Free The Monument by Gary Paulsen Page A

most of the drawings were gone.
    Mine was still there, and the old car and the Jennings dog and the little grave in the bushes and some of the elevator drawings showing the sparrows, but almost none with any people in them.
    Things, I thought—they’ll allow things, but they won’t allow people.
    Through all this Mick hadn’t moved, stood leaning against the bench, and I hurt for him, thinking what they were doing to his art, but he was still smiling that small smile, and I realized that he knew it was going to happen all the time.
    He had planned on it happening.
    When they were done ripping and stamping, there was a moment when it was quiet—Mrs. Langdon staring at Mick, her chest heaving andher jaws so tight her back teeth must have turned to powder—and just then, just at that second, Mick stood away from the bench and said in a loud voice:
    “Art.”
    Everybody froze, stared at him.
    “Katherine Anne Porter once said art is what you find when the ruins are cleared away. I did this so that you could see, could feel, could know what this is all about—this monument. This art.”
    “Crap.” Somebody said. “It’s all crap.”
    Mick nodded. “That too, but that’s part of it, isn’t it? Art is everything. And this monument has to be that, has to be art, it has to hurt and make you weep and lift you into love at the same time.”
    “Tell everybody,” Mrs. Langdon said, her voice sounding like breaking glass, “that you never saw me nude.”
    Mick stared at her, then sighed. “That doesn’t matter, does it? That’s how you would look if I
had
seen you without clothing, isn’t it—looking over your shoulder near a window with the lighton your hair and your shoulder turned just so to catch the light and the skin like cream, pure cream, and that sad look in your eyes because love, love is gone.”
    A strange thing happened then. Mick was talking but I was watching Mrs. Langdon and it all went out of her, all the mad went out of her. She seemed to wilt and sag back into the people standing around her, and the look changed, the way she was looking at Mick. It wasn’t hate any longer, and not even sadness—it was more that she was drawn to him, maybe loved him. Right there in front of everybody she leaned down and picked up the drawing where she’d thrown it and smoothed it and tried to make it flat, all the while looking right at Mick, right into his eyes. I wished I had brought my tablet and pencils because I would have liked to draw that—draw the way she looked and the way Mick’s picture was, crumpled, and how nobody else in the room seemed to be there for her, just Mick up next to the judge’s bench. I wondered how come if it was
Mrs
. Langdon there was never talk of ahusband, now or gone. But Mick wasn’t looking at her.
    “Art,” Mick said, louder, “is all there is and this monument must be part of all of you to be true.” He shrugged. “So, what is it, then? What do you want for your monument?”
    The room exploded.
    Some were still mad, although what Mrs. Langdon had done changed things and some of them had even picked up their drawings.
    The noise was from ideas, but there were so many trying to talk at once it was just that, noise, and I couldn’t tell what anybody was saying.
    Mick held up his hand. “Just a minute.” He went to the side of the room where there was a portable blackboard used to draw things for court. He carried the board to the front and took a piece of chalk from the rail.
    “Now,” he said, “one at a time.”
    “Let’s do it with hands,” Mrs. Langdon said, moving to the front of the room. “I’ll call on you, each of you, and you can tell Mr. Strum what you want.”
    “Mick,” Mick said. “Just Mick.”
    “Sorry,” Mrs. Langdon said, looking at him, and I could swear she was blushing.
    “And I’ll call you Tru,” he said. “That’s how you signed your letter. It’s a good name for someone with shoulders like cream.”
    Right there in front of