Now, on the afternoon after Gil and Maureen’s visit to the cemetery, the time had come for the final decisive moment. The ceramic molds had been baked in a kiln, burning out the wax inside, and now they were set in beds of sand as two foundry workers in fireproof gloves and aprons carefully stepped forward from the furnace, sharing the weight of a glowing crucible suspended on an iron frame.
Gil and Maureen stood watching. It seemed impossible to him that that bucket could contain the molten bronze within it, since it was itself so superheated as to be nearly transparent. But the crucible was more solid than the brilliant sludge it held, and as the workers tipped it forward into the first mold the bright lava flowed and flared into the now-empty cavity that, once cleaned and chased and trimmed, would become the bronze hind leg of Ben Clayton’s beloved horse.
He could feel the furnace heat on his skin as the pour continued, and see the glow reflected on his daughter’s face. They had watched this hypnotic process before, the two of them, back in the old days when she was a girl and her mother was alive and his pride had not yet exiled them from New York. But now they stood together in a new configuration, no longer artist and child but collaborators, as united in accomplishment as they were divided in spirit.
The first piece he inspected, two days later when the ceramic shells were sandblasted away, was the bronze plinth upon which the human and horse figures would stand. The base was as shallow as he could practically make it. It would not be a pedestal, just a utilitarian platform. He wanted the Clayton to be perceived as the heartbroken memorial it was, not a heroic monument.
Maureen was not with him today. She had stayed in Manhattan, preferring to wait to see the statue when it was fetted and assembled, not caring to watch her father fuss over every ongoing detail.
It was one in the afternoon and the foundry workers were returning from lunch. He asked several of them to help him and they built up a waist-high stack of wooden skids. When it was in place Gil joined with four other men in hoisting the heavy bronze plinth onto the top. He pulled up a chair and borrowed a hammer and a point chisel and then—just below where he had incised his name into the pliant clay—he began to add the letters he realized he had left off.
“WELL,” HE WROTE, “before it is all over and done with I guess you will be calling me a ‘Frenchman.’ That seems to be the direction I am headed, as I am off to Paris to see a man Lieutenant L’Huillier knows who says he wants to meet me. This man is trying to put together an outfit of people he calls Gueules Cassées. It’s a kind of club or society I reckon. ‘Gueules Cassées’ means broken faces. I don’t know what this man’s got in mind exactly but it seems like he figures the more people see us the less horrible we’ll look to them and they’ll give us jobs and the like. I don’t know about that but I guess I’ll give it a try as I suppose I have been ‘hiding out’ a little bit in Somme-Py and should ‘show my face’ as the expression goes, though as you know it is a poor face to be parading around. But I guess I will do it. Maybe because you didn’t mind so much that I looked like a monster it could be that other people won’t either.”
That was about as close as his shyness allowed him to come to even an oblique acknowledgment of their night together in Somme-Py. She would not have to be quite so evasive in her response. She knew he craved a tender voice, a direct tone. But she would not embarrass him by speaking too plainly about a moment that could never be repeated—only remembered.
She had spent the morning at the art library that had just been opened to the public in what once had been a bowling alley in the Frick home on Fifth Avenue. She had strolled afterward through the park, gazing nostalgically at Ward’s Shakespeare and his Indian Hunter, two statues she had known from her childhood; and at Emma Stebbins’ Bethesda Fountain, which had goaded and inspired her in her youth because it was the only public monument she knew that had been created by a woman.
Arthur’s letter was in the batch of forwarded mail that the desk clerk had handed to her when she came back to the hotel. Among the envelopes was one addressed in the elegant penmanship of Mrs. Toepperwein of the San Antonio Women’s Club. The date of the dedication of the Spirit of the Waters was now definitely set for September 9. Would Maureen please meet her for tea at the Saint Anthony as soon as convenient so that they might discuss specific plans for the event, particularly any remarks Maureen might like to make before the mayor officially unveiled the piece? Was it true, as Mrs. Toepperwein had heard, that Maureen was an acquaintance of Vance Martindale, the rustic Texas critic and intellectual? Would she suppose that he might be persuaded, both on the basis of friendship and objective merit, to write an essay on the sculpture in the pages of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, like the one he had written on the occasion of the unveiling of her father’s Crockett grouping?
Maureen smiled as she sat reading the letter in the lobby of the hotel. She put it back in its envelope. No thank you, Mrs. Toepperwein. If Vance Martindale wanted to spout off about her talent in print, he was free to do so, but she would be damned before she would “persuade” him. It was odd, though: the fact that she no longer had any use for him made her fond of him in a new way. She could imagine in time moving from icy correctness in her relations with him to a tolerant friendship. But no more than that; never any more.
At almost the same moment that she recognized the spidery hand of Lamar Clayton on one of the envelopes, Francis Gilheaney himself strode into the lobby. He looked like he had walked a long way; he was beaming and sweating.
“I’ve come all the way from the foundry,” he said. “Walked across the bridge.”
