Remember Ben Clayton (38 page)

That was about as close as his shyness allowed him to come to even an oblique acknowledgment of their night together in Somme-Py. She would not have to be quite so evasive in her response. She knew he craved a tender voice, a direct tone. But she would not embarrass him by speaking too plainly about a moment that could never be repeated—only remembered.

She had spent the morning at the art library that had just been opened to the public in what once had been a bowling alley in the Frick home on Fifth Avenue. She had strolled afterward through the park, gazing nostalgically at Ward’s Shakespeare and his Indian Hunter, two statues she had known from her childhood; and at Emma Stebbins’ Bethesda Fountain, which had goaded and inspired her in her youth because it was the only public monument she knew that had been created by a woman.

Arthur’s letter was in the batch of forwarded mail that the desk clerk had handed to her when she came back to the hotel. Among the envelopes was one addressed in the elegant penmanship of Mrs. Toepperwein of the San Antonio Women’s Club. The date of the dedication of the Spirit of the Waters was now definitely set for September 9. Would Maureen please meet her for tea at the Saint Anthony as soon as convenient so that they might discuss specific plans for the event, particularly any remarks Maureen might like to make before the mayor officially unveiled the piece? Was it true, as Mrs. Toepperwein had heard, that Maureen was an acquaintance of Vance Martindale, the rustic Texas critic and intellectual? Would she suppose that he might be persuaded, both on the basis of friendship and objective merit, to write an essay on the sculpture in the pages of the
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
, like the one he had written on the occasion of the unveiling of her father’s Crockett grouping?

Maureen smiled as she sat reading the letter in the lobby of the hotel. She put it back in its envelope. No thank you, Mrs. Toepperwein. If Vance Martindale wanted to spout off about her talent in print, he was free to do so, but she would be damned before she would “persuade” him. It was odd, though: the fact that she no longer had any use for him made her fond of him in a new way. She could imagine in time moving from icy correctness in her relations with him to a tolerant friendship. But no more than that; never any more.

At almost the same moment that she recognized the spidery hand of Lamar Clayton on one of the envelopes, Francis Gilheaney himself strode into the lobby. He looked like he had walked a long way; he was beaming and sweating.

“I’ve come all the way from the foundry,” he said. “Walked across the bridge.”

“You look thirsty. You should have a glass of water.”

He ignored her; his mood was too high. “The castings are first-class. I was worried we might have picked up an air pocket or two in the wax, but I believe we’re going to be free from disaster. Is that the mail?”

He sat down and she handed him the envelope from Mr. Clayton. He tore it open in suspense and she saw the relief in his face when a check slipped out. He laughed at the letter and handed it to Maureen. It read, in its entirety, “Go Ahead. L. Clayton.”

He relaxed into his lounge chair, let out a deep breath.

“Well, at least we have a place to put the damn thing. I doubt Clayton will ever have any use for me but he’s going to have his statue. What did you do today? Are you hungry? Why don’t we go to Renganeschi’s? I wouldn’t mind bumping into some people from the old crowd, now that this thing is finally settled.”

“All right,” she said. “If you’d like.”

“Remember when the three of us used to go there? You and your mother and me?”

“Of course I do.”

He slackened a little more in his chair, wistful now, regretful. For a moment he was silent, then he drew himself up and leaned forward to face her.

“I put your name on it today,” he said.

“What?”

“I carved your name on the plinth with a cold chisel, right below my own.”

“Daddy …”

“It’s your work as well as mine. It’s more your work than mine, if you want to know the truth. I couldn’t have finished it, not with these hands. Not with this selfish old soul of mine. If there’s life in that statue, and I know there is, then you’re the one who put it there.”

She started to answer but her lips were quivering so much she couldn’t get the words out. He handed her his handkerchief while the other hotel guests discreetly refrained from staring. After a moment, he reached out and touched her hand.

“I want you to be a full partner on the La Salle. When we get back to San Antonio and start working on it, you’ll—”

“I’m not going back to San Antonio, Daddy. I’m staying here.”

The blank look he gave her could have been just momentary confusion, but she thought it was something else: a sort of fear she had never seen in his eyes before.

“This is where I’m from,” she said. “This is where I want to be. Not Texas.”

