The Clay Head Benediction Read online

Ben. I prefer to bake more than one at a time because I hate the smell, and I have to open the window while I do it, and it is already starting to get cold. But I put the head in the oven anyway, and sit and wait. I consider sitting outside and waiting for Donald to get home, so I can talk to him about the girl, but he would probably be upset if I catch him off guard, so instead I try to devise ways of running into him by accident. Then, it occurs to me that I might be able to catch him like a fish if I use the right bait.

  About ten years ago, I bought a really fantastic stereo. It is a Sony, with oversized KLH speakers. Turned up, the sound could easily fill a good sized dance floor. I put the speakers into my open window, and search through my music collection to see if I can find something that Donald might like. I have a compilation CD called “The Best of Doo Wop”, and I cue the track up to The Flamingos I Only Have Eyes for You and put it on repeat. Then I turn it up until it is easily audible from the street, and I sit and wait. After the sixth replaying, the kid in the next apartment starts to bang on the wall, which is unusual because they know that I work for the company, and am pretty generous about ignoring their loud parties and the constant smell of pot smoke that seeps out from under their door. It is only twenty after five though, and there is no chance that they are sleeping, and I am not violating the building’s quiet hours policy, so I don’t turn the music down, I just sit and wait, and watch the street for Donald. When I see him turn onto the street, I turn the music up a little bit louder. He is limping a bit, and carrying an old gym bag, which presumably contains his guard uniform. I watch him walk to see if the music is inspiring any change in his movements, maybe a little skip or a wiggle to acknowledge the unexpected serenade. But he doesn’t change at all; he just walks on in his little limping way furiously puffing on his long cigarette. Then, he walks into the building without even checking his mailbox.

  After a few minutes, I decide to turn up the music a little louder to see if maybe he might decide to come up to my apartment to complement me on my taste, but he doesn’t. Finally, I walk down and see him. In the hallway, I notice that my music is equally loud outside of my apartment as it was inside, and even two floors down, in front of Donald’s door, it is still pretty loud. I knock, but there is no answer, so I knock again. I wait another minute and knock a little louder. After about thirty seconds, I hear a rustling from inside of the apartment, and then the door bursts open. Donald stands looking at me without saying anything. Then, finally, he says,

  “What's wrong, Luke”

  I smile. “Am I interrupting your two beer time?”

  “No, you are interrupting my take a shit time. What do you need?” He asks, closing the door a bit, so that I can’t get a full view of his apartment.

  “I...I was wondering if you liked the music”

  “Is that you?”

  “Yep”

  “Well, go turn it off, it’s too loud.”

  “It’s a great song” I say

  “Not again and again it ain’t. People are trying to res’. Its dinner time”

  “People eat dinner at different times” I say

  “Not me. I eat after work. Now, go ahead and turn off the music.” He says, and starts to close his door a bit more. I stick out my foot and catch it before it can close all of the way.

  “Donald, wait, there is actually something I wanted to ask you.”

  He opens the door a bit wider and waits

  “Do you know that girl from the museum, the one with the art cart?”

  “The short one?”

  “I guess. She is a little short, maybe. Anyway, do you know her?”

  “No”

  “Oh, come on, Donald. You know her. All the ladies love Donald. …you must know her”

  I smile, but he doesn't smile back.

  “I like a slim woman”

  “She’s not fat.” I say, feeling a little offended.

  “For me she is. To each his own” He says and starts to close the door again

  “Well, if you do talk to her, could you tell her you know me?”

  “Look…females like a man that is clean, who works, who takes care of his self. Look at you, man. You’re up there playing the same song over and over again with some kind of shit on your hands”

  “Its clay” I say

  “What is?”

