Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  He didn’t say anything.

  “After all, it’s a pretty big grant.”

  Yes,” he said tonelessly. He watched the hooker cry. Her fat pimp showed her something in his hand; from this angle I couldn’t see what. The old couple rose to go, helping each other up. The waitress put an order of fries in front of the cop and bent to rub her varicose veins.

  “If you win, it could mean a major boost to your career. You have a responsibility to your own talent.”

  “Yes.”

  “So think about revisions.”

  “The thing is,” God said slowly, “I filled out the application forms a long time ago. Before I began work. It looks pretty different to me now. I do feel a responsibility to the work, but maybe not in the way you mean.”

  Something in his voice turned me cold. I’d heard that tone before. Recently. I pushed aside his pie, which he hadn’t touched, and covered his hand with mine. “Son—”

  “Didn’t you wonder why I thought at first that you were a cop?” The real cop turned his head to glance at us. He ate the last of his fries, nodded at the waitress, and made for the door, brushing past the tottering old couple. The codger fumbled in his pocket for a tip.

  I could hear the thickness in my voice. “Son—it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Maybe it does for me.” He looked directly into my eyes. His own were very dark, with layered depths, like fine ash. I wondered how I could have thought him only twenty-eight. The cop left, banging the door behind him. The fat pimp pulled the hooker to her feet. She was still crying. The old man laid a dollar bill, a quarter, and three pennies on the table.

  I said, “So okay, you feel responsible. It’s your work, the outlines are yours, even if it got away from you and took off in directions you never intended. That happens. It’s still yours. But that doesn’t mean it’s you. It’s your art, son, not your life. There’s a difference, and it’s crucial. The people who confuse the two aren’t thinking straight.”

  He turned those dark eyes away from me, and shrugged. “I feel responsible, is all. For all of it. Even the part that got away from me.” Suddenly he smiled whimsically. “Accepting responsibility again would actually strengthen the imagery pattern, wouldn’t it? A leitmotif. The Committee might actually like that.”

  They probably would. I said carefully, “A competition is no real reason to go native.”

  “It isn’t my reason.” Abruptly he flung out one hand. “Ah, don’t you see? I love it. All of it. Even if it’s flawed, even if I screwed up, even if I lose. I love it.”

  He did. I saw that now. He loved it. Loved this. The old couple tottered toward the door. The two teenage boys shot out of their booth. One of them grabbed the tip off the table; the other lunged for the old lady’s purse, ripping it off her arm. She fell backwards, thin arms flailing, squeaking “oh oh oh oh . . .” Instantly the old man raised his cane and brought it down hard on the boy’s head. He shrieked, and blood sprang onto his cheek. The boy, outraged, yelled “Fuck! What you go do that for, you old bastard!” Then both boys tore out the door.

  The fat pimp helped the old woman up. He was very gentle. “You all right, ma’am?” The hooker, still crying, reached out one deft hand and stole the old man’s wallet from his pocket. The old woman stood, shaky but unhurt. The pimp escorted them to the door, stopped, walked back to the hooker. Silently she handed him the wallet. His fat hands curled into fists. He returned the wallet to the old man, and all four of them left. The waitress leaned over in the silent diner and rubbed her varicose veins.

  I have never wanted to be an artist myself.

  There wasn’t much else to say. Maybe God would actually go through with it again, maybe not. Sometimes these guys are more in love with the idea of artistic risk than with the actuality. But he had done it once. All of it, right up to the final artistic sacrifice. That set him apart. I couldn’t tell him this—against Committee rules—but that part of his work was what had earned him the first position on the waiting list. It had been an impressive set-piece, especially amidst the uneven emotional tone of the rest of his work. And if he did it again, it would certainly strengthen the imagery pattern in his entry. He was right about that. His chances of winning would increase dramatically. If of course, he survived.

  He had his place on the short list only because another candidate hadn’t. “Withdrew” has a lot of meanings.

  God grinned at me. Not a smile this time, an actual grin. “I’m sorry to be so stubborn. It’s not like I don’t appreciate your interest.”

  “Tell me something. Do you do all your own construction work?”

  He rubbed his sunburned nose and laughed. “You know how it is. If you want something done right . . .”

  “Yes. Well.” I held out my hand and this time he took it, still grinning. He sat the counter stool almost jauntily. I’d been right to like him.

  Outside, it was just getting dark. Clouds raced across the sky from the west, casting strange shadows. Litter blew in gusts at my feet: newspapers, styrofoam cups, a torn shirt. The shirt bore brown stains that might have been blood. The shadows lengthened, laying at right angles to each other.

