Shaking the Nickel Bush (7 page)

Those Swedish people at the little restaurant were as good to me as if I'd been their own folks. Mr. Larsen heated towels in the oven and put them on my back while I was eating. And after I'd finished, Mrs. Larsen phoned their doctor and sent me up to his office. She must have phoned him again while I was on my way. When I got there he knew all about my having ridden in the horse falls, and about the diabetes and my diet. Before he checked me over at all he made me tell him everything Dr. Gaghan and the specialists had said, and show him the diet list in my little book. Then he really did check me over. He stripped me as naked as a picked chicken, laid me out on a doctor's table, took my pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, and poked his hands into my belly as if he were kneading bread dough.

“Miraculous! Miraculous!” he said three or four times as he poked at me. “No rupture of the spleen. That liver seems normal. Kidneys not badly enlarged. Any tenderness there? How about there?”

Every part of me was tender, but there was no sharp pain, so I kept shaking my head, and he kept poking and saying, “Miraculous.” After he had me kneaded to putty he put on his stethoscope and listened to my chest and heart. He picked a spot just above my wishbone and cocked his head like a robin listening for a worm. “Hmmm,” he said, “there's the damage! Considerable regurgitation.”

“If that means a leaky heart,” I told him, “I've had it ever since I was ten.”

“Know the cause?” he asked.

“The doctor in Colorado said it was from riding too many rough horses,” I said.

“Did he tell you to quit riding?”

“Only the rough ones,” I said.

“Then you knew better than to go into any such escapade as this intentional falling.”

“I had to do it,” I told him. “I was broke and couldn't find any other job.”

“Hm! It's a wonder you weren't broken in two! What's your normal heartbeat?”

“Forty-eight.”

“Probably saved your life,” he said. “These slow hearts will stand more abuse than fast ones, but you've done yours no good. I want you to take a full week of bed rest, or at least confinement to your room. Of course, you can go out for meals, and I want to see you each day. After I've examined your specimen I'll write a report to your doctor in the East. What's his name again, and his address?”

Of course, I couldn't let him write to Dr. Gaghan, and the only way I could keep him from it was by promising to do what he told me. I stayed in my room all day except when I went to eat, but it was one of the longest days I ever put in. He'd put some sort of plaster on my back that kept it from aching too much, but I was still bent over like a question mark, and I couldn't be comfortable either lying down or sitting up. Then too, there was nothing but local news in the paper, and the magazine I bought had only one interesting story in it.

I think I might have been a little bit homesick that day if it hadn't been for the Larsens. I didn't go to lunch till well past noontime, so I wouldn't be too much trouble to them, and when I got there Mr. Larsen had a chicken fricasseed for me, crisp celery stalks, and cabbage boiled with caraway seeds. Besides that, he'd got hold of some gluten flour, so Mrs. Larsen copied down Mother's recipe and baked bread for me that afternoon. I think it would have been better than Mother's if she hadn't put in a big handful of caraway seeds—and, of course, I didn't tell her I disliked them. Even with the seeds, my supper that night was the best I'd had in a long, long time. There was hot bread and butter, more cabbage and celery, and a whole broiled fish. I don't know what kind it was, but it was fresh and it was good.

The next morning my back was a lot better and I could straighten up pretty well, but my legs were still so stiff that the muscles pulled at every step. After the doctor had smeared salve on my face and hands, he listened to my heart for three or four minutes, nodded, and said, “A slight improvement already. A week of complete rest should repair the damage fairly well.”

I'd been worried about not letting Lonnie know I was back in Phoenix, and I thought I might be able to work some of the kinks out of my legs if I went to find him, so I told the doctor, “I've got a buddy waiting for me down at the stockyards, and he'll be worried if I don't let him know I'm back in town. Would it be all right if I walked that far—very slowly?”

“Very slowly!” he told me. “This heart must have complete rest until Nature has had time to repair it. Otherwise you might be an invalid for the remainder of your life.”

I grinned and said, “Well, if the specialists were right, it won't be a very long drag.”

