at the base of the falls—Sorrow’s Stone, it was now called—and putting an end to the wanderings of the Sorrowers. For as soon as Josiah perished, the rest of them looked around and concluded that this must surely be the Promised Land they had been told to expect.
They named the place Sorrow Falls, not for the waterfall that claimed Josiah’s life, but because this was the place where Sorrow fell.
That was not precisely what was depicted in the painting.
There was second version of the story, one that saw Josiah not as a determined fanatic who thought he could defy the laws of physics at a very bad moment, but as a peerless leader who was unaccountably distracted at exactly the wrong time.
In the painting, the strong, square chin, and determined blue eyes of Josiah Sorrow were pointed upward, at the sky rather than straight ahead. In his line of sight was a bright streak of light—a sign from the heavens.
Unfortunately, this sign arrived at exactly the wrong time. The river beneath Josiah’s canoe was disappearing over the falls, but as he was looking up he didn’t notice.
The depiction captured, almost comically, the moment just before his death: nearly half of the canoe was pointed over empty space, like something from a cartoon.
It was probably an apocryphal version of events, as the holders of the historical record—the founding Sorrowers—no doubt had cause to re-examine the suicidal last decision of Josiah Sorrow, and perhaps make it come off as less silly and more tragic. No , this version said, there was no talk of God protecting Josiah, it was only that he was leading and became distracted by a light in the sky.
The mural, then, paid respects to both versions. Yes, Josiah can be seen distracted by a light in the sky, but look at him. What an idiot. He doesn’t even have his paddle in the water. Who would go canoeing like that?
Unsurprisingly, after the spaceship landed outside of town, the light in the sky responsible for Josiah Foster Sorrow’s death became a lot more interesting to a lot more people, and the painting in particular ended up gracing the cover of enough magazines to convince the town council to put some money into getting it restored.
In a bit of irony, the restoration uncovered more of the fading tail of the meteor in the top left corner of the mural. The tail—surely nothing more than an accidental brush stroke by the artist—had a thirty-degree angle in it.
The Artist, according to some, had predicted the future.
That was probably Annie’s favorite part of the painting, or it was on that particular day. Other days she ended up transfixed by a background tree, or the symbolic renderings of wild men in the woods—horror show versions of Native Americans with dull eyes, reaching out toward the water like the Karloff edition of Frankenstein’s monster. Sometimes it was the chaos of the water, or the woman on a canoe way behind Josiah, barely given detail other than a bonnet and an open mouth, screaming to warn him.
Sometimes her favorite part was just that nobody knew who painted it or exactly how old it was.
“Stop staring at it.”
Annie was at the library’s front desk, directly beneath the enormous mural. When she sat on the middle stool her head was just below Josiah’s impressively bulgy crotch. That was never one of her favorite parts of the painting.
She turned to discover a slightly paler version of herself.
“I can’t help it,” she said to Violet. “There’s always something new to look at.”
Annie and Violet were the same age, had the same basic physical shape and the same dark brown hair. Anyone filling out a document listing their attendant vital statistics would conclude that they were therefore very similar, and in those simple terms, they were. Annie even thought of Violet that way—as a lost twin sister or lab-created doppelganger, depending on her mood. At the same time, nobody who saw them together could ever mistake them for one
They named the place Sorrow Falls, not for the waterfall that claimed Josiah’s life, but because this was the place where Sorrow fell.
That was not precisely what was depicted in the painting.
There was second version of the story, one that saw Josiah not as a determined fanatic who thought he could defy the laws of physics at a very bad moment, but as a peerless leader who was unaccountably distracted at exactly the wrong time.
In the painting, the strong, square chin, and determined blue eyes of Josiah Sorrow were pointed upward, at the sky rather than straight ahead. In his line of sight was a bright streak of light—a sign from the heavens.
Unfortunately, this sign arrived at exactly the wrong time. The river beneath Josiah’s canoe was disappearing over the falls, but as he was looking up he didn’t notice.
The depiction captured, almost comically, the moment just before his death: nearly half of the canoe was pointed over empty space, like something from a cartoon.
It was probably an apocryphal version of events, as the holders of the historical record—the founding Sorrowers—no doubt had cause to re-examine the suicidal last decision of Josiah Sorrow, and perhaps make it come off as less silly and more tragic. No , this version said, there was no talk of God protecting Josiah, it was only that he was leading and became distracted by a light in the sky.
The mural, then, paid respects to both versions. Yes, Josiah can be seen distracted by a light in the sky, but look at him. What an idiot. He doesn’t even have his paddle in the water. Who would go canoeing like that?
Unsurprisingly, after the spaceship landed outside of town, the light in the sky responsible for Josiah Foster Sorrow’s death became a lot more interesting to a lot more people, and the painting in particular ended up gracing the cover of enough magazines to convince the town council to put some money into getting it restored.
In a bit of irony, the restoration uncovered more of the fading tail of the meteor in the top left corner of the mural. The tail—surely nothing more than an accidental brush stroke by the artist—had a thirty-degree angle in it.
The Artist, according to some, had predicted the future.
That was probably Annie’s favorite part of the painting, or it was on that particular day. Other days she ended up transfixed by a background tree, or the symbolic renderings of wild men in the woods—horror show versions of Native Americans with dull eyes, reaching out toward the water like the Karloff edition of Frankenstein’s monster. Sometimes it was the chaos of the water, or the woman on a canoe way behind Josiah, barely given detail other than a bonnet and an open mouth, screaming to warn him.
Sometimes her favorite part was just that nobody knew who painted it or exactly how old it was.
“Stop staring at it.”
Annie was at the library’s front desk, directly beneath the enormous mural. When she sat on the middle stool her head was just below Josiah’s impressively bulgy crotch. That was never one of her favorite parts of the painting.
She turned to discover a slightly paler version of herself.
“I can’t help it,” she said to Violet. “There’s always something new to look at.”
Annie and Violet were the same age, had the same basic physical shape and the same dark brown hair. Anyone filling out a document listing their attendant vital statistics would conclude that they were therefore very similar, and in those simple terms, they were. Annie even thought of Violet that way—as a lost twin sister or lab-created doppelganger, depending on her mood. At the same time, nobody who saw them together could ever mistake them for one
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