“You look thirsty. You should have a glass of water.”
He ignored her; his mood was too high. “The castings are first-class. I was worried we might have picked up an air pocket or two in the wax, but I believe we’re going to be free from disaster. Is that the mail?”
He sat down and she handed him the envelope from Mr. Clayton. He tore it open in suspense and she saw the relief in his face when a check slipped out. He laughed at the letter and handed it to Maureen. It read, in its entirety, “Go Ahead. L. Clayton.”
He relaxed into his lounge chair, let out a deep breath.
“Well, at least we have a place to put the damn thing. I doubt Clayton will ever have any use for me but he’s going to have his statue. What did you do today? Are you hungry? Why don’t we go to Renganeschi’s? I wouldn’t mind bumping into some people from the old crowd, now that this thing is finally settled.”
“All right,” she said. “If you’d like.”
“Remember when the three of us used to go there? You and your mother and me?”
“Of course I do.”
He slackened a little more in his chair, wistful now, regretful. For a moment he was silent, then he drew himself up and leaned forward to face her.
“I put your name on it today,” he said.
“What?”
“I carved your name on the plinth with a cold chisel, right below my own.”
“Daddy …”
“It’s your work as well as mine. It’s more your work than mine, if you want to know the truth. I couldn’t have finished it, not with these hands. Not with this selfish old soul of mine. If there’s life in that statue, and I know there is, then you’re the one who put it there.”
She started to answer but her lips were quivering so much she couldn’t get the words out. He handed her his handkerchief while the other hotel guests discreetly refrained from staring. After a moment, he reached out and touched her hand.
“I want you to be a full partner on the La Salle. When we get back to San Antonio and start working on it, you’ll—”
“I’m not going back to San Antonio, Daddy. I’m staying here.”
The blank look he gave her could have been just momentary confusion, but she thought it was something else: a sort of fear she had never seen in his eyes before.
“This is where I’m from,” she said. “This is where I want to be. Not Te
xas.”
“You don’t want to work with me?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Work for myself maybe. I don’t know.”
“I don’t see how you can manage. You have no income, you have no money except for what you got from that commission in San Antonio. You can hardly expect that to last for more than—”
“There’s my half of that check.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you couldn’t have done the Clayton without me. I happen to think so too. Give me half the money, Daddy.”
For a moment she thought he was going to rise from his chair, wad the check up and throw it at her feet and say, “Here! Take it all!” But the anger in his expression turned instead to a kind of wonder, and then to a sadness so deep she could hardly believe her audacity.
“All right,” he said at last. “You and I will go to the bank tomorrow and open an account for you. We’ll find you a place to live.”
“Thank you.”
“The money will only last for a little while. I’d still like to know how you think you can get on.”
“I won’t be proud. I’ll take whatever work I can. If I can’t get any commissions, I’ll be a clerk. I don’t care. I want to be here. I want to be on my own.”
“You’ll have to at least come back for the unveiling of your Women’s Club piece.”
“No. I’ll write them and tell them that you’ll be there to represent me. Will you?”
“Of course I will, if that’s what you want. But what about the Clayton? Don’t you want to be there when it’s installed? Don’t you want to see it?”
“I’ve seen it, Daddy. I’ve already seen it from the inside out.”
His eyes were reddening and he was glancing around the room, looking for someplace for his gaze to settle other than on his daughter’s eyes. He was a proud man and he did not want to weep openly in a public place.
She leaned forward and spoke in a soft, emphatic voice to her broken father.
“You know, of course, that it’s a magnificent work of art. And no one but you could have done it, Daddy. No one.”
Struggling for composure, he answered with a nod. She pretended to look at the mail, giving him the chance to gather the formidable emotional strength that had seen him through every artistic setback, every regret, every disappointment, that had enabled him to keep his mind and his heart trained on the work to come, the shapes waiting to be formed in his studio.
“Well,” he said when he had come as far back to himself as the moment would allow, “shall we say eight o’clock for dinner?”
THIRTY-FOUR
There was no ceremony. On a day in late September the statue was delivered to the Abilene station in three pieces—man, horse, and base—transferred to a flatbed truck and conveyed to Lamar Clayton’s property. The truck then inched precariously along the narrow, half-washed-out ranch roads to the base of the little hill where the statue was to be installed.
It was hard, sweaty, dangerous work getting the pieces to the top, Gil worrying about the fate of his creation every foot of the way. Clayton had hired a crew to clear brush and rocks and outline a rough path to the summit, where the ground that would hold the base had been carefully graded. They tied a stout rope to the axle of the truck and, as it drove forward, the wooden skids to which the statue’s pieces were lashed were lurched upward one by one by means of a block and tackle secured to one of the big boulders at the top. Gil and Ernest and Nax and Clayton himself all took a hand in helping to guide the skids along the cleared trail, two of the men walking behind with thick wooden poles to help lever the skids forward and do their best to prevent them from sliding back in case the rope broke.
