The Clay Head Benediction by Marty Rafter - HTML preview

“So what about all this?” I ask

“The reception, you mean?  It is in your honor.  We appealed to your better judgment...” He says

“I don’t remember that” I say

“You will”

“I know what this is, you know.  I know this is a dream." I say

“I know.  It is your dream.  Your dream is the gallery, and me…and…surprise, surprise, all your friends are here”

“It is not my dream that all this happens” I say

The man smiles, “Of course it is.  Why else would everyone be here?  I didn’t think of it.  You did.  You planned your own coming out party…and you invited everyone you used to know to see your big redemption…the vindication for all these wasted years.”

“It won’t happen like that.  I’m not looking for notoriety...” I say

“Not yet.”  The man says.  “But you will have the rest of your life to question your decision” 

I wake up in a panic.  For the first time since I was a small child, I feel like I have had a genuine nightmare.  I have had plenty of strange dreams, weird dreams, scary dreams, but not nightmares.  And so, I sit alone in the darkness and think, and the hum of the refrigerator keeps me company until I can’t take it anymore, and I get out of bed and try to draw, but as soon as I pick up the pencil, I can feel it is a bad idea, and so I absentmindedly look through some of my notebooks for a while.  And it is there, a poem:

Come! O, human child!

To the woods and waters wild,

With a fairy hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping then

           you can understand

So, I get dressed in my winter clothes, long underwear, jeans, a sweater, my hat and coat and gloves, and push my blankets into a bag, and I leave the apartment.  I walk for a long while, and finally, I am in the pine grove again, where I lie down gently on the ground.  The wind blows and the big trees sway, and the darkness wraps its arms around my soul, and I sleep. 

When I wake, the ground has developed a frost and I am freezing, but I slept.  The mania of feeling like my project must be completed right away is gone, and is replaced by the certainty that it will be completed.  But I am not ready.  A great project requires great discipline, and nervous energy alone will not make it come true.  It is still early in the morning when I collect my belongings and leave the grove, and I am happy not to encounter any early morning dog walkers as I briskly walk away from the park with by duffel bag of damp bed clothes.  I return to the building refreshed and happy and put my pillow and comforter into the drier before sweeping the hallways and inspecting the area around the dumpster.  Then, I return to my apartment where I pack away my crafting supplies, and tend to the mundane administrative tasks of normal living.  After I have paid some bills, and shower and eat, I make a second quick inspection of the building, and then walk to the entrance to the busway where I take the first bus that arrives. 

I ride the bus for a while until in finally makes its way down Grant Street and past the main port authority office where I get off and boy a monthly pass.  Then, I after studying the maps, I take the bus to the big camping store on the Carson Street where I buy a heavy winter sleeping bag and a mountaineering bivy sack, which is a sort of waterproof cocoon for sleeping outdoors.  Then, I ride the bus home and made another check of the building.  At dusk, I pack the sleeping bag and the bivy sack into my duffel bag, and walk back to the grove where I spend a second dreamless night sleeping alongside the stand of bushes where I had originally left my shoes.  The next days follow the same routine.  I would wake in the woods, pack my sleeping bag and bivy sack into my duffel bag and walk home at dawn, check the building, and then I would spend the day on the bus, riding aimlessly around the city feeling the rhythm of the vehicle and watching the neighborhoods pass by the windows.  Then, towards evening, I would return home, do a bit of work around the building, and then go back to the grove to sleep.  It developed into the closest thing I have ever had to a decent wintertime schedule in five years. It rained hard for a few days, too hard for the bivy sack, and I stayed in my apartment, not sleeping, listening to music, but as soon as the rain was gone, I was back to the woods.  When the time came that I would normally apply for the seasonal work at the post office, I let it pass, and continued my routine.  It was peaceful; the dreamless nights, conversations with regular acquaintances on the bus, little problems to fix around the building.  The only downside is that I was unable to locate Ben.  Twice I stopped at his apartment and left messages for him, but I never heard from him, so I could only hope that he had found a peaceful little ritual of his own.   It was December 8th, 37 nights in the woods, before I started thinking about the project again.

