But I want to see how he makes those heads and he doesn’t seem bad, so I take the coat off.
I keep it close, though.
“How do you want me to sit?”
“Anyway you like, as long as you’re comfortable.”
“Why are you making all these heads?” I sit, prop my feet on the crossbars of the stool, stay cool. “You sell them?”
He laughs. “Well, not so far. I have to find a gallery for them so that they can be shown and sold. That’s next, I guess.”
“You wanna know what you should do?”
He tips his head, smiles. “Sure.”
“Naked ladies. You make statues of naked ladies and they’ll sell a lot faster than a bunch of heads.”
He laughs again, a nice laugh. “You’re probably right.”
I know I’m right. I saw it on TV. Two hundred years ago some man did a painting of a naked lady and somebody just sold it for two million dollars.
“How come some of the heads are made out of iron?” I ask.
“It’s not iron; they’re bronze castings. All of them will be made into bronze later. If I can afford it.”
“Bronze. What’s that?”
“It’s a mixture of metals. Copper and tin. It’s quite hard.”
I shrug. “Same as iron to me. I dunno from copper and tin.”
He reaches into a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag and scoops handfuls of mud. He plops them on a table that’s covered in newspapers, makes a big lumpy ball.
“Where do you get the mud?” I point.
“It’s called clay. I order it from an art-supply store and they deliver it.”
I watch him work with his hands on the clay and pretty soon I see that the head is taking shape. I see eyes, see ears, see nose and lips.
It doesn’t look like me, but something makes me think of me. Like I’m in the clay somewhere. Like I’m waiting to come out.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make me come out of that clay.”
Another smile. This iron-head man smiles more than anyone I’ve ever seen. Nice, though, even if I’m not used to it. Usually, when I see someone’s teeth, it’s ’cause they’re yelling.
“I always wanted to draw or paint or do some kind of art with my hands. So I went to school to learn and then I—”
A knock on the door and I jump off the stool. Only the cops knock like that.
But it’s the pizza. In all my life, I never had food brought to me.
I can smell it across the room and my stomach grumbles so loud I bet Petey and Blade, wherever they are, can hear it.
Then we eat.
He takes one piece, but he’s still looking at the clay head. Chew, swallow, steady eyes.
He looks back at me, but not to talk. He tilts his head, looking hard. He sets down his pizza, goes over to the stand and starts again.
It’s been a long time since I had hot food and I eat one whole piece of pizza, then another. Tastes so good my jaws hurt.
Third piece, fourth, and I slow down.
I think of Layla.
“You going to eat more?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I’m not that hungry. Are you enjoying it?”
Am I enjoying it? Grease and cheese around my mouth, crumbs on my T-shirt, more food than I’ve had in six months. I’ve never had enough to eat—not so much that I wasn’t still a little hungry around the edges.
“It’s all right.”
“Then take the rest with you. I’ve never liked cold pizza.”
There’s still a little over half left for Layla and that baby inside that she’s feeding.
I nod. “My friend Layla likes pizza.”
“Do you think she’d come with you sometime and let me sculpt her head? I could pay her like I’m paying you. Ten dollars.”
I shake my head. “Hard for Layla to get around.”
“Is she sick?”
I’ve seen her puke her guts up in the mornings, but that’s just baby sick. “No. She’s going to have a baby.”
“Oh.” He stops pushing the clay and looks off like he’s studying that picture again. Only he’s not looking at anything but air. “So she’s much older than you?”
I nod. “She’s fifteen.”
“Fifteen …”
He stops talking then, and starts working the clay again, and I can see he has questions. I’m thinking: In his life, he doesn’t always have to be moving. In this warm, soft place he has, he doesn’t know anything about how you’ve got to keep moving.
“She was too slow,” I say. “A man caught her in a stairwell.”
And I tell him about her. I don’t know why, but it all comes out. Layla and me and living in the building.
He looks like he’s about to cry even though it wasn’t him got caught in that stairwell.
He looks out the window. “Right there across that fence … I didn’t know.”
I laugh ’cept it isn’t funny. He doesn’t smile back at me this time, just stands there looking out the window like he’s never seen that view before. I guess he hasn’t. It’s not the kind of thing people notice. Not if they don’t have to.
He’d stopped working, but now he starts again, slow, like he’s not really paying attention. I do, though. I watch how he takes bumps and smooths them, adds bumps to where it’s smooth. He runs his fingers along the slopes of the head on the stand. I could watch forever.
A while later he stops to turn on some lights and I look outside. It’s dark. That’s not good. Layla’s alone and I’ve got to get back in the building. Without being seen. Carrying half a pizza. After I made Petey and Blade mad at me.
“It’s time for me to go,” I say.
“It’s not late; it’s not even six yet.”
“That doesn’t matter. It gets dark early in the winter. Things change when it’s dark.”
Bill looks out the window and then back at me, nodding. “You’ve got a point there.”
