow flipped through his sketchbook, gazing at random studies, seeking one worth developing further. Once again, the futility of communication overcame him. Soldiers have bugles to play charges, letters to fill with stories of death and disease at the front; trains bear bundles of newspaper; there’s the chatter of Morse code, and the mud-splattered courier on horseback with the urgent dispatch, and the semaphore signals of the men in the hot-air balloons. All to say what? Kill, Kill, Kill, or, It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. The tide of despair returned. Winslow pulled out his razor, to punish his mustache, the other half of his mustache, the one he’d left alone weeks ago, to grow out long and wild like a jaguar’s tail, while the other half slowly returned, like a field of wheat. Winslow paused. He began slicing the drawings, tearing apart the portraits of the men, cutting the paper into fourths. He took the chin of Barlow, placed it next to the eyes of the fake slave, topped it off with the forehead of the Sharpshooter. He kept cutting and slicing the paper until the new and better order revealed itself to him.
