by Drawn Words
"The whole city’s a marketplace, dearie. Your drawings are pretty, but I don’t know who might want to buy them. Maybe if you drew religious scenes instead of farm animals you might sell some of them to the crazy monks."
Ewen left the public house and wandered the streets, looking for some kind of shop that might trade in artworks. Several hours later, when he found none, he decided to open his own impromptu business. He took a half dozen of his best renderings from his bag and propped them up on the walkway, against the front of a cobbler’s shop. Before he could finish setting up his display, the cobbler burst from the shop and yelled at him to get that trash off his property.
"I’m sorry," said Ewen. "I didn’t know the walkway was private."
The cobbler frowned at him and looked at the artwork, stroking his long salt-and-pepper beard with a heavily callused hand.
"Those are pretty fair drawings," said the cobbler. "Did you make them yourself?"
"Yes sir, I did. And lots more. Would you like to see them? They are all for sale, if you would like one."
"No. I have no use for drawings, but I can see you have some skill with your hands. Looking to make some money in the big city, are you?"
"Yes sir, I am. I’m new in town and don’t have any coins yet."
The cobbler made a sour face. "I can see you aren’t from the city just from your clothing. They don’t look like they were made by a proper tailor."
Ewen looked down at his garments. "My mother made them."
The cobbler rolled his eyes. "Boy, if you are in need of money, I might find use in my shop for an assistant, if you can handle the work. I cannot pay very much, but if you are any good, you might learn a useful trade."
Ewen pointed to the sign on the front of the cobbler’s shop, a poor rendering of a shoe, much larger than life, but crudely drawn, probably by the cobbler himself.
"Would you like me to make you a proper sign?" Ewen asked.
"There’s nothing wrong with my sign," the shopkeeper said, glaring at him. "I want you to help me make shoes."
Ewen’s first thought was to pack away his drawings and move on, but the gnawing hunger in his stomach was overpowering.
"I don’t know how to make shoes," Ewen said.
"I’ll teach you what you need to know," said the cobbler. "If you have any talent with your hands, you can learn."
The cobbler’s name was Logan, and over the next few months he trained Ewen to fashion simple footwear. Ewen’s shoes were not fancy like the cobbler’s own handiwork, but they were wearable and served well for the working people who couldn’t afford the master’s better wares. Ewen was allowed to sleep nights on the shop floor, in exchange for a portion of his meager wages. The cobbler also kept him barely fed for another portion of his dwindling earnings and only a pittance was left over for paper and art supplies, but it was enough for his few needs.
Logan had a collection of wooden foot models of different sizes, and Ewen was expected to make shoes to fit each of them, all exactly the same except for the size. He learned quickly to turn out a simple clog design, but before long the monotony of the task began to bore him. He wanted to try his hand at the more sophisticated models the cobbler crafted, and watched him carefully.
"Master Logan," he said to the cobbler, "what is the purpose of the little crown symbol you stamp onto the soles of the shoes you make?"
"That is my trademark," the cobbler replied. "It identifies the shoe as having been crafted by a master cobbler–me."
"So a simple mark signifies your work. Isn’t that like what they used to call ‘writing’?"
"Writing? You mean like books?" the shopkeeper said, looking surprised. "No, no. It is just a mark to tell my shoes apart from those made by other cobblers."
Ewen wondered what the odd word ‘books’ meant, but asked, "Can I put a trademark on the shoes I make, too?"
The cobbler looked puzzled. "But then my customers would get confused over which shoes were really made by me."
"Oh, I don’t want to copy your trademark," Ewen said. "I’ll make up my own mark, to insure sure no one confuses your superior craftsmanship with my novice work."
"Of that there’s nary a need, I think. But if it would please you, go right ahead. Just be sure to make your mark different enough from my own so there can be no mistake."
"You can be sure of that, I promise."
Ewen drew and redrew sketches of his intended mark on paper first, getting it just right before he began embossing the design on the soles of the finished shoes. Instead of the small crown logo that Logan stamped into the leather of the shank, up near the heel, Ewen decided to make something larger, using the whole flat outsole of the heavy clogs that he toiled over for his mark.
His trademark was a portrait of his father.
It was a hard-working face, all bristly and rugged, yet still kind. The softness about the eyes was not lost on the rough underside of the heavy work shoes. Each of the portraits took nearly as long to tool into the hard sole as it took to produce the entire shoe, and Ewen worked at applying his trademark to the shoes in the evening by candlelight, after the cobbler had gone upstairs for the night, so the old man would not know how much time he was wasting.
Worked into the portrait, skillfully hidden in the twisting whiskers of his father’s beard, were the drawn words, "Father, forgive me."
