The Monument by Gary Paulsen Page A

where it showed, where people could see me.
    Even if it was embarrassing.
    So I went back into the corner of the office tomy desk and put the tablet down and started to draw.
    I tried to draw people, the men standing there, but I couldn’t get them to look right so I worked at the scene, the room, the door and the window looking out to where the truck was dumping grain. It was funny but I started to see things for the first time that I had been looking at forever.
    The wood over the door. It wasn’t just wood, it was beautiful with dark strips of grain that seemed to jump out even through the layers of dust from the wheat, oiled dark wood. I wondered where it came from and how it got where it was, why somebody would take so much time and effort on a piece of wood over a door. I tried to draw the wood, the door, tried to get that feeling in it. It didn’t work and I looked up and Jimmy Durbin was standing there looking at the drawing.
    “It’s really good,” he said.
    I looked to see if he was teasing me—thought about turning Python loose on him if he was, maybe taking a leg—but he meant it.
    “It’s hard for me to do.”
    “That’s because you’re making it look good. Anybody can do it if it’s easy. The hard stuff takes longer.”
    “I’m going to be an artist.” Oh great, I thought. Stupid. Open my mouth and be stupid.
    “It shows.”
    He smiled and moved back to his father but he looked at me two or three more times. I was glad I was sitting down so my leg was under the desk. I tried to push my hair back when he wasn’t looking so it would be neater and I thought, hey, you never know, you never know. I was glad I hadn’t let Python have his leg.
    “You can’t just do a monument, can you?” I heard Mick say. There were four men now, and one young boy named Carl who was seven or eight and hiding in back of his father’s leg looking at Python with big eyes while he chewed his lower lip. I wished I could draw people because it would make a good drawing, the way he was standing.
    “Monuments have to be a certain way for a certain place.”
    “Hell.” Clyde Jamison went to the door, opened it, and spit a gob of tobacco juice that would have killed a sparrow if it had hit one. He closed the door and turned back to Mick. “Monuments is monuments. You raise something up there and a month later pigeons are crapping on it and nobody remembers anything. It’s all a waste of money.”
    “Not this time,” Mick said, his voice quiet. “Not on this one.”
    “What makes this one different?”
    “You,” he said. Then swung his arm around to the rest of the room. “All of you. Everybody in this town. They’re all different from all other towns. When I know you, all of you, I’ll know how to make the monument, won’t I?”
    A couple of them nodded. Fred did nothing, just watched, and I was glad he was my father. He just held back and studied things and always knew—always knew. How is it, I wondered for about the millionth time, that I didn’t get adopted and didn’t get adopted and then one day Fred and Emma came in and I got lucky, luckier than I could ever have hoped.
    “So I’m trying to learn as much as I can before the day after tomorrow.”
    “What’s day after tomorrow?”
    “The meeting,” Fred said. “There’s a meeting at the courthouse to decide on the monument.”
    “Ahh, yes.”
    “Everybody is coming. It’s a potluck.”
    “I’ll be there—but I still think it’s just someplace for pigeons to dump.”
    The men moved back to their trucks and Mick motioned for me to stay and work. He went back out to his wagon and found a new tablet and his bag of chalks and started to work on his own.
    He began in the office with me, his hands floating over the paper in swirls before lowering. I watched him for a bit, then watched Fred watching Mick.
    Fred’s eyes glowed.
    “It’s like dancing, ain’t it?” he said to me when he saw me watching him. “His hands just dance.”
    Some