The Seventh Most Important Thing

by Shelley Pearsall

  “Squeak! Squeak!”

  Squeak looked confused, then embarrassed.

  “You made it!” Arthur said, pounding him on the back. “Good to see you, man!” They hadn’t seen each other much since the end of high school. Squeak was going to Boston College, majoring in physics. Of course.

  “Reginald. Not Squeak,” Squeak said, smiling wider. “I wouldn’t have recognized you. You look like a preacher or something in that fancy suit.”

  “I know.” Arthur grinned. “I feel like an idiot in it.”

  “So, you excited for tonight?” Squeak pointed at the entrance of the art museum, where a crowd of well-dressed people was already lined up on the wide steps, waiting for the reception. A colorful banner saying HAMPTON’S THRONE, OPENING SOON flapped in the warm evening breeze.

  “I’m not sure yet,” replied Arthur. Which was the truth.

  —

  It had been seven years since he’d last seen Hampton’s Throne. Seven years since he’d been a juvenile delinquent with a probation officer. Seven years since he’d gone around the neighborhood collecting the Seven Most Important Things with a grocery cart. More than seven years since his dad had died.

  It was so long ago it didn’t even feel like his own life when he thought about it.

  But he knew there would be a few people at the reception to remind him.

  Groovy Jim was there. Arthur had called the shop to let him know about the event, and he could already spot him in the crowd—a tall, hippieish guy with his mop of curly hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.

  Arthur’s mom had tracked down Officer Billie, who was now working as a security guard. “She did a lot to help you,” Arthur’s mom reminded him. “I think we should try to let her know.”

  Officer Billie told Arthur’s mom she’d already heard about the exhibit opening.

  Of course, Arthur thought. She knew everything.

  Officer Billie said she was pretty sure Judge Warner would be there, because he was a board member of the museum. But Arthur couldn’t believe the story when he heard it from his mom. A board member? Judge Warner had seemed like the last person on earth who would be interested in art.

  The rest of the people in the crowd were strangers to Arthur—museum staff and patrons and guests. People who had a lot of money to spare, by the looks of their stylish clothes and jewelry.

  Arthur was suddenly glad his mother had insisted on the suit.

  —

  The museum had asked Arthur to be part of the ribbon-cutting group for the opening of the exhibit. There were five people in the group. One of them turned out to be Judge Warner. He was introduced as the Honorable Philip Warner, a board member and lifelong friend of the museum. Just as Officer Billie had said.

  “From brick throwing to ribbon cutting,” the judge whispered to Arthur with a half smile as he handed out the scissors to everyone. “Now, that’s what I call redemption.”

  Even seven years later, he could still make Arthur nervous.

  —

  On the count of seven—Arthur’s suggestion—they cut the silver ribbon across the entrance to the exhibit. Cameras flashed as the bits of ribbon fluttered to the floor. The crowd watching in the hallway clapped.

  And then it was time to walk through the wide marble doorway to see Mr. Hampton’s masterpiece on display for the first time.

  This was the moment Arthur had been most afraid of.

  He was worried Hampton’s Throne would look smaller and less spectacular than he remembered, the way things from your past often did. Had the pieces really filled half of a garage once? Would people understand why heaven had been made out of junk? Would they see what Hampton had been trying to do?

  He didn’t need to worry.

  As the crowd entered the room behind him, there was a soft gasp. Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. Mr. Hampton’s masterpiece looked far better, far more beautiful, than he remembered.

  In the darkened room, the red chair Arthur had found for Mr. Hampton years before filled the center like a radiant throne. Around it, the foil-wrapped tables and chairs and pedestals and pillars sparkled in the spotlights. Metallic wings stretched outward. Stars caught the light. And at the top of it all—above the glittering thrones and tables and pillars—was the small cardboard sign Arthur wanted everyone to see: FEAR NOT.

  —

  For a long time, Arthur stood at the side of the room watching as the museum guests filed in. He noticed how they spoke in hushed whispers as they entered the darkened space, and how they stepped forward to look at the intricate pieces more closely—then back, as if trying to grasp the scene from a distance. Forward and back. Forward and back. Like a dance.

  Arthur found it hard to resist pointing out to people that there was no way of seeing everything—no matter how close or far away you were from Mr. Hampton’s work. Or how many hours you stared at it. Some things in this world were meant to remain a mystery.

  The line to see Hampton’s Throne stretched out the door and down the hallway. It moved slowly.

  And just as Mr. Hampton had said, the people kept coming.

  —

  At the reception later, Officer Billie came over to give Arthur a round metal tin. “I’ve switched from caramel corn to cookies,” she told him. “Chocolate chip. Hope you like them.”

  “Thank you,” Arthur said, remembering to make eye contact and sound grateful. He’d learned a few things from Officer Billie seven years earlier.

