SUNSETTER, MOONRISER: The Tragic & Explosive Death of Dean Rainard, Instalment IV

Instalment 4: “I WAS WRONG”

Dean Rainard, like most Art Historians, was not an artist. He had always thought that he had no artistic ability and therefore had never tried art out. Until the day he died, which was this day, he had never even painted one single painting. When his grandfather, the late Lazlo Franks, died, he died with hardly any possessions. All Dean inherited was a canvas on an easel, a brush, and a tube of Cerulean Blue. His inheritance had sat untouched in his basement for twenty-four years.
Dean Rainard walked out of Eel River Athapaskan High School with tears in his eyes. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He had no clue that he was a crazy person. Most crazy people don’t know that they are crazy people. He walked the small streets of Olympia all the way to Holiday Road, on which he lived. He walked up to his drive way. The top third of his white button-up dress shirt was now soaked with mucus. He cried his way into his small ordinary house, and down in to his small ordinary basement. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. His basement had no windows. He sat there, on the floor of his basement for three hours crying. ‘There is nothing good for me, there has never been anything good for me, there never will be anything good for me,’ he thought. Dean Rainard sat there and sobbed for three hours, a pitiful mess. A lump of craziness in a white button-up dress shirt completely soaked in mucus. After three hours, he got himself up still crying. He looked over and saw his inheritance from Lazlo Franks in the corner of the room. He walked over to it. The canvas was huge, six feet wide and four feet tall. Getting it into the basement twenty-four years earlier had been a pain. Dean unscrewed the cap of the Cerulean Blue. It smelled nice, like chemicals. It was a soothing smell, like how gasoline is a soothing smell. It is interesting how even in the deepest moments of insanity, the clearist thoughts of clarity can still come to a crazy persons head. The chemical smell of the paint brought the clearist thoughts of clarity to Dean Rainard’s head. He squirted a glob of Cerulean Blue into the palm of his hand and lifted it to his nose. It brought back a memory that he couldn’t really put his finger on. He didn’t know what it reminded him of. Childhood? His grandfather? ‘Did I even ever meet my grandfather?’ he thought. What ever the memory was he couldn’t tell. And whatever it was, was making him cry even harder. He took the brush and dipped it in the glob on his hand. He wrote three words on the canvas over and over. “I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I…” He wrote it in big, bold, capital letters. “I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG I WAS WRONG…” Dean Rainard covered the canvas with these words. He wrote the phrase ‘I WAS WRONG’ 322 times. By the time he was done with the painting his entire left arm and most of his shirt was covered in paint and mucus. He walked up stairs, tracking paint through most of the house, still sobbing. He walked to the laundry room, took off his clothes, and put them in the washer. He then walked into his bathroom and hopped in the shower.