“You don’t want to work with me?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Then what will you do?”

“Work for myself maybe. I don’t know.”

“I don’t see how you can manage. You have no income, you have no money except for what you got from that commission in San Antonio. You can hardly expect that to last for more than—”

“There’s my half of that check.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said you couldn’t have done the Clayton without me. I happen to think so too. Give me half the money, Daddy.”

For a moment she thought he was going to rise from his chair, wad the check up and throw it at her feet and say, “Here! Take it all!” But the anger in his expression turned instead to a kind of wonder, and then to a sadness so deep she could hardly believe her audacity.

“All right,” he said at last. “You and I will go to the bank tomorrow and open an account for you. We’ll find you a place to live.”

“Thank you.”

“The money will only last for a little while. I’d still like to know how you think you can get on.”

“I won’t be proud. I’ll take whatever work I can. If I can’t get any commissions, I’ll be a clerk. I don’t care. I want to be here. I want to be on my own.”

“You’ll have to at least come back for the unveiling of your Women’s Club piece.”

“No. I’ll write them and tell them that you’ll be there to represent me. Will you?”

“Of course I will, if that’s what you want. But what about the Clayton? Don’t you want to be there when it’s installed? Don’t you want to see it?”

“I’ve seen it, Daddy. I’ve already seen it from the inside out.”

His eyes were reddening and he was glancing around the room, looking for someplace for his gaze to settle other than on his daughter’s eyes. He was a proud man and he did not want to weep openly in a public place.

She leaned forward and spoke in a soft, emphatic voice to her broken father.

“You know, of course, that it’s a magnificent work of art. And no one but you could have done it, Daddy. No one.”

Struggling for composure, he answered with a nod. She pretended to look at the mail, giving him the chance to gather the formidable emotional strength that had seen him through every artistic setback, every regret, every disappointment, that had enabled him to keep his mind and his heart trained on the work to come, the shapes waiting to be formed in his studio.

“Well,” he said when he had come as far back to himself as the moment would allow, “shall we say eight o’clock for dinner?”

THIRTY-FOUR

T
here was no ceremony. On a day in late September the statue was delivered to the Abilene station in three pieces—man, horse, and base—transferred to a flatbed truck and conveyed to Lamar Clayton’s property. The truck then inched precariously along the narrow, half-washed-out ranch roads to the base of the little hill where the statue was to be installed.

It was hard, sweaty, dangerous work getting the pieces to the top, Gil worrying about the fate of his creation every foot of the way. Clayton had hired a crew to clear brush and rocks and outline a rough path to the summit, where the ground that would hold the base had been carefully graded. They tied a stout rope to the axle of the truck and, as it drove forward, the wooden skids to which the statue’s pieces were lashed were lurched upward one by one by means of a block and tackle secured to one of the big boulders at the top. Gil and Ernest and Nax and Clayton himself all took a hand in helping to guide the skids along the cleared trail, two of the men walking behind with thick wooden poles to help lever the skids forward and do their best to prevent them from sliding back in case the rope broke.

They all slipped and fell from time to time as they steered and straightened their burden. Gil gashed his knee on a rock, tearing the new twill pants he had bought in New York, scraping his knuckles as he struggled to regain his grip. But the brute work of lifting did not seem to trouble his arthritic hands nearly as much as the complicated flexion of his fingers that modeling required.

The base was the first piece to reach the top. They secured it in place with steel rods, and then when horse and man were brought up they were removed from their thick cotton batting and lifted by the block and tackle, which had been transferred to an A-frame. Gil called out instructions as the men steadied the swaying forms and gently lowered the feet of the man and the hooves of the horse—all with stabilizing rods protruding from them—into the holes that had been drilled into the bronze base and below into the rock itself.

And there it stood. There was no plaque, no need for one. Everyone knew it was Lamar Clayton’s boy. George’s Mary drove to the base of the hill in Clayton’s Model T and walked up to join them. Peggy was with her and the dog sniffed at the pungent patina on the surface of the statue. George’s Mary didn’t have anything to say at first and Gil couldn’t read her expression. She just stared at the sculpture with what might have been admiration, or sadness, or perplexity.