It happened because the woman from the cathedral got on the bus.  She recognized me, but I did not recognize her, I just noticed that an old woman was intent on sharing my seat.  Which, itself was not that unusual, because I was sitting in the front, and lots of lonely old people seek out strangers for company.  But when the woman s sits down, she says “I was hoping that I would see you again”

“You were?”  I ask

“Oh yes.”

“Well, I’m glad you found me” I say

“You don’t remember me do you?”  She says

“I’m afraid I don’t” I say

“You gave me a present early last month…at church.”

“Oh, yeah.  I’m sorry, of course, I remember now.  Did you like it?”

“Oh, yes. I like it very much. “

“Well, that’s good” I say

“I’ve had a bit of trouble keeping the cat from playing with it though.  She likes to bat at it with her paw, you know...”

“That’s funny” I say

“That doesn’t bother you?”  She asks

“No, why would it...”

“Oh, you know...people can be touchy” she says

“I’m not one of them” 

“Well, that is good for you” she says reaching out to pat my arm. 

“There is something I have been wondering about since I met you...” the woman begins

“Oh?”

“What does this is all a misunderstanding mean?”

“Well, normally it means that one person has said something, but another person might not be hearing it correctly.  Like, for example…”

“Oh, honey, I know what it means.  I’m wondering why it said that on the note”

“What note?  I ask

“The note inside the present you gave me”

“Oh, well.  It is kind of long story, but I guess the condensed version that I originally made it for someone else.”

“That was one of my guesses.  A girl?”

“Yes, but not a romantic thing.  More like a professional disagreement.”  I say

“Do you want to talk about it?”  She asks

“Probably not” 

“Ok” the woman says, and she is quiet for a little while

“It is just a long story...I could tell you the whole thing if you have time”  I say

“Oh, you don’t have to do that sweetie…you know what my husband used to say?  He used to say old friends are called that for a reason...they get old, sometimes people just move on in different directions”

“That’s good advice” I say

“It can be, but he was wrong twice as much as he was right”

“Has he been gone a long time?”  I ask

“Thirteen years”

“I’m sorry” I say

“Oh sweetie, I don’t blame you” she says laughing at her own joke “It was cancer of the lung” she smiles sweetly at me, and I smile back at her.

“You know what I have been thinking about?”  I say, “A big project...I’ve been….”

“You aren’t getting off at the next stop are you?”  She asks

“No”

“I am…but I want to hear about this project of yours”

“It's no problem” I say

“I could just ride for a bit, I don’t have anything to do” she says “I can miss my stop”

“Don’t do that.  I will get off with you, and walk you home, I’ll tell you on the way”

“Or you could come for coffee” she offers

And so I do, I walk with her to her little apartment with the slow elevator and green carpet, and listen as she shows me the shelf where the head I made sits in its box alongside a dying spider plant, a porcelain Virgin Mary and a ceramic sad clown figurine, and she shows me pictures of her children and her husband. And it is where I tell someone else the whole story.  Not the dreams part or the part about sleeping outside, but the rest:  Ben, the library, the Mouthwash Man, Maria Olson and all of the heads.  And she listens like I am telling her the most normal thing she has ever heard.  I have found that the generation that grew up without television has a pretty liberal definition of what is normal, as long as you look normal, they let you get away with some kooky stuff, and act like it is no big deal.  Then I tell her about the big project, and she says, “You are pretty good at making clay heads.”

“So, do you think I should make something involving clay heads?”  I ask her

“Or, you could try to make a big one” she says

“Do you think so?”

