The Clay Head Benediction

by Marty Rafter

hordes of skaters gliding on the ice rink at PPG place. On New Year’s Eve, the square will be filled with people. In recent years, the city has made Market Square a hub for its annual First Night celebration. My plan is this, by 2am on New Year’s Day, the party will be cleared, and all of the celebrants will be heading home. After that, the city work crews will come and work through the night, dissembling the bandstands, sweeping up plastic cups, and returning the city to its normal condition. On that morning, when the crews are gone, I will put the head right in the center of the square. Right in the very middle. And hopefully, because the crews will be home with their families eating pork and sauerkraut, and the police will be resting after a long night of policing, the head will survive the day. On January 2nd, when people return to work, the head will be there, and because the square was recently cleaned, the returning workers will think that the head is there by design. And the commuters, and the people who work in the buildings, and the students, and the drifters, and everyone who passes by it, will see it, as just what it is, a free art project. Then, it will slowly come to light that the head was not placed there by any placing authority, no arts organization, no civic club, and there will be some discussion about removing it. Hopefully, by that point it will be so beloved that there will be editorials defending it in the newspaper, and little discussions about it in offices, that take people’s minds off of the drudgery of their day and the horror of world events, and it will become some renegade symbol of accidental civic pride, like the Hollywood sign or the Eiffel tower. Something impermanent that people will care about for permanent reasons, and then maybe someone else will do something just like it, or not, I can’t think that far ahead. First I need to plan.

  Looking at the stage where the performers are playing, I realize that that particular structure is unlikely to be disassembled after the New Year’s festivities, and most likely, it will be the main site for activities during the night. I walk around the base of the stage looking for a lose panel, or something underneath the stage that may allow me to hide something there, but in doing so, I run afoul of a sound technician who reprimands me for standing where I do not belong. Then, I walk behind some of the restaurants that surround the square, to see if there is some spot by the dumpsters that I can stash the head, so that I can bring it out in the early morning of New Year’s day, but then I have a vision of the head being crushed under the weight of an errant beer keg or thrown into the garbage as forgotten trash, so I ditch that idea, and start to look further afield. I walk down the road to Point State Park, the small spit of land at the end of the city where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio. There may be a suitable hiding spot here, but the park may also be serving as the larger party venue for New Year’s, so I instead walk across the street to the gleaming silver buildings of Gateway center. I notice there, in front of the building that houses KDKA, the station responsible for the nation’s first radio broadcast, a small strip of grass alongside the building. In that strip of grass, there is as heavy wooden chest about three feet high with a big steel lock on the front, and I deduce that that chest probably holds some sort of broadcasting equipment or perhaps wiring to be using during the party. It is a perfect solution, just like the anarchist meetings in Chesterton’s Man Who was Thursday; the best way not to arouse suspicion is to hide in plain sight.

  The next day, I call Ron at the rental office and ask if I can borrow one of the company work trucks for the afternoon. He is eager to help, after I explain to him that I want to haul some materials out of the building. Then, I take the truck to the hardware store and buy the supplies to construct a box. I bring the supplies back to the building, and then, to make good on what I had explained to Ron, I spend a little time cleaning out some of the debris from the building’s basement and taking it to the dump. After that, taking advantage of the fact that nearly all of the student tenants had gone home for the Christmas holiday, I spend the night building the storage box in the laundry room using measurements I had taken of the head in my apartment as a guide. After that, I give it a quick coat of paint, and after the paint dries, I paint on some convincing looking official markings to make the box look like something belonging to one of the concession companies servicing the party.

  After I sleep for a while, I spend some time thinking about how exactly I can move the box and the head to the site. Ron would probably let me borrow the truck again, but he probably wouldn’t let me keep it overnight. Also, I would like to be able to be able to get as close to the site as possible without arousing suspicion, and on New Year’s Eve there are likely to be roadblocks in place very early. I cannot think of an acceptable solution, so instead, the next day, I take the bus back downtown again to do a bit more reconnaissance. Ultimately, I decide that the site where I found my inspiration at Gateway center is the most logical place to stash the box. The buildings there surround a central courtyard that has a large fountain. The complex’s center plaza may see a bit of foot traffic on New Year’s Eve, but it is unlikely that there will be any events there, so the box, if placed correctly, in one of the grassy areas along side Building One, should not draw much attention. From Gateway Center, I will only have to walk a few blocks with the head until I reach Market Square.

  After I finalize my plan for the box, I plot my escape. There is a river trial that runs along the Monongahela River starting at Point State Park that goes past the jail, and finally hooks up with the Eliza Furnace bike trail, a trail more commonly known as the jail trail. I walk all the way from the city, past the bike rental concession, and past the jail, and onto the trail which runs alongside the parkway all the way to the point where it ends, and I have to walk across a few surface streets and into Panther Hollow Park. The park runs roughly perpendicular to jail trial and ends in lower Oakland. From there, I can take a set of steep stairs from the lower street to the parking lot directly behind the University of Pittsburgh art building which also happens to be across from the library that I am pointlessly permanently barred from entering. From there, it will be an easy walk back to my apartment.

  As I walk along the trail, and try to think of a way to get the box down to the city, the solution to my problem almost literally runs right into me. A woman, dressed in brightly colored winter exercise clothes riding a silver hybrid bike rides directly towards me on the right hand side of the path. Her helmeted head is turned to the side, and she is talking, and when she looks up, she is within fifteen feet of me. She quickly veers, and I notice the object of her attention. Behind her bike, in a low yellow pod with two wheels that looks something like a motorcycle sidecar is her child. The pod would be perfect. A bike would be perfect. I could ride the bike into town on this trail without getting too much attention, and then, ride all the way back, or even better still, rent the bike, drop off the box, and then return the bike before any of the festivities begin. Then, I could take the bus home for a while and wait and rest, and go back down to the city towards the end of the night so that I am fresh and alert when it is time to put out the head. So, I return back along the trail, and walk back to the bike rental concession, and the woman there happily informs me that they do have that exact configuration of bike available for a multi day rental, and they also will be open on New Year’s Eve to return it. And so, after a quick transaction, I am riding home on a bicycle with a nice sturdy child carrier behind it.

  At home, I stash the bicycle and carrier in the building’s laundry room, and go upstairs to rest for a while. After I wake up and get ready, I go back down to check how the carrier will accommodate the storage box. The box is a bit too large, but I am able to make some modifications that allow for it to be carried pretty easily. However, the modifications require removing the canopy from the carrier; I think I will be able to put it back on, but not easily. So, on the day of the event, I will have to return home first before returning the bike to the rental company. Ultimately, this will mean that I should probably try to unload
the box sometime very early in the morning on the 31st, or perhaps even late at night on the 30th. On the 29th, I make a trial dry run with the empty box. The ride is easy, there is only one major downhill section that requires special attention to the trailer, and for the most part, my unusual accessory seems to attract very little attention. The drop off looks like it will be easy too. I am so excited that I can barely sleep that night.

  Early in the morning of the 30th, I take extra care to clean all of the building as thoroughly as possible in order to distract myself from the impending task. Then, I go out for a walk to burn off a bit more nervous energy and eat a heavy lunch at the noodle shop. By the mid-afternoon, I am tired enough to sleep and I fall into a dreamless slumber that lasts until 9pm. Then, I wake up, drink a glass of milk, take a quick shower, and make a final assessment of the head. Everything is perfect, as I wrap the head in a thick protective blanket, and bind the blanket tightly with tape. Then I lift the head to