Scott Nicholson - The Manor

Dead stay dead.

Dead stay dead forever.

Mason wiped the sweat from his forehead. He had removed his shirt, but still the room was too warm. Oak chips stuck to his chest and arms. His shoulders had passed the point of aching. The pain had transformed into a dull, constant drumming somewhere in the back of his mind.

His sculpting instructor at Adderly, Dennis Graves, had told him that the key to art was stamina. Mason's first assignment had been to carve the letters of the word stamina into a block of white pine. That clumsy effort now rested across Mama's dead television set. He'd given it to her like a kindergartner who'd brought home a finger painting. That was back before her blindness, though after her eyesight failed she often held it in her lap and ran her fingers over the letters.

Someday he was going to do another word just for her: dreams.

He would fashion it in bronze or copper, something durable. Maybe even granite. Except then the word would be too heavy. Maybe it would be too heavy even in balsa wood. Or air.

Mason had finished with the hatchet and adze. The rough form was fleshed out. The sky had grown darker in the basement's small high windows. He didn't know if that meant rain or that dusk was coming. He'd long ago lost track of time.

Mason worked with his broad chisel and mallet, shaving off sections of the oak. The grain was cooperative, as if in a hurry to become its true shape. The statue was revealing itself too fast, and there was no way that he should be this far along already. It was almost as if the wood was pumping energy back through his tools into his hands.

Sure, Mase. Whatever you think. Artistic license.

And look here, the shoulders are squared, one of Korban's arms will be across his stomach, the other hand behind his back. An aristocratic pose. A man who knows what he's all about.

The dead space of the basement swallowed the sounds of metal on metal and metal into wood.

Come out, Korban. I know you 're in there, somewhere inside this godforsaken hunk of oak. SING to me, you beautiful old bastard. Rise up and walk.

Mason squinted as a spray of sawdust skipped back toward his face. He drove the chisel's blade into a space beside the statue's left arm. Stamina. Dreams.

He'd have to send Dennis Graves another word.

Spirit.

You had to have spirit, or you were lost. The material had to have spirit. You couldn't squeeze soul out of a stone. It had to already exist, to have existed forever, waiting there for the artist to release it.

The breath of spirit wind blew from the four corners. That's where dream-images came from. They weren't really new ideas or visions. They were things that already were, that just had to be revealed to human minds.

Okay. Okay. Now you're losing it, linthead.

Artistic pretension is expected, and all that gibberish might come in handy after you get "discovered." But right now, the reality is that you 're working yourself into a lather and you can't make yourself stop. You should have taken a break to eat and rest.

But YOU CAN'T MAKE YOURSELF STOP.

Mason frowned and rammed the chisel off the flank of hip. He didn't think it was a good sign when people started having philosophical debates with themselves. He was supposed to be in a creative trance. He wanted it, searched for it, prayed to the gods of impossible dreams.

He looked at the bust of Korban, and it seemed to smile at him from the table. The wooden lips parted: "So why can't you stop?"

I can stop any time I want to.

"Certainly. I believe you, Mr. Jackson."

Look, you can't just turn creativity off and on at will. You've got to roll with it while you've got the wheels. You've got to take the Muse's hand when she wants to dance.

"Fine. No arguments. But let's just see you stop."

Okay. But I want you to know that my shoulders and arms and finger muscles are going to scream in pain because they 're wound tighter than a spool of factory thread. Besides, I'm doing this for Mama, not me.

The bust said, "Excuses, excuses."

I'll show you. Here we go…

Mason flailed at the chisel. Two inches of dark red wood peeled away from the section that would be Korban's left kneecap. He repositioned the blade and drew back the mallet for another blow.

The bust laughed, a sound like the shuffle of rodents. "You're not stopping."

Okay, already. Get off my case. I just had to get USED to the idea.

Mason curled another strip of oak away, then looked down at his tools scattered around the floor among the shavings.

See? I can take my eyes off it if I want to. Just as an experiment, I'm going to think about something besides Ephram Korban's statue. Take, for instance, the lovely Anna Galloway…

Mason paused, a drop of sweat hanging at the tip of his nose.

"Ah, so it's fair Anna that makes your heart sing," the bust said. "You can have her, you know. Once you finish. I promise. And I always keep my promises."

Mason clenched his teeth and gave the hammer an extra-hard swing. He could stop any time he wanted. He just didn't want to think about her right now. Didn't want to think, didn't want to think, didn't want to think "I say, who were you talking to?"

Mason spun, hammer in hand, raising it as if to ward off an attacker. William Roth stepped back, his gray eyes startled wide. He almost dropped the canisters of liquid in his arms.

"Easy, mate."

Mason lowered the hammer. The spell was broken. "Sorry. I was just getting carried away there for a minute."

"Looks longer than a ruddy minute to me. Have you been working on that thing nonstop?"

Mason nodded. The pain in the back of his shoulder blades sent its first red twinges to his brain. He rubbed his right biceps.

Roth looked past Mason at the statue. "Good Lord, how did you get so much done already? You must be working like a pack of beavers."

Mason looked at the statue and tried to see it as Roth did. All the limbs were clearly suggested in the mass of wood, and it was distinguishable as a human form. The head was a featureless block but in close proportion to the rest of the body. The legs rose up from the base with a vibrancy and strength.

"It's coming along," Mason said. "I promised Miss Mamie it would be lovely."

"What's the rush? You're going to bust a blooming artery if you keep at it like that."

"Say, can I ask you something?"

"As long as you put down the hammer."

Mason laid the hammer on the worktable beside the bust. "Take a look at this painting."

Roth set his canisters on the table and Mason lifted the canvas to the light of the nearest lantern.

Roth pursed his lips in approval. "Quite a piece of work."

"What do you see in that smudge there, at the top of the house? Along the railing of the widow's walk?"

Roth bent close and peered at the shapes. "Looks like people to me. Wonder who messed it up."

"Would you believe me if I told you those people weren't there two days ago?"

Roth looked at Mason and then back at the painting. "I'd say you're ass over teakettle from overwork."

"Well, maybe it's something to do with the chemicals in the paint. It just bugs me, that's all. As an artist myself, I know how it feels to come up short of perfection."

Roth gave his barking laugh. "Don't kid yourself with all that 'artist' rot. It's all about jack, selling out for whatever you can get."

Mason rubbed his chin and felt the scratch of stubble. He had been neglecting his hygiene. He could smell his own underarms. To Roth, the studio must have stunk like the laundry room at a gym. Mason knelt and retrieved his shirt, shook the wood chips free, and put it on. He glanced at the statue and felt guilty for thinking of abandoning it.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked Roth, before his mind could fixate on Korban again.