“Have you ever tried it?”  She asks

And I realized I never had, nor had I even really thought about it.  The whole thing is so obvious it is almost stupid.  And I want to jump up and start thanking her, but then I remember that there is no good way to bake the clay, and that big pieces of oven bake clay will be expensive, but I thank her just the same because at least it is a start.  And we sit and chat some more, and I eat some butter cookies and drink two cups of coffee, and we are both thankful for the company.

That night, I sleep in the woods again, but I don’t fall asleep as quickly, and in the morning I return to the building tired and depressed.  I repeat the same pattern for two more nights until I realize that my respite has finally come to an end.  After a final restless night in the woods, I wash my sleeping bag and clean the bivy sack and pack them both into my duffel bag for the last time.  Then I ride the bus down to the north side where I put the duffel under a railroad underpass a few yards from a homeless encampment with a little note that says “free” slipped into the luggage tag. Then, I ride the bus back to the building and work for a little while.  Then, with a little bit of daylight remaining I make two cheese sandwiches and walk to the library.  When I get there, it is dark but the building is still open, so I sit outside on the benches and wait.  At seven, I see the familiar figure of Ben emerge carrying two large shopping bags.  I watch him for a few seconds before walking up to him.

“It has been a long time, buddy” I say as I approach him

“I told you, once your girlfriend came into the picture, you would disappear.”  He says.

“I tried to stop and see you twice”

“Not here you didn’t” He says

“No, I stopped where you live.  At your apartment” I say

“If you had stopped here, you would know that I don’t live there anymore”

“I’m not allowed in the library anymore, Ben”

“Still with that convenient excuse, huh?”  He says, too loudly.

“It isn’t a convenient excuse.  It is the truth.”

“Just like how you went to my case workers office, and had to be hauled out by the guards, too”

“It didn’t happen like that, Ben.”

“Oh, I bet it didn’t.  ...just like how they had no right to kick you out of the library, too, huh?  Nothing is ever your fault”

“Oh, come on, Ben.  That is ridiculous.  I made you a sandwich.”  I say, reaching into my bag

“I don’t want a fucking sandwich from you. “

“There is no reason to be angry, Ben”

“There is every god damn reason to be angry.  ...I had to move because of you”

“Because of me?”

“Yeah, you showing up.  Stirring up trouble with my neighbors.  Stealing from me”

“Ben”

“No, stop following me”

“Are you playing the trumpet at all?”

“Don’t talk to me about my trumpet, Luke.  Don’t talk to me about anything.  “

“Ben, I’m sorry I haven’t been around, but it isn’t what you think.  First off, it didn’t even work out with that girl...”

“Why would it?  What kind of person is attracted to a thief and liar!”  He screams.

“Ben, I’m not lying”

“Jesus doesn’t share your biases, asshole!”  Ben screams back at me

“What are you talking about Ben?”

“I am talking about you.  You superior motherfucker!”  he yells

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Coats emerge from the library door.  When he sees Ben yelling at me, he turns around and goes back into the building and reemerges with a guard.  Both men stand there and watch us.  Then, the guard goes back in, and I assume that he is planning to call the police.

“Ben, please, I think that guard is going to call the police” I say

“Let him.  I will tell them what you fucking did.  How you broke into my apartment and...”

I stand and watch Ben, with his rage showing no signs of abating, I decide then to leave.  When I walk away Ben does stop yelling, and so, I walk alone in silence into the darkness of the evening.  After I am out of sight of the library, I open my bag and take out one of the sandwiches and eat while I walk.   The exercise feels good.  I missed walking, but walking is always about thinking for me.  Not the bus though, the bus is diesel powered mediation...transcendental bus riding.  I might trademark it like the Maharishi did, charge a lot of money for classes, and get rich for teaching people how to ride a bus.  Stranger things have happened.  Like Ben.  Ben is a stranger thing, but if he doesn’t want to be friends with me, that’s fine.  It is not my job to force people to be my friend.  After a while of walking, I decide to stop by the noodle restaurant to see if the old woman has been feeding the cats.  The paper plate is there, but there is no food on it.  I walk over to check the plate to see if it is new, and when I do, the alleyway door opens.

