The rain had been falling for hours. Jolting blasts of lightning crisscrossed the sky and roof-shaking thunder loosened the cobble stones in the streets of Auvers-sur-Oise. The heavy down pour is what sent the witch hunt into the pubs and cafes seeking shelter. It was the only way I was able to skip out of town without losing my hide. Angry town's folks, art historians and two local politicians demanded my head on a stake placed at the entrance to town. Women in bonnets with newborns strapped to their chests shouted for the spilling of my blood, "stretch and quarter the bastard!"
"Stretch his Yankee neck and leave him for the crows!" They chanted in bloodthirsty amaurosis. My only crime was to arrive in the tiny ancient stone town and question the well-known discrepancy regarding the death of Vincent Van Gogh, a man who at the time was an unknown dirty vagrant harassed by children and loathed by the local hookers. Other painters in the area deemed him disagreeable and only once in his short lifetime did one of his paintings sell.
It had been around noon the day before when I met a local "Van Gogh expert," in a cafe at the edge of town. He was an annoying man, overweight with a squeaky voice. I didn't like him from the start simply by the way he looked in his tweed jacket and combover, but once he opened his mouth I figured the meeting would more than likely end in blows. I didn't beat around the bush and came right out with it, "Van Gogh didn't off himself."
"Whatever do you mean?" he said. The nerve of the guy being that there had been a conspiracy theory since the time of Van Gogh's death that he hadn't shot himself but had been shot. It wasn't a knew revelation but the fact that I ended up on the run for my life was something peculiar. The story is that Van Gogh had been out in the wheat field that day carrying a loaded pistol. Why he was carrying it is a debate that would never be agreed upon, but at the same time it is irrelevant. The details that follow are much more mysterious and interesting. Supposedly, as it is told, Van Gogh had been heading back to his small apartment located over a little cafe in Auvers. At some point he came upon a few of the local teenage misfits of the area. Van Gogh may have befriended them. It is said that he accompanied them to a barn and was showing them his pistol when one of them pointed it and shot Van Gogh by accident. After the gun went off striking the artist in the chest the kids took off. Van Gogh struggled back to his apartment where help was called. His brother and best friend, Theo, was summoned from Paris. Theo was at Vincent's bedside when he perished. The rumor is that Van Gogh whispered to his brother not to tell the cops what really happened. He said that he didn't want the kids to get into trouble.
When I gave the fat man my story and explained that I was looking to expand on this theory and even one day turn it into a book he became livid. He jumped up shouting at me and spilled his cafe late. Other patrons in the cafe stared in disapproval and horror but not at him for his behavior but because of my statement. "You miscreant!" he shrieked. "You vulgar otter! How dare you presume to re-write the history of Auvers's greatest melancholy!" I leapt up and grabbed one of the old wooden chairs to defend myself as the ferocious rotund beast man came crashing toward me. I thought through my options quickly and realized that I would never make it out of the cafe in one piece if I laid porky out by battering him with a chair. I jumped behind a woman and then in the confusion made it to the door. "Get him, for the love of God, get him!" The expert screamed. I was already out the door and hauling tail down the road and patrons exited the cafe in a weak pursuit of me. They were as confused as I was, but the confusion didn't last long. By the time I made it back to the inn where I was staying word arrive that a gang had formed and they were hunting me. How dare I try and steal Van Gogh for Auvers was their argument. It was insanity. They had no argument and their call for my public execution was asinine. I went down to the desk and saw one of the maids that I had befriended earlier in the day when I first arrived.
"What is going on?" I asked her.
"What did you do?" she said.
"I don't know, what did I do?"
"You better get out of town and do it tonight. You can hide here until dark but then you are on your own," she said. That was all she had to say. I knew that if the town's people caught me I would be murdered right there in the town square. Killed because I believed a story that was different then they did. So is the way of the world. Suffice to say, the witch hunt had zeroed in on me most likely due to my maid friend's sudden change of heart. I made it out a window and was just about to be surrounded when the sky opened up and people began scurrying for shelter. I knew Van Gogh hadn't killed himself. But sometimes it seems history isn't that interested in being changed.
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