“I don't know. I don't know,” he said, sort of questioningly. “That specimen I examined yesterday wasn't as bad as I expected—under the circumstances. I'm rather inclined to agree with your family physician—that is, if you behave yourself, stick rigidly to your diet, and get as much sunshine as you can on your body. Nature is a wonderful healer, and there is no better medicine than sunshine.”

I waited until I had my shirt back on, then gave him one of the report cards to fill out for Dr. Gaghan, but I didn't leave it for him to mail. When I checked it with the copy of the one I'd made out myself I found them almost exactly alike, so I knew I couldn't have done myself too much damage in the horse falls.

On my way to the stockyards I poked along slowly, stopping to look at the old guns in pawnshop windows, or at anything else that would kill a little time, and I had one of the finest pieces of luck that I ever had in my life. In one of the windows there were a dozen or so brightly painted water jars, and inside the dingy little shop an old Mexican was shaping another on a potter's wheel. The minute I saw him I knew I'd found exactly what I needed to take up my time during the week I'd have to stay in my room.

All the time I'd worked at the munitions plant I'd had a roommate who worked in the designing department. He was only a few years older than I, but before the war he'd been one of the better sculptors in New York City and had taught in one of the art schools. The reason I'd moved in with him was because he'd seen me whittling a horse's head one noon after a bunch of us had eaten our lunches in the shade of a powder shed. Ivon had been sitting five or six feet up the line from me, but when the man beside me got up he came over and took the vacant place. He watched me for maybe ten minutes, then asked, “Where did you learn that?”

“I didn't,” I told him. “I've whittled horses ever since I was a little kid.”

“Ever model them in clay?” he asked.

“I've tried to,” I told him, “but it's no good. With clay the legs aren't strong enough to hold the bodies up.”

“Don't you know how to make an armature?” he asked.

“I don't even know what one is,” I said.

“If you'd like to come up to my room after supper, I'll show you,” he told me.

While I was telling him I'd like to come the whistle blew, so he scribbled down his address and room number on a card and we both hurried back to our jobs.

That evening when I went hunting for the address I found it to be one of the best apartment houses in Wilmington, with a beautiful lobby and an elevator. When I asked the elevator boy where I'd find the room number, he said, “Oh, that's the artist—top floor in the rear.”

As I walked down the carpeted hall I felt about as much out of place as a catfish in a goldfish bowl. I hadn't expected to find the man living in so fancy a place, so I hadn't bothered to put on my good suit before coming. Even after I'd reached the door I had to stop a minute to decide whether to rap or to go back to my little eight-dollar-a-week room and put on my good suit. I was sure that any room in that building would be furnished like a palace, and I'd look like a ninny coming into it in my old working clothes. I'd just made up my mind to go back and change when the door opened and Ivon stood there in a dirty linen smock, holding a letter in his hand.

“Oh,” he said, “there you are! Go on in while I drop this letter down the chute. Should have sent it away last night.”

I couldn't have been more surprised if I'd stepped through a doorway and found myself on the moon. The floor, about fifteen feet square, was covered with sheathing paper, splashed with plaster, and pockmarked with bits of stepped-on clay. Instead of the fancy furniture I had expected, the room was bare except for a big worktable in the center, a cluttered tool bench at one side, an easel, and a couple of plaster-spattered chairs. Standing here and there were a dozen or so pedestals, some with plaster heads or busts on them, and some that were covered over with pieces of damp cloth. On a shelf under the worktable were plaster hands, arms showing the overlapping and twisting muscles as though the skin had been peeled away, a broken foot, and three or four bas-reliefs.

I was still standing just inside the doorway, looking around, when Ivon said from behind me, “This is my shop; I live in the other room. Come, toss your hat into the bedroom, and we'll see what we can do about an armature.”

As Ivon spoke we walked part way down along the wall, and he opened the door to a bedroom that was as spick-and-span as the shop was messy. There was a thick carpet on the floor, pictures on the walls, and all the furniture was dark, satiny mahogany. “How good a shot are you?” he asked as he pointed toward a post on the nearest twin bed. “I don't go in from the shop without changing my shoes. Fortunately, I have another door from the hallway.”

