The Monument (11 page)
Authors: Gary Paulsen
We were standing—Tru, Mick, Python, and I were standing by the end of the monument area. It was done and in some way looked like it had always been there. The last truck had brought in fresh sod and Mick and Tru and I—Mick finally let me stop drawing and help—cut and fit the sod around each tree and the stone benches in
the middle so that no new dirt showed and it seemed to have always been.
“Tonight is the official showing,” Tru said. “It is beautiful, Mick—what you’ve done. It’s hard to look at it.”
And it was—without crying. Next to each tree on a small stand stuck in the ground was a brass plaque with the name of a soldier and the date he had died. Later, when the trees were grown, each plaque would be fitted to a tree so that it would grow into the wood.
“Like the peaches, don’t you see?” Mick had explained to us. “So that they are truly part of the wood and will live because the tree lives.”
But it was not possible to look down the row of trees and see the names and not cry. It was in the same way as the Degas painting made me cry. They were all gone and I would never know them, and their lives did not go where they were supposed to go, but ended. Just ended.
“Tonight people will come and see what you have done,” Tru said. “Are you proud?”
Mick looked at her and something passed between them that I did not understand, some
knowing thing. He shook his head. “No. Not this kind of art. Any pride for me came when my art stirred up the hornet’s nest in the courthouse that night—when I found you, found Tru, Mrs. Langdon. If it takes killing eighteen young men to get a piece of sculpture, you cannot be proud, can you?”
I knew then. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. “You’re not going to be here tonight, are you?”
“Didn’t I tell you she was cunning?” Mick said to Tru. “And isn’t she?”
“You’re going to leave.”
“And I’m going with him,” Tru said.
“It was always going to happen,” Mick said. “I was always going to leave, wasn’t I? And she was always coming with me. It’s just that now it’s time.”
“But the monument …”
“It’s not mine. It belongs to the eighteen men and to Bolton. There is other work to do now.” He smiled. “Somewhere there is a place about to be overrun by paintings of Jesus and Elvis on black velvet, about to be swamped by ghastly
pictures of blondes with large breasts being saved by avenging heroes or gushy pictures of little girls and boys with large eyes.”
“And only you can save them,” I said, and as sad as I felt, I couldn’t help smiling.
“There it is, isn’t it?” He looked around at the town. “The Lone Artist rides again.”
“And Tonto,” Mrs. Langdon—Tru—said. “Let’s not forget Tonto.”
“Not a bit of it,” he said. “One can never forget Tonto.” He looked at me and was serious—or as serious as I’d ever seen him. “You will note what happens tonight, won’t you? And draw it, catch it, and we will send a card from … where was that, my dear?” He looked at Tru.
“Westfalia,” she said. “Westfalia, Texas—they want a statue in front of their new mall.”
“Ahh, yes. Texas. We will send you a card from there and I wish a full report on the reaction.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Then there is nothing else, is there?”
And I thought,
Oh, yes, oh dear God, yes, there are a thousand things to know and I want
to talk to you and listen to you
but nothing came out, not a word. They climbed into the station wagon which I saw now was full of cardboard boxes, and it started with smoke and noise and drove away, turned a corner, and was gone.
Gone.
And I should have been sad and maybe I was, a little, because I knew there were tears on my cheeks and I was pulling and twisting kind of hard at Python’s hair, but I was smiling because I couldn’t help thinking:
God help Westfalia, Texas.
Dear Tru and Mick:
I’m sorry to hear you had to spend the night in jail, Mick, but you shouldn’t have said that to the wife of the sheriff of Westfalia. You also shouldn’t have written what you said to her on a postcard. I’m sure there are laws against it. But isn’t it lucky that Tru was there to get you out and get the sculpture going?
You wanted a report on how it went here
.
It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. There never was what you’d call a crowd of people and almost nobody talked. People kind of came all evening and walked down through the trees and nodded and smiled and seemed to be very polite, but when they looked down and saw the names on the plaques, even though some of them had been here before, you could tell it made them want to cry
.
Even Harley was quiet and looked choked up. I stayed off to the side all evening until close to midnight, drawing. When it was too dark to draw I tried to memorize pictures that I could draw later
.
I think everybody liked the monument, if like is the right word, and by midnight everybody was gone except for one person
.
Mr. Takern had brought a little canvas folding stool, and he put it next to the tree with his son’s name and sat there until after midnight. He didn’t talk or anything, just sat, and once in a while he would reach over and pet the side of the tree, the bark, and I couldn’t watch
it after a while, but maybe after a long time I will be able to draw it
.
I guess that’s what makes an artist, isn’t it?
Send me any new addresses you get, and I will report on any new developments with the monument
.
Love,
Rachael
P.S. — I know
— draw.
I will
.
Of
The Monument
, Gary Paulsen writes:
Ten or more years ago I read that Katherine Anne Porter once said, “Art is what we find when the ruins are cleared away.”
Since then this book has worked at me. I wanted to show art, show how it can shake and crumble thinking; how it can bring joy and sadness at the same time; how it can own and be owned, sweep through lives and change them—how the beauty of it, the singular, sensual, ripping, breath-stopping, wondrous, frightening beauty of it can grow from even that ultimate ruin of all ruins: the filth of war.
Gary Paulsen
is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books:
The Winter Room, Hatchet
, and
Dogsong
. His novel
The Haymeadow
received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Among his Random House books are
The Time Hackers; Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day; The Quilt
(a companion to
Alida’s Song
and
The Cookcamp
);
The Glass Café; How Angel Peterson Got His Name; Caught by the Sea: My life on Boats; Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books; The Beet Fields; Soldier’s Heart; Brian’s Return, Brian’s Winter
, and
Brian’s Hunt
(companions to
Hatchet
);
Father Water, Mother Woods;
and five books about Francis Tucket’s adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. Their most recent book is
Canoe Days
. The Paulsens live in New Mexico, in Alaska, and on the Pacific Ocean.