Read Online Remember Ben Clayton by Stephen Harrigan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Harrigan
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need to go back,” Gil mused. “Not just to show him the maquette, but to stay around a while. I need a better sense of the place. I need a better sense of my subject.”
“How long a time were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. A week or so. If Clayton can stand the sight of me that long.”
“It will add to the expense.”
Gil waved the observation away, though she had a fair point. The way to get rich and stay rich was to knock out one big statue after another, as fast as possible. He had already caught the mood of this piece, he had already formulated the concept. But he could sense a hidden richness in this statue, an opportunity for greatness.
“A week is nothing,” he told her. “If it will improve the quality of the work—and it will—then we’ll afford it.”
She smiled. “You liked it out there, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Your father’s a cowboy at heart.”
IT WAS well past dark when the taxi pulled up to their house off Roosevelt Avenue. Above the rooftops of this low-lying neighborhood southeast of downtown San Antonio, the full moon hung starkly in the sky, illuminating the crumbling bell tower of Mission San José. What a strange world I’ve come to live in, Gil confided to himself as he paid the driver. It was a thought that visited him often enough. How could it not? For all of his life he thought he would come to ground among the teeming opportunities of New York, or perhaps find a picturesque exile in Europe, surrounded by intoxicating ruins and statues of antiquity for inspiration. The thought of living on the edge of an old Spanish mission field in Texas, among breweries and lumberyards, would never have found an excuse to enter his mind.
And yet here he was: home. Or what was supposed to be home. His wife had been dead for a year, but at moments like this he felt the confirmation of her absence with crushing force. He knew that Maureen felt it too. As they entered the house, she hurriedly switched on the light in the parlor, as if the darkness and emptiness of the house made up some sort of an active threat.
Mrs. Gossling, the housekeeper, had left a pot roast for them that afternoon. After unpacking, Maureen heated it up and then the two of them sat at the kitchen table, eating their late dinner while they skimmed through the newspapers that had accumulated in their absence. Neither felt the need to talk much after the long train journey together, but Gil could not stop thinking about the conversation that would have taken place at this homecoming if Victoria were still alive.
The news of a major commission had always made her beam with relief, since it was she who had borne the burden of managing their accounts, scanning the mail for promised payments or an unexpected check from the sale of a gallery piece. Gil had always had a high tolerance for financial anxiety; it was a necessary trait for a man in his line of work. But the suspense had worn on Victoria, and he missed the opportunity to reward her with the news of a project that would ensure their continued solvency for a year or more. And he missed just talking to her, telling her about the old man who had seemed as poor as he was sad but who had not even blinked at the price Gil had proposed, and about the lonely primacy of the site that made him confident that this statue would be a work of heartbreaking impact.
“I might use the Holloway boy again,” he said to Maureen.
She looked up from the Evening News , with its screaming headlines about Bolsheviks and railroad strikes.
“He might be a little too slender.”
“Maybe a little. We’ll see how the clothes fit him.”
Rusty Holloway was the young man whom Gil had used as the model for one of Crockett’s men in his Defenders of the Alamo grouping. He was the son of a well-known Texas Ranger captain, though he himself was an unadventurous postal worker who had a Class 3 deferment and had missed the war. And despite his father’s iconic occupation,
“How long a time were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. A week or so. If Clayton can stand the sight of me that long.”
“It will add to the expense.”
Gil waved the observation away, though she had a fair point. The way to get rich and stay rich was to knock out one big statue after another, as fast as possible. He had already caught the mood of this piece, he had already formulated the concept. But he could sense a hidden richness in this statue, an opportunity for greatness.
“A week is nothing,” he told her. “If it will improve the quality of the work—and it will—then we’ll afford it.”
She smiled. “You liked it out there, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did. Your father’s a cowboy at heart.”
IT WAS well past dark when the taxi pulled up to their house off Roosevelt Avenue. Above the rooftops of this low-lying neighborhood southeast of downtown San Antonio, the full moon hung starkly in the sky, illuminating the crumbling bell tower of Mission San José. What a strange world I’ve come to live in, Gil confided to himself as he paid the driver. It was a thought that visited him often enough. How could it not? For all of his life he thought he would come to ground among the teeming opportunities of New York, or perhaps find a picturesque exile in Europe, surrounded by intoxicating ruins and statues of antiquity for inspiration. The thought of living on the edge of an old Spanish mission field in Texas, among breweries and lumberyards, would never have found an excuse to enter his mind.
And yet here he was: home. Or what was supposed to be home. His wife had been dead for a year, but at moments like this he felt the confirmation of her absence with crushing force. He knew that Maureen felt it too. As they entered the house, she hurriedly switched on the light in the parlor, as if the darkness and emptiness of the house made up some sort of an active threat.
Mrs. Gossling, the housekeeper, had left a pot roast for them that afternoon. After unpacking, Maureen heated it up and then the two of them sat at the kitchen table, eating their late dinner while they skimmed through the newspapers that had accumulated in their absence. Neither felt the need to talk much after the long train journey together, but Gil could not stop thinking about the conversation that would have taken place at this homecoming if Victoria were still alive.
The news of a major commission had always made her beam with relief, since it was she who had borne the burden of managing their accounts, scanning the mail for promised payments or an unexpected check from the sale of a gallery piece. Gil had always had a high tolerance for financial anxiety; it was a necessary trait for a man in his line of work. But the suspense had worn on Victoria, and he missed the opportunity to reward her with the news of a project that would ensure their continued solvency for a year or more. And he missed just talking to her, telling her about the old man who had seemed as poor as he was sad but who had not even blinked at the price Gil had proposed, and about the lonely primacy of the site that made him confident that this statue would be a work of heartbreaking impact.
“I might use the Holloway boy again,” he said to Maureen.
She looked up from the Evening News , with its screaming headlines about Bolsheviks and railroad strikes.
“He might be a little too slender.”
“Maybe a little. We’ll see how the clothes fit him.”
Rusty Holloway was the young man whom Gil had used as the model for one of Crockett’s men in his Defenders of the Alamo grouping. He was the son of a well-known Texas Ranger captain, though he himself was an unadventurous postal worker who had a Class 3 deferment and had missed the war. And despite his father’s iconic occupation,
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