  “The shit on my hands”

  “It looks like shit no matter what it is. Now, go on and turn that song off, it's about to be my two beer time” The door starts to swing close again

  “At least tell her that I asked about her” I say, to the sound of the lock turning

  Back in my apartment, I let the song play through a few more times before turning it all of the way off. I figure it would be best to do that rather than let Donald feel like he could order me around in my own place. He is wrong too. I am clean. At times even obsessively so, and the things in my apartment, though few, are of good quality, and in nice condition. The truth is, I have some familiarity with what “females” want. And in my earlier life, I had gained quite a bit of intimate familiarity with a number of different women. That is back when I used to drink a whole lot…but I stopped all that. I didn’t get sober, as the expression goes. I didn’t go into some room with a bunch of other people and admit my powerlessness or anything like that. I just came to the conclusion that alcohol was the gasoline that fueled a vehicle that was driven by someone not entirely me, so I stopped; no pomp and circumstance necessary. On the other hand, I was never that enthusiastic about it anyway, booze and drugs and all that other stuff were the ideological equivalent of a neck tattoo to me, a way of pledging allegiance to a lifestyle that didn’t involve the soul crushing bondage of conforming to a room full of desks and florescent lighting. I thought then, and still think, that there is no more shameful form of intellectual prostitution than giving ones talents up to a life of forms and meaningless arguments and insincere commitments to things that a person can’t possibly be passionate about.

  To really be great at selling toilets, you have to love toilets and the toilet industry, to the point that you accidentally find yourself lapsing into toilet related discussions when the conversation gets stale. I hate toilets and everything like that. There are certainly a lot of good people working hard at a lot of different things, but the stock broker, the toilet salesman, that is a strange niche to carve in a person’s soul.

  Donald is wrong about that, too. I work. I help people find homes. I might not do it all year, but that is my choice. I am not asking anybody for anything that I haven’t worked for. I might not make a lot, but I make enough to survive, and that is fine with me. Plus, to anybody who ever rents anything from me, I never present myself as anything other than a respectable, responsible member of society. This is all I really have to offer… a pleasant exterior and a confirmation of biases. If an eagle builds a nest over a salmon hatchery, that eagle is considered a pretty smart eagle, if a person finds the path of least resistance, he is lazy and undirected, and that, my friend is exhibit A in the case against our society.

  When I take the clay head out of the oven, it looks good. A lot better than the first one I made, so to occupy my time, I decide to give it the full course of embellishments. I dig through my supplies and find a matching pair of brown eyes with a large pupil that I think were originally designed for use in bird mounts, and using some epoxy, position them in the empty sockets. The effect is a slightly disturbing, but I try to offset that by sketching some eyebrows on with a permanent marker. The marker doesn’t really give the eyebrows the effect I am looking for so, I decide to take the long route, and actually do the eyebrows the proper way, with a piece at a time, with individual pieces of a hair. After that is finished, the bald head looks unusual, so I set about piecing on hair in the scalp as well. The whole process of the head and eyebrows takes about seven hours, and it is already past midnight when I am done, so I decide to make eyelashes also. Eyela
shes are tricky because they need to stick directly out, but not look really bristly. The whole thing with the eyelashes takes another two hours owing to an unfortunate slip with the glue, and the delicate cleanup involved, but when everything is done, I am satisfied with the result.

  By the time I’m finished it is so late, that I start to worry that if I do fall asleep, I will miss my meeting with Ben, so I use the time that I have left to construct a carrying case for him. I had scrounged a bit of hard foam from one of those packing containers that computers come in. I cut out a little cube of the Styrofoam, and then cut a sliver off of the top for a lid, and from the larger piece, I dig out a depression that fits the head snugly. Then, I cover the entire box in fabric, and to hold it closed, I tie a piece of ribbon around it.

  It is five in the morning by the time everything is done, so with nothing to do for the next four hours, I make myself some beans and a glass of milk, and then I put the present for Ben into my backpack and go out for a walk. The morning is cold and my joints have started to ache from the lack of sleep. There is almost nobody out, but as I get closer to where the colleges are, I pass a few runners. I also see an older woman putting paper plates of dry cat food out behind the dumpsters of the noodle restaurant, but otherwise I am alone. I kill time for a while and think. Then I