  Groovy Jim stopped by to tell Arthur and Squeak that they should come and get a tattoo at his shop sometime. “I can always use the business,” he joked.

  “Hey, I just got one,” Squeak said, rolling up his sleeve to show it off. “Look.”

  Groovy Jim and Arthur had to squint to see what it was. It looked like a tiny smudge of letters on his biceps: F = ma.

  “Newton’s second law of motion.” Squeak prodded Arthur: “Force equals mass times acceleration. Remember that from high school?”

  “Oh yeah.” Arthur laughed. “Man, I cannot believe you did that. I thought you were going to get something big and scary. That’s what you always said.”

  Squeak grinned. “Trust me, getting this little thing was scary enough.”

  —

  Arthur and Squeak stayed until the end of the reception. It seemed like everybody had heard how they were the ones who had saved the Throne. People kept coming over to ask them what Mr. Hampton had been like and what they’d done. Arthur figured he and Squeak must have told the story of the coffee cans ten or fifteen times.

  When Arthur and his family finally left the museum that night with the last of the guests, it was dark outside. As they came out, he couldn’t help noticing the big flock of city pigeons that had gathered on the museum steps for the night. There must have been fifty birds, he thought.

  As the group started down the steps, the flock suddenly took off together, moving upward like one big cloud. Everyone stopped to watch them. You could hear the beat of their noisy wings lifting into the night sky—dozens upon dozens of metallic-paper wings rising over the city.

  Arthur smiled as he watched the birds disappear into the darkness, remembering his dad again, remembering what Mr. Hampton had said:

  Some angels are like peacocks.

  Others are less flashy. Like city pigeons.

  It all depends on the wings.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book began about twenty-five years ago when I visited a small folk art museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. I remember stepping into a darkened exhibit room, and there it was—a breathtaking world of gold-and-silver tables and thrones and pillars.

  The scene was lonely, curious, and awe-inspiring, all at the same time. It wasn’t until I walked closer that I realized what the art was actually made from and saw its mysterious title: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.

  The artwork and its unusual story have remained in my imagination ever since.

  T
oday, James Hampton’s masterpiece, which is sometimes referred to as The Throne of the Third Heaven or Hampton’s Throne, is on permanent exhibit in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, formerly called the National Collection of Fine Arts. It has also traveled around the country for special exhibits. You can read more about James Hampton and the little we know about his work on the Smithsonian’s website: americanart.si.edu.

  Like the character in the book, James Hampton was a solitary man who created his vision of heaven in an unheated garage over many years. One hundred eighty objects make up The Throne. They are built of various scraps he gathered from the Seventh Street neighborhood near the garage and from government buildings in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a night janitor.

  Discarded furniture, foil, glass bottles, mirrors, coffee cans, cardboard, and lightbulbs are among the materials he used most often, which inspired the idea for the Seven Most Important Things. One piece in the collection is labeled as having been made in 1945 on Guam, where James Hampton was stationed during World War II, though the story about its meaning is my own interpretation.

  Interestingly, Hampton wrote down some of his ideas and visions in elaborately coded notebooks, which have never been deciphered.

  For the purpose of the story, I used a grocery cart as James Hampton’s “chariot,” although he was more commonly seen pulling a child’s wagon or carrying a burlap sack. The characters of Arthur Owens, Groovy Jim, and Officer Billie are fictional. Unlike the landlord in the book, the real landlord played a role in helping to save the artwork after Hampton died in early November 1964 following a long battle with cancer.

  While some details about James Hampton and his work were changed for the story, others are true to life. He did refer to himself in his writings as “St. James” and the “Director of Special Projects for the State of Eternity.” Wings and stars were important symbols in his designs. The quote “Where there is no vision, the people perish” was found on a bulletin board in his garage. “Fear not” appears at the top of his masterpiece.

  Anonymous individuals really did contribute money to save the artwork after Hampton’s death. And The Throne was kept in storage for seven years before going on exhibit—where it continues to intrigue and inspire visitors today.

  The rest is left to the imagination.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to the important people who made this book possible: my wonderful editor, Nancy Siscoe; my agent extraordinaire, Steven Malk; copy editor Colleen Fellingham; ace proofreader Amy Schroeder; designers Kate Gartner and Trish Parcell; and my husband, Mike, who always reads the first words. Thanks also to Marcy Lindberg, Bob Kline, and Redwin Lewis for their help along the way.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A former teacher and museum historian, Shelley Pearsall is now a full-time author. Her first novel, Trouble Don’t Last, won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Her other books include Jump into the Sky, Crooked River, All of the Above, and All Shook Up. To learn more about the author and her work, visit ShelleyPearsall.com.