Free Dream Factories and Radio Pictures by Howard Waldrop Page B

and drove away. The crowd dispersed, leaving Carter Lord in his dressing gown. With a sigh, he turned and went into the museum.
    1913
    I F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HAD SEASONS, this would have been another late spring.
    Teeheezal was at his desk, reading a letter from his niece Katje from back in Pennsylvania, where all his family but him had been for six generations.
    There was a knock on his door. “What? What?” he yelled.
    Patrolman Al stuck his head in. “Another card from Captain Angus. The sergeant said to give it to you.”
    He handed it to Teeheezal and left swiftly. Patrolman Al had once been a circus acrobat, and the circus folded in Los Angeles city two years ago. He was a short thin wiry man, one of Teeheezal’s few smooth-shaven patrolmen.
    The card was a view of the Eiffel Tower, had a Paris postmark, with the usual address on the back right side. On the left:

    Well, went to the Ballet last night. You would of thought someone spit on the French flag. Russians jumpin’ around like Kansas City fools, frogs punching each other out, women sticking umbrellas up guys’ snouts. I been to a rodeo, a country fair, six picnics, and I have seen the Elephant, but this was pretty much the stupidest display of art appreciation I ever saw. Will write again soon.
    —Angus
    PS: Ooh-lah-lah!
    “Hmmph!” said Teeheezal. He got up and went out into the desk area. Sergeant Hank had a stack of picture frames on his desk corner. He was over at the wall under the pictures of the mayor and the village aldermen. He had a hammer and was marking five spots for nails on the plaster with the stub of a carpenter’s pencil.
    “What’s all this, then?” asked the Captain.
    “My pictures got in yesterday, Chief,” said Sgt. Hank. “I was going to put ’em up on this wall I have to stare at all day.”
    “Well, I can see how looking at the mayor’s no fun,” said Teeheezal. He picked up the top picture. It was a landscape. There was a guy chasing a deer in one corner, and some trees and teepees, and a bay, and a funny-shaped rock on a mountain in the distance.
    He looked at the second. The hill with the strange rock was in it, but people had on sheets, and there were guys drawing circles and squares in the dirt and talking in front of little temples and herding sheep. It looked to be by the same artist.
    “It’s not just paintings,” said Sgt. Hank, coming over to him. “It’s a series by Thomas Cole, the guy who started what’s referred to as the Hudson River School of painting way back in New York State, about eighty years ago. It’s called The Course of Empire . Them’s the first two— The Savage State and The Pastoral or Arcadian State . This next one’s called The Consummation of Empire —see, there’s this guy riding in a triumphal parade on an elephant, and there are these armies, all in this city like Rome or Carthage, it’s been built here, and they’re bringing stuff back from all over the world, and things are dandy.”
    Hank was more worked up than the chief had ever seen him. “But look at this next one, see, the jig is up. It’s called The Destruction of Empire . All them buildings are on fire, and there’s a rainstorm, and people like Mongols are killing everybody in them big wide avenues, and busting up statues and looting the big temples, and bridges are falling down, and there’s smoke everywhere.”
    Teeheezal saw the funny-shaped mountain was over in one corner of those two paintings.
    “Then there’s the last one, number five, The Ruins of Empire . Everything’s quiet and still, all the buildings are broken, the woods are taking back everything, it’s going back to the land. See, look there, there’s pelicans nesting on top of that broken column, and the place is getting covered with ivy and briers and stuff. I ordered all these from a museum back in New York City,” said Hank, proudly.
    Teeheezal was still looking at the last one.
    “And look,” said Sgt. Hank, going back to the