“Thank you.” I had done nice work. The colors popped. Not the way they would have with a coat of varnish, but still. Compared to the way the mural had looked when we’d first stretched it? A completely different animal.

“It looks pretty messed up to me,” Nathan said, and everyone laughed. I’d met Oliver’s cute son only a couple of hours earlier—he was spending a few days with his dad—but already I’d learned that this was a boy unafraid to speak his mind. I liked that about him.

“It has a way to go,” Oliver agreed with his son.

I looked at Nathan. “If you’d seen it before I started cleaning it,” I said, “you’d realize how much better it looks now. I’ll show you a ‘before’ picture later.”

“I like all the blood,” Nathan said. “It’s so sick.”

Everyone except Lisa laughed.

“If you say so, Nathan,” Lisa said, then let out a sigh. “Well”—she peeked at the phone in her hand—“I’m not happy it took two weeks just to clean this thing, but it obviously needed it. Quite a difference. And I have to say I have no idea what to make of it.”

“That Indian.” Adam shook his head. “So crazy.”

“What Indian?” Nathan asked, most likely scanning the mural for a warrior in headdress.

“He means the brand of the motorcycle,” I explained. “See the motorcycle tire and red fender poking out from between the women’s dresses?”

“Why is it there?” Nathan asked.

“Wish we knew the answer to that,” Oliver said.

As soon as I’d started working on the motorcycle, I’d understood what Mama Nelle had meant about Jesse covering it over. Anna had painted the mural thinly, but in the area of the motorcycle, the paint was extremely thick as though the cycle had been painted over and then repainted, maybe more than once. Maybe even more than twice. I couldn’t explain why, but Anna and Jesse seemed to have some sort of duel going on there.

“We should make a list of all the strange things the artist put into the mural, so we can add them to your wall text about it, Oliver,” Lisa said. “Make it sound mysterious. Make gallery visitors try to guess what message the artist was trying to convey.”