{"id":2604,"date":"2023-07-21T13:42:06","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T17:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2604"},"modified":"2023-07-21T13:42:06","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T17:42:06","slug":"a-great-painter","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2604","title":{"rendered":"A Great Painter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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W. Keith Everett<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Issue 16<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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He listened as the man in the suit started it all. He was thinking of other things, but trying to pay attention. The man in the suit talked about how great she was, how she had so many friends and how much she contributed to her community. One lady stood up and introduced herself as a former student and told how she produced such radiant light in her paintings and brought out the color using shadows to depict reflected light, so much like the way she radiated light into her surroundings when she was present. Another lady stood up and described how she taught her how to bring out certain colors, making a storm look truly threatening or a sunset relaxing, much the way she encouraged her students with a kind word of praise at a time when she saw discouragement on their faces. Yet another lady stood up and talked about how she taught her how to scratch through paint to expose colors underneath at strategic places with just a palette knife. One man stood up and stated, \u201cShe taught men too, and we learned to bring out the luminosity in our paintings. She brightened up every class.\u201d A young kid, probably high school, stood up nervously and said she taught him the use of small circles or dots to create an image. Others spoke, but he could only think of how her hair blew in the wind the time they went sailing on the lake and she was so scared but went because he loved sailing, the way she walked, with a little swing almost like a skip, the way she stayed home and took care of her mother while she was dying for three years instead of going to college and starting a life, the way she fought for each of her children during various trying times in their lives. And the thought of\u00a0their worst kiss ever, when he went off to war\u2014the hard-pressed lips coated with salty tears and ending with a sob as he got on the bus. He thought of their embrace when he returned, the necklace he placed under her pillow and the wonderfully sleepless night together that followed, and her loving presence in the evenings watching movies, laughing, joking, and holding hands on the couch in their living room. It was his turn to speak now, but he could not. He looked down at his notes through watery eyes and could not read them. He blinked several times, looked up at the man in the suit nodding for him to go ahead.\u00a0 The man in the suit said a prayer. He stared as two men lowered the casket into the gaping black hole of forever.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\u200b\u200bW. Keith Everett<\/strong> is a writer and social studies teacher whose work has appeared in Swimming World<\/em> magazine and thirty book reviews in Military Review<\/em>, Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin<\/em>, and Infantry Journal<\/em>. He was fired from the Army Reserves as a Lieutenant Colonel after 32 years and ten months and was fired from Immigration Customs Enforcement, where he served variously as a Border Patrol Agent, Special Operations Inspector, Criminal Investigator, and Assistant Field Office Director after 26 years.\u00a0 He is currently teaching at Cane Bay high school in Summerville and lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina area.\u00a0<\/summary>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
Read “Paper Covers Rock<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “Ad Magic<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “The Necklace<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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W. Keith Everett Issue 16 Flash Fiction He listened as the man in the suit started it all. He was thinking of other things, but trying to pay attention. The man in the suit talked about how great she was, how she had so many friends and how much she contributed to her community. One lady stood up and introduced herself as a former student and told how she produced such radiant light in her paintings and brought out the color using shadows to depict reflected light, so much like the way she radiated light into her surroundings when she was present. Another lady stood up and described how she taught her how to bring out certain colors, making a storm look truly threatening or a sunset relaxing, much the way she encouraged her students with a kind word of praise at a time when she saw discouragement on their faces. Yet another lady stood up and talked about how she taught her how to scratch through paint to expose colors underneath at strategic places with just a palette knife. One man stood up and stated, \u201cShe taught men too, and we learned to bring out the luminosity in our paintings. She brightened up every class.\u201d A young kid, probably high school, stood up nervously and said she taught him the use of small circles or dots to create an image. Others spoke, but he could only think of how her hair blew in the wind the time they went sailing on the lake and she was so scared but went because he loved sailing, the way she walked, with a little swing almost like a skip, the way she stayed home and took care of her mother while she was dying for three years instead of going to college and starting a life, the way she fought for each of her children during various trying times in their lives. And the thought of\u00a0their worst kiss ever, when he went off to war\u2014the hard-pressed lips coated with salty tears and ending with a sob as he got on the bus. He thought of their embrace when he returned, the necklace he placed under her pillow and the wonderfully sleepless night together that followed, and her loving presence in the evenings watching movies, laughing, joking, and holding hands on the couch in their living room. It was his turn to speak now, but he could not. He looked down at his notes through watery eyes and could not read them. He blinked several times, looked up at the man in the suit nodding for him to go ahead.\u00a0 The man in the suit said a prayer. He stared as two men lowered the casket into the gaping black hole of forever.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2604","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}