Over the ensuing months, sales of the clogs were brisk, and Ewen soon learned to duplicate his trademark quickly. It seemed he could never make the shoes fast enough to build up the shop’s inventory to the levels Logan demanded. While he toiled in the back of the shop, Logan sold the shoes in the front, so Ewen didn’t know who was buying his creations, but someone surely was. A lot of someones. Ewen kept tally on a scrap of his drawing paper, one tick for each pair of clogs he made, and each group of ten circled. There were a lot of circles.
One day while Ewen was in the front of the shop taking orders from Logan, one of the more affluent customers came in and asked to be fitted with a pair of clogs. Logan tried to convince the customer that his brogues and balmorals were much better suited to the customer’s station, but the customer insisted on a pair of "those shoes with the faces on the soles." Logan finally relented and sold him the clogs, charging the customer half again what he normally charged the common people for them, but the customer left the shop happy nonetheless.
That evening, after the workday was done, Logan fished a few coins out of the till and handed them to Ewen, saying, "I’m afraid I don’t have any more use for you here. You’ll have to go."
"But why?" Ewen asked.
"Look at this place, boy. The shoes are piling up in our inventory."
Ewen looked and saw the oxfords and balmorals and pumps, all the master’s shoes, that had gone unsold over the past weeks.
"But people are still buying plenty of my clogs," Ewen said. "I’ve made nearly two hundred pairs and hardly any of them are left."
"Clogs are cheap," Logan said. "I need to sell proper shoes to a better class of people to make a good living. I need to sell the shoes that I make. I’m sorry, but an eager worker like you is sure to find something else to do in a city this size."
That night, with only a few saved coins in his pocket, Ewen packed his drawings in his sack and left the cobbler’s shop.
* * *
Several weeks went by after he had been discharged from the cobbler’s shop, and Ewen still could not find another job. Work was scarce this time of the year with the harvest recently over and many unemployed farm hands looking to find a niche in the city before the winter cold set in. Begging was the only job Ewen could manage, making lifelike chalk drawings of cows and chickens on the wooden walkway near the center of town to attract the passersby.
Even at begging Ewen was a failure, barely making enough small change for the occasional drink of ale to go along with the crusts he fished from the waste bins behind the public houses. He thought about leaving the city, but with winter coming and the harvest alre
ady in, there were no field jobs to be had nor crops to be filched. It seemed his only option would be to return to his mother and brother, but he could hardly face them after the tragedy he had caused back home.
Thinking more and more of his dead father, Ewen began sketching his portrait on the sidewalk as a tribute, and business instantly picked up. He seemed to have hit on something, as pedestrians would stop and admire his work with much more frequency than when he drew farm animals.
Each morning, Ewen touched up the larger-than-life portrait of his father he had drawn with colored chalk on the wooden walkway near the center of town. For some reason, the local rascals would deface it nightly after he had left to find a warm spot for the night, adding a crude halo over his father’s head. If it didn’t rain during the night, it only took a few minutes with a damp rag to erase the halo and add more chalk to the places where the color had worn thin from pedestrians’ footsteps.
Hidden cunningly in the chalk portrait, just as on the shoes, were the drawn words, "Father, forgive me." On one side of the portrait, Ewen drew a couple of large coins, as a suggestion to the people who stopped to look. Ewen sat on the other side of the portrait and spent the hours sketching on what little paper he had remaining.
Many of the pedestrians seemed to recognize the face on the sidewalk and stopped to admire it. Ewen noted many of those interested spectators wore the shoes he had created. Once in a while, one of them would drop a real coin onto his chalked ones.
One day, as Ewen struggled to keep his drawing paper from fluttering away in the chill autumn breeze, he was distracted when a thin man dressed in black robes roomy enough to hold two of him looked over his shoulder with curious eyes. "That’s a queer sort of drawing," the man said, looking at the paper. "Those shapes look almost like they might be some sort of writing."
"It’s just some designs I’m working on," Ewen said, hurriedly stuffing the bundle of sheets into his sack.
The man looked down at the portrait on the sidewalk and said, "I rather like that. It’s the same face as the one on the shoes, isn’t it?"
Ewen nodded yes and smiled, hoping the man liked the portrait enough to drop a coin for him. Under the black robes, Ewen saw he was wearing a pair of his clogs.
"So, you’re the one who made all the faces, then?"
Ewen nodded again. He was certain the fellow would leave a coin or two now.
"Could you answer a question for me and settle a dispute?" the man said, pointing at the sidewalk. "What’s the meaning of those odd figures there, around the beard?"
Ewen’s face flushed red. First the shapes on the paper, and now the hidden ones in the portrait. The man surely knew his drawn words were more than just random designs. The memory of the elders taking away his father played out briefly in Ewen’s mind. Maybe it was time to own up to his work.
"I . . . I . . . it means ‘Father, forgive me,’" Ewen said.
The man’s eyebrows arched and he looked over the portrait again. "Father, forgive me? Is that supposed to be some kind of a prayer?"
Ewen thought quickly. "A prayer. Yes, a prayer. This is a picture of Jesus, and those are, um, His dying words on the cross."
