The Madrona Heroes Register: Underneath It All

Chapter 2 - The Sudden Rain

I am so sick to death of other kids, the boy with the blonde hair thought to himself. The light from the low setting sun was making his hair look almost white. His cheeks were scarlet for the moment in deep contrast to his typically pale skin. 

The boy fumed. It’s no more my fault that her little brother climbed too high than that girl at camp today can’t draw. The girl who sat next to him at art camp was struggling with her painting of a panda. When she asked for help, he had helped. But the moment he finished painting a superlative panda over her original awful rendition, the girl had wailed to the teacher that he had ruined her painting.

The boy could still hear the teacher’s words ringing in his head, “Ollie, you can’t just paint over someone else’s painting.” 

“But she wanted me to show her how to improve her panda.”

The teacher had a pitying look on her face that confused and angered Ollie. “You ruined her painting.”

“Ruined?” Ollie was almost yelling now he was so upset. “Ruined? I improved her painting. Her panda was awful.”

“Ollie, please lower your voice.” The teacher said.

Ollie had fumed then too. In fact, Ollie hadn’t really stopped fuming since camp had ended that day. Ollie loved to draw, but how was he expected to do his best when the teachers cared more about not hurting anyone’s feelings than they did about great art? Not that painting a panda from a poster was so ‘great’. Nothing was as beautiful as drawing an actual living thing.

Ollie remembered the first moment he’d understood this. Ollie had never been particularly inclined towards drawing or anything artistic, but at the age of six he’d sat in the back seat of his mother’s car when they’d come to a stop light. Ollie wasn’t sure why he looked out the window at that moment. Maybe some motion caught the corner of his eye. Out the window Ollie saw the most striking bird.

It was a small bird, perched on the trunk of the tree but sticking straight out at a right angle. The bird appeared to be able to stand sideways from Ollie’s perspective. Its chest and face where white. A black stripe started between its eyes and stretched over its head to the top of its back. Shades of bluish gray intermingled with slightly darker stripes of the same color spreading down the bird’s back and to its wings. The tail was black. The lower part of the bird’s stomach almost concealed a small yellow glow. Ollie noticed every tiny detail. 

Ollie was struck, not so much by the bird’s beauty, but by the notion that the bird had something to give him. The bird had a gift, and it was Ollie’s to receive. The image of the bird stuck in Ollie’s mind. Ollie collected his gift the only way he knew how. When he and his mother arrived home Ollie rushed to find colored pencils and paper and transferred what was still fresh in his mind to paper. 

When Ollie’s mother took a moment to glance at his drawing as she scooted away from the soon to be set kitchen table, her jaw dropped. “Ollie, where did you get this?” 

“Get what?”

“This drawing. Where did you get it?”

“I drew it.”

“Don’t tell fibs young man. You did not draw this.”

Even at the age of six Ollie’s temper had been quick to rise. “I drew it! I drew it! I drew it!” Ollie screamed at his mother.

“Show me.”

Ollie’s little fist was clenched around a gray-blue colored pencil. He slowly unclenched it tearing his angry look away from his mother and reproduced the original drawing in painstaking detail.