“The night people come out,” I say, because he has no idea about the dark. “And they’re always looking to get it over on someone.”
“I can walk you home,” he offers. Like he’d know what to do if Blade’s boys came up on him in the dark.
“You don’t belong over there,” I tell him, because I got enough to worry about getting me back to my building, without thinking about him on Blade’s side of the block.
“Be careful, J.”
My gut starts to tighten up around all that pizza I ate ’cause I’ll be lucky to make it back and I hate when I have to be lucky. Luck is nothing to count on.
I pick up the pizza.
“I gotta go now.”
And I leave.
There’s nowhere to go at night that’s safe. Night people with night eyes are in the alleys, in the halls. They’re watching and waiting.
They’ll hurt you for a dollar. They’ll kill you for ten dollars.
They say a woman in the building sold her baby to Blade for a seven-dollar bag of what he sells. He turned right around and sold that baby to some rich lawyer for nine hundred dollars.
Bill’s building is all lit up in front. On this side of the block, nobody breaks the bulbs so they can carry on in the dark. I hate the lights when it’s dark outside ’cause everybody can see you, you can’t move fast in the light.
I run back to the alley between the buildings and then stop, listen. I stay out of sight, stop, then move, stop, then move.
A little sound. I stop again. Hold my breath, crouch down. Someone digging on the other side of the Dumpster. He doesn’t know I’m there, blown-out druggie doesn’t know anything. I hide, part of the dark two feet away, and he shuffles past me without knowing I’m there.
Now across to the basement window, to the furnace room. Warm, but stinking. Now that I’ve been in Bill’s room where it didn’t stink, I can smell things I didn’t before. I can smell myself.
I wait in back of the furnace. Then a new smell. A smell I
know. A smell I love.
“Layla?”
I hear her soft breath. “That you, J?”
“Who else?”
“You smell like food.”
“Pizza. Leave the light out. Come to my voice.…”
“There’s nobody down here but us. I left the light off so nobody’d think I’m here. I’ve been here for over an hour, waiting for you. You didn’t come, I thought Blade had you.”
“Petey caught me but I got away.” I find her in the dark and put the pizza box in her hands. “Here.”
She takes a breath. “Where’d you get this?”
“Somebody gave me half a pizza. You eat it all. I already ate.”
She chews and sighs, a soft sound in the dark.
I dig in my pocket. “Here’s some money. Ten dollars. I know you gotta buy those vitamin pills so the baby grows good.”
“I can’t take your money, J.”
“I can get more. He wants me to come back.”
“Who?” Her voice is hard. “Come back for what?”
“The … artist I met. I met an artist. And he pays me pizza and ten dollars for sitting.”
“What do you mean ‘sitting’?”
“He pays me to sit and he makes a model of my head with clay and later he’ll turn it into iron.”
“You’re crazy. You’ve always been a little loose, but now you’re making things up.”
“He’s in the building on the other side of the fence. One of them rich people like we watched that time. He’s an artist, name’s Bill. He paid me ten dollars to sit on a stool and he made a statue of my head.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“Nope. He bought the pizza, then gave me the money. Said he’d make a clay head of you, too, ’cept I told him you couldn’t get through the basement window.”
“I’d stick in the window like a cork in a bottle.”
We both laugh at the picture, then grow quiet. She’s thinking and I’m wondering about the head he was making of me.
“It’s really something to see …,” I start.
“What?”
“The way he moves the clay around with his thumbs. Pretty soon I could see me inside it, waiting to come out.”
“Sounds like you liked it.”
“Watching him made me want to do it.”
“So you’re going back?”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew I would.
To see if I could get another pizza.
To see if I could get ten more dollars for Layla.
More.
To see if I could move the clay like he did.
“You come sit next to me on the bench here.” Her voice is low and I move to her, put my arms around her shoulders. She holds me around the waist and we sit like that in the dark.
I think she’s just breathing but then I know she’s crying.
“I’m scared.”
“It’ll be all right.”
“I hate it here.”
I hold her tighter. “It’ll be all right.”
Like I know.
Like I know anything.
Me and Layla spent the night in the basement with the lights off because she couldn’t go home.
“Ma lost her night job,” Layla tells me. “Got mean drunk when she came home. Blamed me for getting pregnant. Blamed me for everything.”
“Like always,” I say. We have that in common, getting blamed for everything that’s wrong.
We slept some, talked some, cried some.
Just after the light comes through the little window, Layla goes back upstairs because she knows her ma left for her day job. But I go outside and through the alley and into the other building, back to my place. I wanna see about working with clay today.
I look out the window, but Bill isn’t up yet. And even my Eskimo jacket can’t stop the cold. Cold comes in like a snake, crawling around inside my clothes. My feet hurt for a long time, don’t stop hurting until I can’t feel them anymore.
Finally Bill wakes up. I watch him move back and forth. He goes past windows without looking until finally, when he’s putting water in a teakettle, he looks up and sees me.
He opens the window. Steam comes off the sink and outside. He looks warm.