The man frowned. "Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.’"
Ewen stiffened. "Well, maybe I heard it wrong."
"I thought it might be Jesus," the man said, "but shouldn’t He be drawn with a halo? I’m afraid that He looks just like a common farmer the way you’ve drawn him here."
"Jesus was a common man," Ewen said.
The man reflected on that a few seconds. "Well, I just think He looks better with the halo."
Ewen thought about the halo the children added nightly to the portrait and asked, "Do you know about the halo?"
"Why, of course! You made the shoes, right?" the man said, pointing to his feet.
"Yes, but what about–"
"And the odd shapes in the beard mean, ‘Father, forgive me,’ but it’s not in any kind of writing I’ve ever seen."
Ewen nodded, then thought about what the man implied. "You say you’ve seen writing? I mean, not my little squiggles, but real writing?"
"No," the man said, looking away nervously. "That’s not what I meant."
"But you said–"
"You misheard," the man said, fishing a coin out of his pocket and dropping it on the sidewalk. "You be careful now."
The coin rolled along the walk and Ewen scrabbled after it, snatching it while it was still in motion and squirreling it away safely in a deep pocket. When Ewen looked up, the man in black was gone.
* * *
The next morning at his usual begging spot, Ewen found that someone had once again added a crude halo to his sidewalk portrait during the night. Instead of wiping it away this time, Ewen decided to let it remain, adding color and smoothing out the curve of it instead. There was no use fighting it, especially if the notion that his father’s portrait was Jesus Christ was gaining some popularity. Maybe it would bring him a few extra coins to play up the phony religious angle. Perhaps that was the reason all along why the face had proved so popular.
The plan seemed to be working, and by late in the afternoon Ewen had collected more than enough coins for a decent meal when a familiar figure showed up to admire his handiwork.
"It’s a sure moneymaker, that drawing of yours," the man said. It was Logan, the cobbler.
Ewen looked up at him from his seat on the walkway. "It’s brought me a bit of luck," he said.
"Look, boy," said the cobbler, "I was a little hasty in sending you off like that. Since then everyone in town has come into my shop asking for a pair of those shoes of yours with the damned face."
Ewen smiled and touched up a spot on the sidewalk with some chalk.
"See, I’m asking you to come back," said the cobbler. "I’ll give you half again what I was paying you before, if you’ll just come back to my shop."
"Oh, I don’t know," said Ewen. "I don’t think I want to make any more of those clunky clogs."
"Then I’ll show you how to make the fancy, expensive models," Logan said. "You don’t even have to make shoes at all, if you don’t want to. I’ll make them. You just come back to the shop and put the faces on the soles."
"What, put my trademark on your superior work?" Ewen said in mock horror. "Won’t the customers be confused?"
"Lad, I need those faces on the shoes."
Ewen looked away. "It’s just a face. Why is that so important to you now?"
Logan lifted his foot, and for a second Ewen thought he was going to kick him. But Ewen recognized the shoe as one of his own clogs, and the cobbler held his foot up for him to look at. There on the sole was the face, his trademark, just as Ewen had tooled it into the hard leather. A bit worn from wear, perhaps, but still recognizable as his father’s visage.
Where the leather sole had worn under the ball of the cobbler’s foot, a round halo had appeared, framing his father’s face.
"People say it’s a miracle," the cobbler said. "A sign from God."
Ewen laughed. No wonder the portrait, with the added halo, was becoming so popular.
"Look, boy, come back to the shop and I’ll double what I was paying you before. If you don’t come back and put faces on my shoes, I’m going to be put out on the streets."
Ewen stared at Logan a few seconds, then said, "It’s not so bad on the streets. You’ll get used to it." He dug deeply in the pocket where he hid his coins, and came up with a hard-earned quarter, holding it out to the cobbler. "Here, Master Logan, go buy yourself a draught on me."
* * *
Another week passed and the days grew chillier. One early morning found Ewen cutting through a back alley on his way to his usual sidewalk begging post. A patch of color on one grimy wall of the building near the mouth of the alley caught his attention. It was his father’s face, painted right on the bricks.
The painting was an obvious imitation of the sidewalk portrait he had labored over for the past few
weeks, and not at all a bad effort. The halo was featured even more prominently than he had been drawing it, so the lie that the face was Jesus must have been spreading. Ewen also noted that the drawn words that he normally disguised in the beard were all wrong in this portrait. Instead of his graceful curves, there were harsh angles and loops that bore little resemblance to his original drawing.
As Ewen reached the main street, he spotted a group of three boys a few years younger than himself loitering near the mouth of the alleyway. Their clothing was ragged and their faces showed a trace of grime, so Ewen surmised they were runaways like himself.
"Excuse me, lads, do you know anything about this painting on the wall here?" Ewen asked.
The boys peeked around the corner of the building to see the painting. "Oh, that drawing is all over town," said the redheaded boy.