“Well, I believe you should be happy now, Mr. Clayton,” she said at last. “You’ve got your statue of Ben right where you wanted it.”

She turned to Gil. “You did a right good job, if you care to know my opinion.”

“Thank you.”

“Your daughter ought to be here to see this,” Clayton said.

“I think so too.”

Three weeks before, Gil had attended another installation, a far more formal affair when the Spirit of the Waters was presented to the city of San Antonio. The mayor had unveiled it. A band had played and Gil had been called upon to make remarks in Maureen’s absence. He told the audience he was honored to represent his daughter and they were fortunate to witness the unveiling of the first public work of a major new sculptor, a young woman whose name would soon be known not just in San Antonio but throughout the nation.

The men Clayton had hired stood around admiring their work for a time. They were drenched with sweat and bleeding from cuts. One of them had a Brownie and he told everyone to stand next to the statue. Clayton said he didn’t feel like having his picture made and moved off to the side. After the photo was taken the men took down the block and tackle and Clayton gave them their money and shook their hands and they drove off riding on the back of the flatbed truck. Gil and Clayton and George’s Mary remained on the summit with Ernest and Nax for a few minutes more, watching the dust cloud thrown up by the departing truck as it rumbled along the poor road.

“That was a piece of work, getting this goddam thing up here,” Lamar said.

“Yes sir, it surely was,” Ernest replied.

Nax lit a cigarette and pounded the rump of the bronze horse, a muffled echo sounding from the hollow cavity. After that there was just an awkward silence, everyone seeming to think maybe something ought to be said, but no one knowing what it should be. Gil knew it was not his place to speak. Whatever he had to say about Ben Clayton had been said in the statue itself.

So after a while they walked down the hill and crowded into the lizzie and drove back to the ranch house. Gil spent the night again in Ben’s room, the boy’s clothes back in his dresser, the saddle back on its sawhorse. He woke to the sound of mourning doves and the smell of biscuits baking. He washed and dressed and made his way through the familiar house to the breakfast table, where Clayton was smoking and drinking coffee and solemnly staring at an equipment catalog. He greeted Gil by asking what time his train was.

“Four in the afternoon.” Gil nodded his thanks to George’s Mary as she poured his coffee and set his plate in front of him.

“You got time if you want to come with me.”

“Where?”

“I thought I’d ride out to that far pasture we went to that other time. See what the statue looks like from there. You want me to I’ll have Ernest saddle up Margarita for you. She’s a pretty mild-tempered animal. Not that I’m saying you can’t ride.”

“I’d very much like to do that,” Gil said.

WITHIN THE HOUR
they were off, riding across the same open pastures and rocky declivities they had traveled last November on their way to search for calves that needed doctoring for screwworm. The summer had been harsh, from the look of the grass and the parched greenery along the creek banks, but there was such breadth to the landscape, such boundlessness in the sun-washed blue sky, that Gil felt surrounded by a sumptuous natural beauty all the same.

He felt more secure in the saddle than he had on that previous occasion. Margarita was a conservative-minded horse, no more eager to take a spill than he was. When they came to the rocky slope upon which Gil had been thrown by Poco, she tested the terrain with such caution that he could almost hear her deliberating thoughts.

Gil and Clayton had ridden for two hours, hardly saying anything to each other, before they entered the open pastureland spread out before the mesa on which the statue had been erected. They both stared at it in the distance but still Clayton did not comment. He just led his horse ahead through the high grass and Gil followed. After another five minutes the rancher reined up and turned his horse toward the mesa and sat there in the saddle staring at the unmoving figures on top.

They were maybe two hundred yards away. The piece looked unnervingly natural, just as Gil had planned it to. Ben Clayton was no colossus. The figures were seven feet tall but looked to be only life-size from this distance, so that it seemed that at any moment the young cowboy on the hill was going to catch sight of them and raise his hand in greeting.

“Well,” Clayton said to Gil, “is it your masterpiece, like you said it was going to be?”

“Are you asking me if you got your money’s worth?”

He’d meant it in a light-hearted way but Clayton took it as a cross remark. “No, dammit, I’m asking you if you’re proud of it.”

“I am.”

“It don’t bother you that hardly anybody’s ever gonna see it? After you and me are dead it’ll just be standing there with nobody to explain it.”