“Oh, no!” says the old woman as she opens the door and sees me in the alley.

“I’m sorry” I say, aware of the effect and unexpected person in a dark alley can have.

She stops the door from swinging closed, and says to me, “Oh.  It's you.  I thought I told you that I didn’t want you back here”

“I’m not really back here.” I say

“You’re back here” she says

“This is actually the first time I’ve been here since I talked to you, I was just walking by and was curious about the cats”

“I told you the cats are fine.  I am never going to forget to feed the cats”

“I guess you’ve proved that” I say

“I wasn’t lying”

“I wasn’t inferring that you were lying” I say

“I guess you can be on your way then” she says

“Can I ask you one favor?”

“I’d prefer if you weren’t back here”

“I promise.  I won’t be back here again, but I was just wondering…all these newspapers, can I take them?”

“As long as you don’t come back, yes”

“I might need to make two trips.”  I say

“Fine.  Two trips, then, if I see you here after that...I’m calling the police”

“Don’t worry..It won’t be a problem.  I am just going to take these papers” I say

And so, I carry the papers back to my apartment.  Then I return, and carry the final huge stack back.  After that, I sit and read through them for a while, but for the most part, I find the news, even old news depressing, so I force myself to fall asleep.  When I sleep, I dream that I am back in the grove, and it is summer, and I am lying down to sleep.  The woman from the bus is there, and as I lie down she brings me a blanket, which warms me, and protects me from the wind, and I sleep, and I dream of being asleep, and when I wake up I feel fantastic because my project has finally begun. 

In the morning, after eating, and cleaning up, and doing a bit of work around the building, I have a flash of inspiration that I am surprised has escaped me for so long.  So, I walk to the bus stop.  After a twenty minute ride, I am at a suburban library.  It is a bright open space with simple shelves of hardback best sellers and open desks with free computers.  There are a few elderly patrons browsing some low shelves filled with audio books, but otherwise the library is empty.  It feels great to be back among the books.  I search around for a while and find that the library is mostly free of the literary heavy hitters, but there are still books.  I ask the librarian at the desk if my card will allow me to borrow, and she tells me that my card “will work at any library in Allegheny County”.  It is a wonderful feeling, but there is one subject in particular that I am interested in.  Fortunately, there is a big craft section, and I find exactly what I am looking for, a big illustrated about the art of papier mache.  I find a spot at one of the tables and read for the entire afternoon, taking lots of notes.

When I get home in the evening, and sit down to draw, the idea comes right away.  I take a long while making a good detailed sketch.  Then, I put another piece of paper over my original sketch, and trace the entire thing again.  By the time that process is done, it is nearly one in the morning, but I don’t feel tired, so I unfold a few pieces of newspaper, tape them together into a single sheet, then, using a yardstick, I make a grid on the new large single paper.  And then I slowly redraw my more simple design onto the larger paper.  When that drawing is done, I am satisfied with the size, and start the process of drafting out the armatures that will create the substructure of the frame of the head using the large draft as a guide.  It is dawn by the time that process is complete, and so, I get an early start on some chores around the building.  When my work is done, I look through the boiler room and maintenance closets for supplies.   There is a pretty good store of things.   There is a big piece of dry wall, a jigsaw with a serviceable blade, a  bucket of joint compound, two unopened tubes of adhesive, a can of marine varnish for some reason, and a whole pile of the old metal screens. 