They all slipped and fell from time to time as they steered and straightened their burden. Gil gashed his knee on a rock, tearing the new twill pants he had bought in New York, scraping his knuckles as he struggled to regain his grip. But the brute work of lifting did not seem to trouble his arthritic hands nearly as much as the complicated flexion of his fingers that modeling required.
The base was the first piece to reach the top. They secured it in place with steel rods, and then when horse and man were brought up they were removed from their thick cotton batting and lifted by the block and tackle, which had been transferred to an A-frame. Gil called out instructions as the men steadied the swaying forms and gently lowered the feet of the man and the hooves of the horse—all with stabilizing rods protruding from them—into the holes that had been drilled into the bronze base and below into the rock itself.
And there it stood. There was no plaque, no need for one. Everyone knew it was Lamar Clayton’s boy. George’s Mary drove to the base of the hill in Clayton’s Model T and walked up to join them. Peggy was with her and the dog sniffed at the pungent patina on the surface of the statue. George’s Mary didn’t have anything to say at first and Gil couldn’t read her expression. She just stared at the sculpture with what might have been admiration, or sadness, or perplexity.
“Well, I believe you should be happy now, Mr. Clayton,” she said at last. “You’ve got your statue of Ben right where you wanted it.”
She turned to Gil. “You did a right good job, if you care to know my opinion.”
“Thank you.”
“Your daughter ought to be here to see this,” Clayton said.
“I think so too.”
Three weeks before, Gil had attended another installation, a far more formal affair when the Spirit of the Waters was presented to the city of San Antonio. The mayor had unveiled it. A band had played and Gil had been called upon to make remarks in Maureen’s absence. He told the audience he was honored to represent his daughter and they were fortunate to witness the unveiling of the first public work of a major new sculptor, a young woman whose name would soon be known not just in San Antonio but throughout the nation.
The men Clayton had hired stood around admiring their work for a time. They were drenched with sweat and bleeding from cuts. One of them had a Brownie and he told everyone to stand next to the statue. Clayton said he didn’t feel like having his picture made and moved off to the side. After the photo was taken the men took down the block and tackle and Clayton gave them their money and shook their hands and they drove off riding on the back of the flatbed truck. Gil and Clayton and George’s Mary remained on the summit with Ernest and Nax for a few minutes more, watching the dust cloud thrown up by the departing truck as it rumbled along the poor road.
“That was a piece of work, getting this goddam thing up here,” Lamar said.
“Yes sir, it surely was,” Ernest replied.
Nax lit a cigarette and pounded the rump of the bronze horse, a muffled echo sounding from the hollow cavity. After that there was just an awkward silence, everyone seeming to think maybe something ought to be said, but no one knowing what it should be. Gil knew it was not his place to speak. Whatever he had to say about Ben Clayton had been said in the statue itself.
So after a while they walked down the hill and crowded into the lizzie and drove back to the ranch house. Gil spent the night again in Ben’s room, the boy’s clothes back in his dresser, the saddle back on its sawhorse. He woke to the sound of mourning doves and the smell of biscuits baking. He washed and dressed and made his way through the familiar house to the breakfast table, where Clayton was smoking and drinking coffee and solemnly staring at an equipment catalog. He greeted Gil by asking what time his train was.
“Four in the afternoon.” Gil nodded his thanks to George’s Mary as she poured his coffee and set his plate in front of him.
“You got time if you want to come with me.”
“Where?”
“I thought I’d ride out to that far pasture we went to that other time. See what the statue looks like from there. You want me to I’ll have Ernest saddle up Margarita for you. She’s a pretty mild-tempered animal. Not that I’m saying you can’t ride.”
“
I’d very much like to do that,” Gil said.
WITHIN THE HOUR they were off, riding across the same open pastures and rocky declivities they had traveled last November on their way to search for calves that needed doctoring for screwworm. The summer had been harsh, from the look of the grass and the parched greenery along the creek banks, but there was such breadth to the landscape, such boundlessness in the sun-washed blue sky, that Gil felt surrounded by a sumptuous natural beauty all the same.
He felt more secure in the saddle than he had on that previous occasion. Margarita was a conservative-minded horse, no more eager to take a spill than he was. When they came to the rocky slope upon which Gil had been thrown by Poco, she tested the terrain with such caution that he could almost hear her deliberating thoughts.
Gil and Clayton had ridden for two hours, hardly saying anything to each other, before they entered the open pastureland spread out before the mesa on which the statue had been erected. They both stared at it in the distance but still Clayton did not comment. He just led his horse ahead through the high grass and Gil followed. After another five minutes the rancher reined up and turned his horse toward the mesa and sat there in the saddle staring at the unmoving figures on top.
They were maybe two hundred yards away. The piece looked unnervingly natural, just as Gil had planned it to. Ben Clayton was no colossus. The figures were seven feet tall but looked to be only life-size from this distance, so that it seemed that at any moment the young cowboy on the hill was going to catch sight of them and raise his hand in greeting.
Remember Ben Clayton Page 39