“Good morning, J. How long have you been there?”
“Just got here.” No sense telling him everything. “Thought I’d see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine. Since you’re probably not going to school today …” He pauses and when I shake my head, he continues, “Come over and have some oatmeal and then we can work for a while. I didn’t finish what I started last night.”
“See you at the door.” I go out to the middle of the building and start climbing out through the basement window.
Petey.
Another man is with him, name of Slipper, who’s high all the time, worse than Petey.
They’re by the Dumpster, but they don’t see me so I pull my head back in. They’re out early looking for something. I can see their breath in the freezing air and I know they’re not out this early and in this cold unless Blade sent them for something.
For someone.
Only one thing Petey could be looking for ’cause there isn’t any money to be made on the street this time of day.
He’s looking for me.
Blade’s got everything God made—money, connections uptown, the Big M car, the Glock Nine, women. Everyone on this street is either scared of him or working for him and it’s not fair that he wants me, too.
But I know that when I got away from Petey, I made Blade look bad ’cause Petey works for Blade, and Blade doesn’t like looking bad. Blade can’t let that be.
I move across the basement to rooms I don’t usually go in, wade through trash almost to my knees, to another window on the other side of the building.
Petey’s so drunk he thinks he can stand by a Dumpster and catch me. His brains are nothing but mush from the drugs.
I climb outside, take the long way around the block to the other world, and I see Bill at the door. Waiting for me.
I slip inside. Warm. Safe. Good smells. He hands me a bowl of something tan covered with brown sugar, flecked with dark things.
“What are those?”
“Raisins. Don’t you like them?”
“Sometimes.” I shrug. “What are they?”
“Grapes. You dry grapes in the sun and they turn into raisins.”
I eat the whole bowl and it’s so hot and sweet it hurts my teeth, but good. I wish I could take some back for Layla. He puts the bowls in the sink when we’re done and then slides the stand with my head out from a corner.
The head looks different from when I saw it last. Twisted or something, like I’m looking over my shoulder. There’s nothing below the head, but the way the statue is looking, you know there’s a shoulder down there. You can almost see the whole body below the head even though there’s nothing but air and the post for the stand.
“Can you teach me to do that?”
He looks up quickly, surprised, smiles.
“I can help if you want to try sculpting.”
He finds another small worktable, puts it in front of my stool and drops a lump of clay on it as big as both of my fists.
“What do I do?”
“Put your hands in the clay. Learn the texture and get used to the feeling.”
“I want to do what you did. How do I make the clay look like what I can see in my head?”
“You have to work awhile before the clay shows you things that aren’t there yet.”
“But I … I want to make Layla.”
He inhales sharply and studies my hands on top of the clay.
He comes over to the stand and looks into my eyes like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Do you have a picture of her in your mind?”
“Sure. Layla’s like the other side of me.”
“Do you love her?”
“What’s that got to do with making her come out of the clay?” I
frown at him.
His face changes and he steps back quick, like he’s said something he shouldn’t have or done what he shouldn’t. Like he’s worried that he’s made me mad.
“Working with the clay is … it’s about a kind of love. You have to see things like you love them. Whether it’s Layla or a brick … you have to see inside them to make the clay show you what’s there.”
How do you love a brick? But I can see he’s happy talking like this, even if it is crazy. “How do I start?”
“Here.” He takes my hands in his. I try to pull away but he holds firm, placing my hands gently on the lump of clay before he lets go. “Knead the clay, work your fingers into the clump. Learn how the clay moves under your hand. Feel how much pressure you need, and sense the difference against your fingertips and your knuckles and the heel of your hand. Start to try to make the shape round, like a head. Just work at that and, when you can see her, when you can see Layla’s head in your hands, then I’ll show you how to add clay and make the nose, lips, ears …”
So I start.
Warm, slow hands in the cool, soft clay, just trying to make it round.
I start.
Time stops. I don’t know how to say it another way. I stop thinking of when, only thinking of what. No more whens or ifs.
Layla in the clay.
She’s in there, waiting to come out. I use my fingers to try to find her. Like she’s hiding and I’ve got to find her and bring her out.
I don’t think of where I am when I’m working. Everything else goes away, this room, the neighborhood, the building on the other side of the block, Blade and Petey, I even forget Bill is there, listening, watching.
I don’t know how long we’ve been working but when I look up he’s looking at me. Not the way he was studying me when he sculpted me, but … I dunno, nice somehow. Nobody ever looked at me like that before.
“What?” I say.
“You were talking to yourself.”
“I was?”
“Yeah. Who’s Blade?”
“He’s … over on my side of the block.”
“He sounds like a very bad man.”
“He’s badder than words can say.” I think about telling Bill about how Blade got his name, about the drugs and the money and the girls, and Petey hunting me for him, but Bill wouldn’t believe me, wouldn’t get it. “I don’t even know words bad enough for Blade.”
Gary Paulsen Page 3