I carry the piece of drywall up to my apartment, and transfer my drafts of the frame of the head onto the drywall using the grid method, but when I cut them out with the jigsaw they are too brittle, so I repeat the same process again in duplicate to make thicker pieces which I affix with epoxy and then cover in tape.  Once that is done, I return the unused drywall to the boiler room, and go out to buy a dozen rolls of masking tape.  With the masking tape, I start to draft out the shape of the cheek bones, chin, forehead, and occipital bun using broad taut strips of tape pulled over the frame.  Then, in the voids under that tape, I stuff rolled newspaper until I have roughed out the bulk of the face.  The process uses every roll of tape that I bought, along with a big chuck of the newspaper I salvaged from behind the restaurant.    By the time that work is done, it is nearly one in the afternoon, and  I haven’t slept for 30 hours, but if I sleep now, I may wake up in the middle of the night with no supplies and nothing to do, so  I decide to go and check in the recycling container behind the building for more paper, but there is nothing salvageable there, so I call around to a couple of the local newspapers to see what they do with their unsold papers, and they all politely explain that they have other people who buy their unusable and unsold paper for to resale to overseas box makers, but the people at the Post Gazette recommend a place where I can buy whole rolls printing paper, and so, after a short last minute bus trip, I am the owner of a thirty pound roll.  After that, I go to the grocery store and buy 15lbs of flour.  Then, after a small meal, I fall into a dreamless sleep.

I wake up shortly after three, and start the project again.  With wire from the old screens I start to frame out eyes and a nose and give detail to the chin.  Then I start the first layer of the papier mache.  By nine, the whole first layer is complete and I stop for a while to do a little work around the building.   Over the next week, I repeat the process of adding new layers, and letting them dry. One day, I receive an apologetic call from my mother that she has decided to accept my sister’s last minute offer to spend Christmas with her in St. Louis, where she is to be met by a number of other relatives that she has fond memories of, and I cannot recall at all.  She seems genuinely upset about the whole thing, but I assure her that there is no cause for concern, and I promise to fly down and visit her in February.  That auspicious development ensures not only that my project will not be interrupted, but also that I can plan for a grand reveal without any interruptions.  I work constantly, stopping only to eat and nap and shower and shave and make cursory examinations of the hallways and dumpster areas to make sure they are clean.   With the joint compound, I sculpt the details of the head, and the true expression of the figure takes shape.   The painting takes until Christmas day.  Sixty total hours of paint, all inside my apartment with the windows open to the winter chill for ventilation, and the stereo blaring.  When the head is finally done, it looks just as I had planned. 

It is a man’s face with a hawk like narrow nose like Donald’s, and a slight stubble grey beard like Ben, and it has small ears with short earlobes like the girl from the museum, and the thin smiling mouth from the woman at the cathedral, and flat heavy eyebrows like Coats, and the receded chin of Brian Folz, and round cheeks of Maria Olson, and little crow's feet by the eyes like the woman by the fountain.  But the eyes are my eyes, and they take the longest to paint.  Staring into a handheld mirror, it takes almost eight hours to get the eyes right.  I am not a painter, but I do my best, and my best is something I can be proud of.  The head has no hair, though.  I considered it, going to the barber, and asking for a big bag off all the hair he has swept off of his floor, but I ultimately think better of it because all of the sorting would take forever.  But the project is done, hours and hours of work, and wonderful dreamless nights falling asleep exhausted.  When I look at the face, I am reminded of how long it has been since I had one of those dreams.  In the woods I didn’t, and now here, with my project, still none.  I get a flash of panic like the type a reformed cigarette smoker feels when he considers an event in the future that will test his resolve.  The time when this project is done, and I am somebody without anything again, maybe there will be dreams, or this will be a dream made real, and it will kill all the dreams, I don’t know.  But there is still a lot to do.

The day after Christmas, I take the advantage of the slow traffic to do a little bit of recognizance in Market Square.  When I get there, however, I am surprised to find that there are many more people than I had expected.  The square has undergone a transformation from the way it was in my childhood when it was surrounded by head shops and occupied by drug dealers and their desperate customers.  Now, Market Square actually reflects the class A office space that surrounds it, and there is a small band playing on a stage in the corner of the square when I arrive, and 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 w