I sailed my hat for the top of the bedpost, and I happened to have good luck. It lit like a horseshoe over a peg, and spun around a couple of times without falling off.

“Good eye!” Ivon said. “No wonder you can whittle a horse. Can you make them look like any special one?”

“If people know the horse himself I don't have to tell them which one I've whittled,” I told him.

“Tie him up somewhere and use him for a model?” he asked.

“No, I never tried that,” I said. “If I've known him well I can remember what he looks like, and I guess I just kind of see him in my head.”

“Good! Good!” he said. “Now let's get at that armature. How big a horse do you want to make?”

That evening Ivon showed me how to twist the wires and make an armature for a horse a foot high. I never knew anyone, except my own father, who was so patient. He didn't try to do it for me; just showed me how and let me do it by myself. And with all the horses I'd whittled, he told me something I'd never noticed—that the average horse is square; his body the same length as his height at the withers, with his forelegs, neck, and head each about half of that length.

Before we started he took a piece of charcoal, knelt, and with a few quick strokes he sketched a rearing stallion on the floor. “The armature is simply the skeleton,” he told me as he drew a heavy black line that looped through the head, along the arch of the neck, curve of the back, and length of the tail. “There's the main stem,” he said. “Now we'll attach lighter wires to it and shape them into the bones for the shoulders, hips, and legs.” As he spoke he drew in the lines to show me exactly how the wires would be bent and shaped, so as to be hidden inside the clay. And how those for the tail and hind legs would extend down through a wooden base to hold the framework firm and solid. Then along the back he sketched in hanging wires, with heavy crosses at their lower ends. “Those are wooden bats,” he said, “to support the weight of the body instead of ribs.” The whole thing hadn't taken more than five minutes, but when he'd finished I knew everything I'd need to know about armatures.

The second evening Ivon showed me how to moisten the clay, work it pliable in my hands, lay it on the armature with the face of my thumb, and scrape it into the shapes I wanted with his tools. The third evening he watched me as I finished the head and neck of my horse, making suggestions to help me here and there. Then, when I was putting the damp cloth on it to keep it from drying out until I could come again, he asked, “Why don't you move in here with me? That would save you a long walk these evenings, and you could be quite a help to me with some tricky castings I'd like to make this winter.”

“I'd like to,” I told him, “but I couldn't afford the rent.”

He asked me how much rent I was paying for my room, and when I told him he said it would cost me the same there. My eight dollars a week couldn't have been a quarter of what that apartment cost in wartime, but it was the nearest to a home I'd ever had away from home, and Ivon taught me all that I had the ability to learn. By the end of the war I'd made hundreds of horses, and eight or ten portrait busts of friends we had at the plant. They didn't have the lifelike look that Ivon's did, but anyone could tell whose portraits they were.

My hands were itching for the feel of the clay again as I stood there on the sidewalk in Phoenix, watching the old Mexican build up the sides of his jar with his wet hands. I waited until the jar was finished, then went in and asked him what he'd charge me for a bucket of clay. He started off with a dollar, but I worked it down to sixty cents for the clay and an old bucket to carry it in. Then I told him I'd come back and get it within an hour.

Lonnie wasn't at the stockyards when I got there, but I recognized a couple of the boys who were hanging around. One of them thought he might have hopped a freight back to Tucson, and the other thought he'd gone west—maybe to look for me at Wickenburg, or to go on through to California for the winter. I told them where he could find me if he came back, then hunted around the yards for pieces of baling wire and sticks I could use for making armatures.

I don't suppose that bucket of clay weighed more than twenty-five pounds, but with my back and legs and arms as lame as they were, it felt as though it weighed a ton before I got back to my hotel room. After I'd made another trip out for a pair of pliers, I spread the tarpaulin from my bedroll on the floor and spent the rest of the morning twisting up an armature for a little horse, dampening my clay, and working it over to get out any particles of sand or grit.