“No, Clayton, that doesn’t bother me.”

Just as he said this Gil noticed that the statue was no longer a solitary shape on the mesa. There were moving figures next to it, a man and woman. The man was walking around the statue, gesturing with some sort of burning bundle he was holding in his hand.

“That’s my sister and her Kiowa husband,” Clayton said when Gil turned to him. “They’re blessing the statue or some goddam thing.”

“I thought you told her never to come back here.”

“I was in a hard mood that day. I wrote her a letter a while back. Figured she ought to see it, that Ben would want her to. She and Eli are camped out in town somewhere. She didn’t want to stay on my property and have to talk to me and that’s just about the way I want it too.”

Gil’s horse shifted her weight from one shoulder to the other and idly nosed through the grass at her feet. He stretched his legs in the stirrups, working out the stiffness from the ride. He thought about dismounting but liked the sensation of still being in the saddle, of looking up toward his statue with the benefit of the extra elevation that Margarita provided. He could hear Eli’s voice now, declaiming some Kiowa song as he blessed the sculpture. When he was through singing, Jewell put her hand against the statue, touching the boy’s arm, bowing her head, and then she turned and disappeared with her husband down the far side of the hill.

When they were out of sight Clayton turned to Gil.

“I expect you didn’t go all the way to France without asking that boy over there how my son died.”

“Yes, of course I asked him. He took Maureen and me on a tour of the battlefield. He showed us where it happened, how it happened.”

“What did you find out? Ben wasn’t no coward, I can tell you that right now.”

“He wasn’t a coward. Far from it. He took out a machine-gun nest, pretty much by himself. There was a rather desperate assault against the German position in the cemetery and he was in the thick of that as well. Then they were under fire from a machine gun in the steeple of the church and he decided to take that gun out too. He had just climbed out of the trench when the gunner saw him. He died instantly, as I believe you’ve heard.”

“That all of it?”

“What else do you want, Clayton? Your son was killed trying to eliminate a German machine-gun position. No one ordered him to do it. He just took it upon himself.”

“So it was just foolishness that got him killed.”

“It wasn’t foolishness. By any common definition it was heroism. If you insist on faulting your son then I guess you could call it heedlessness. He was in a big fight and his blood was up.”

“I don’t care to fault him. I done plenty of that already.”

There was just the slightest temptation to tell him the whole truth. Maybe he deserved to hear it, to hear what Ben had learned from that Indian in Company E and how it had led him to throw his life away in a rash assault on that German gun. Gil had told Clayton that his son’s blood was up, but he did not tell him his blood was up because of Clayton’s closed-up heart and his grudging secrets. Lamar Clayton had been a failure of a father, a man who had allowed his own disappointments and his own seething temper to lead his son to a bewildered death. If Lamar Clayton had had an artist’s vision, if he could have detected the fate of his son as it slumbered in the stone of his own tragic life, there might have been a better ending than this forlorn monument. But even an artist’s eye, as Gil had learned, could not necessarily detect what was buried in the hearts of the people the artist was supposed to love.

The two men sat their horses and kept their secrets and continued to train their eyes on the statue. Gil had hired a photographer from the San Antonio newspaper to come out in a few weeks to take some high-quality images, since he did not know if he would ever see the piece again firsthand. This would probably be his last chance to study it, to judge what he had done.

He was pleased. It stood there on its promontory with a kind of natural dominion, as if this cowboy and his horse were living beings that had not been painfully winched up onto the top of the mesa but had just happened upon it and had paused to appreciate the view. After so many years it was still a mystery to Gil how he had done it. How he and Maureen had done it.

“Well,” Clayton said, “do you want to sit here and look at it all day or do you want to go catch your train?”

Gil knew Clayton meant the needling tone to be friendly-sounding. But neither of them was really in that kind of jousting mood. Gil said nothing. He just wearily pulled his horse’s head up from the grass and followed Lamar Clayton back the way they had come. They were not friends and they rode under separate burdens of silence and solitude. Lamar Clayton set his face straight ahead but Gil kept looking back, startled and gratified by how alive the boy looked as he stared off into the cow pastures and beyond them to the plains.