The Clay Head Benediction

by Marty Rafter

see me as well, and those men know exactly who I am, a spoiled alien walking in a dream, and one of those men pulls a dirt clod that was stuck onto the bottom of his hoe, and he throws it at me. It misses, but I don’t run. I stand there, and that seems to make the men even more frustrated because they reach down to the path, and come up with rocks and stones, and throw those at me as well. And finally, I am hit. Hard in the face, by something solid, and I bring my hands to my face just as I am hit, and in doing so; catch the object that hits me. And I look down into my hands, and the blood from my face runs onto the clay head that I am holding…. and then I rip the earmuffs from my ears.

  In the mirror, I am not bleeding, but my face still hurts. I touch my skin gently to feel for injury, and in a few places it is tender, but there is no real evident sign of being hit with anything… I force myself to eat something, and then, I think of the library again. Without any other reasonable solution to the library problem, I call Ben’s case worker, and once again, she does not answer. So, I pack my bag. Very gently, I collect every face that I have, and I go out into the street. I consider walking up to the library to see if they will let me inside, but I decide against it, and walk to St. Paul’s instead. The cathedral is cool, and smells of incense. I walk along the aisle and run my hands across the wood paneled walls as I go. The sounds of my footsteps echo through the building as I walk. I sit for a while, and watch the windows diffuse the light, and I think about all of the workers who built this building and wonder if any of them donated their craft. I would wager that a lot of them did, and that is as good an argument for religion as any, as far as I am concerned, or at least the ones that value great craftsmen. So, then I look around for a place to hide one of my heads, but even in looking, it starts to feel like an insult to all of the other people who donated their art to build this building.

  So, I go back out to the street and walk around the building looking for a place to put one of the heads, but nowhere on the building makes sense. In between the cathedral and the rectory, I come across a small koi pond presided over by a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. The rocks surrounding the pond are about the same size as one of the heads, and there, I find a place to hide one. Then, I sit and watch the pond for a while. From my seat, I have a view of the steps and I can see people trickling into the church. I watch them for a while and wonder how many of them really look at the art, or feel the walls, and I’m sure that some of them do, and some of them don’t, and then I see a priest exit the rectory building, and begin a slow progress down the stairs. He is heavy and old, and he seems uncertain of the quality of his joints, and I look from him to the statue of St. Francis, and wonder at how different they look, with the young St. Francis magnetic to creatures of the earth, and the old priest gingerly fighting the forces of himself. So, I stand up and walk over to him.

  “There are a lot of people already inside, father” I say

  “That’s good” says the priest

  “Is it some kind of Saints’ day?”

  “No...Not a major one. It is always some saint’s day” he says

  Then, the priest takes a few more gentle steps and says, “the 25th of October, yes. It is technically the feast of St. Crispin, but that is no longer on the liturgical calendar”

  “Like the battle of Agincourt” I say

  “You like Shakespeare, do you?” Says the priest as he continues on, paying more attention to his footing than to me.

  “Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, these wounds I had on Crispin’s day”

  “Ah…impressive” says the priest “are you planning on joining us inside?”

  “I was enjoying the pond” I say

  “Well, enjoy it, then.” He says, and he continues into the church without me.

  So, I go back and sit next to the pond, and the fish start to collect themselves in front of where I sit, and I look under the bench to see if someone had possibly decided to store a container with a bit of food for them there, but there is nothing. So I move to the other side of the small pond to try to indicate to them that I have nothing, but the fish follow me again, and I wonder if they know about what happened with me and the cat. If maybe, I had somehow managed to hold onto what the man with the dogs had, or St. Francis carved in stone will always have, and I decide that it would be best if I go to the zoo to find out.

  Getting to the zoo requires taking the bus, but the stop is close, and after I ask a few people, I manage to identify the proper one that will take me there. The rhythm of the big vehicle is soothing, and I rest my head against the window as we drive, and feel the vibration of the road course through my body. The people who advised me what route to take, however, were slightly wrong, and I ultimately discover that I am only on the bus that goes close to the zoo, but not directly to the gates, but the driver is understanding, and ignores the sign insisting that she not be talked to, and explains a lengthy transfer process that would allow me to be driven directly to the front. But instead, I decide to get off of the bus, and walk the rest of the distance myself, but before I do, I leave one of the better clay heads in the separation between my seat and the wall.

  The critical aspects of the zoo are unchanged from my childhood; the entrance is basically the same. There is still the same impossibly long escalator that used to fill my heart with expectation and joy, and for a moment, I even consider taking a ride on the train that I loved so much, but am disappointed to find that it is closed for the season. I walk while to the first exhibit, a habitat of tigers, and watch them for a long while. I try to still my mind and breathe, but there is a young man and his date to the left of me, and she is suffering through a lengthy monologue about a television program he saw about a man with a pet tiger who was eaten by the tiger, and while the story is, in fact, somewhat interesting, I am a bit disappointed that I cannot concentrate enough to make any kind of contact with the tigers. So, I walk a little further, and try to repeat the process again with the lions, and for a moment, one of the sleeping lions lifts its head and looks at me with its bored eyes and yawns. Then it stretches itself out further and expands its paws so that I can notice the articulation of each claw, and then rolls to its side in a dramatic return to sleep. I pass a few more exhibits, and watch an ostrich for a while, but I decide against trying to telepathically communicate with the ostrich because it looks deranged.

  Then, I walk to the area where the elephants are kept, but none of them are in the outside enclosure, probably owing to the slight chill in the air, so I proceed to the huge building that serves as their winter home. The first large pen is empty save for a young woman who is very efficiently pushing a wide broom. Beyond her, though an enormous door, I can see the shape of an elephant patently waiting to be returned to the space. I can see that there is an elaborate system of massive steel doors that allow the elephants to be moved from room to room without endangering the trainer, and a system of troughs that allow for easy cleaning. The room is painted a dusty yellow, and around the top is a border of geometric shapes intended to read as an African motif. In the next pen there is an adolescent elephant who is slowly pacing around. Behind that elephant I can also see another door that reveals the same network of passageways that I could discern in the first enclosure. The juvenile elephant is separated from an even larger enclosure that is about the size of an ice rink by a gigantic prison door made of steel tubing. In that enclosure is an even younger elephant who is vainly reaching his trunk through the bars into the adolescent elephant’s enclosure while its mother paces the perimeter of the concrete ice rink.

  I am alone in the building except for the trainer in the empty pen, so I stand and watch the adolescent elephant. I start to calm myself. I breathe gently, in and out through my nose, and try to match my heartbeat to the rhythm of the room, but the thump of the trainer’s broom and movement of the mother elephant in the next enclosure make it difficult, so I watch the adolescent elephant for a while instead. I try
to look into his eye, and he walks along the bars in front of me, and I notice something of an equine quality in his glace, and then I am struck by how unusual it is that something this large could be a prey animal, but it is true, and I realize that my intense stare is a distraction. So, I look to the ground instead, and try only to sense the elephant in the room. I close my eyes for a moment and breathe, and when I do, I start to feel the deep pulse of the elephant’s heart in my body. I try to stand very still and radiate calm. After a minute or two, I can feel the elephant‘s heart start to slow, and I watch as it moves along side of the bars. Directly in front of me, at the end of the bars, at about eye level with the elephant, there is a large metal link chain that was presumably hung there as some kind of diversion for the animal. The elephant stops pacing along the bars, and gently lifts the end of the chain with his trunk. Then, he drops the chain. Then, he picks up the chain again, and feeds it into his mouth, and turns towards me.

  The elephant lets the chain fall from his mouth again, and puts his trunk through the bars. I can look at him directly now, as he extends his trunk to me. I