  Each work of art has its own internal pace; a thousand years is different here.

  I thought I could hear them on the horizon, dragging the heavy wooden cross, howling about the thorned crown. Coming for him.

  1994

  ARS LONGA

  What would you do if you were an art instructor and your favorite student insisted on wasting his time drawing little sketches of anthropomorphic mice and ducks? As multiple Nebula-winner Nancy Kress demonstrates, it’s not all that simple a question when the student is a kid named Disney.

  The first time I saw Walt, I knew he would be a great man. Oh, I know everybody and his brother says that about the famous, or those about to become famous. But in my case it’s absolutely true. I saw that earnest little boy dressed in his hand-me-down knickers and tom shirt, and I just knew. I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true. The town of Marceline entrusted me with their precious children for fifty-two years, until my retirement. I’m a member in good standing of the First Congregational Church. You may ask anyone in Marceline about Annie Peeler’s veracity.

  I’ve never been interviewed for a newspaper before.

  Would you like more tea, Mr. Snelling?

  Yes, of course, about Walt. Of course I understand your time is limited and this will only be a small article, although I do think the papers might pay more attention to the fine arts instead of all these cheap movies and so-called pop songs with their suggestive lyrics and . . . Art is the thing that unites us, lifts us out of baser and more jaded selves. Art is what justifies our being.

  Yes, I did tell Walt that. I told all my pupils that, right from the first day of school. It’s a great mistake to think third-graders can’t understand. Children hunger for greatness, and in a place like Marceline they see so little of it around them. That’s why I’ve always hung fine art prints all around my classroom, even in the early years when they cost me most of my salary. I used to travel to Kansas City on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe to buy them. Renoir and Rosetti and Monet and Whistler and of course Burne-Jones. Children will open like blossoms in the presence of great art, with proper guidance. I’ve always believed that. Why, when I graduated from Normal in 1894—

  Yes. Walt.

  As I say, I knew right away he was special. He sat at his desk in those patched hand-me-downs—his father, you know, was as mean with money as with everything else—drawing his little pictures in the margins of schoolbooks so old they had pages missing. I think they’d been his older brothers’ books, and Walt’s father just didn’t give a hoot if all of Milton and most of long division had just been wantonly ripped out.

  His mother? What mother?

  Oh, don’t write that down, I’m sorry I said it. It wasn’t a very Christian thing to say, was it? I’m sure she did the best she could, poor thing, married to Elias Disney. Never a
ny money, of course, and what was worse, no education or refinement, no chance to pass on a sense of the finer things in life. Just the same, to let him go around in those torn knickers, scrounging pencil stubs out of wastebaskets, sketching his little things in the margins of schoolbooks because no one recognized and nurtured his talent at home . . . If ever a boy needed mothering, it was young Walt.

  I bought him his first sketchbook, you know, and a box of decent pencils. His little face just lit up. He was a grateful child, always, and quick to see an opportunity. Right away he started copying Edward Hicks’ “The Peaceable Kingdom.” He liked animal pictures, although of course later on I tried to steer him toward people. I always impressed on the children that the human form is the noblest expression of the painter’s art.

  Young Walt’s first copy wasn’t very good, of course—he completely missed the painting’s spiritual dimension—but he kept at it all year, and gradually his drawing improved. I remembered he copied Burne-Jones’ “The Mill” very credibly, and also Gauguin’s “The Yellow Christ.” Oh, yes, we had Gauguin, even though some of the parents didn’t like it. Too strange and—I don’t want you to get the wrong impression here, these are all lovely people in Marceline, good solid Christian people, but they do have provincial tastes. There’s no getting around it. But I kept Gauguin up on my walls even when a delegation of parents went to the principal to object. I’ve always had a little rebellious streak of my own. And more important, of course, is that education must never bow to the trivial or the provincial. Education of the young must always embrace the highest of ideals and attainments.

  Which is why I was glad when Walt’s family moved to Kansas City at the end of the school year. Oh, of course I was tom up inside; some days I truly didn’t think I could bear losing him. But I thought that in KC he could have proper art lessons, go to museums . . . Ha! Just shows you how much I knew about Elias Disney!

  He bought a newspaper route, you know, for the Kansas City Star. Little Walt and his big brother Roy had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to meet the delivery truck and deliver hundreds of papers before school, struggling through the snow and rain in the dark. It almost broke my heart when Walt told me that in the winter he would lie down and doze in the corridors of apartment buildings, because they were warm, and in the summer he’d play with toys left overnight on the porches of children whose fathers weren’t the skinflint, lucre-minded louts that Elias—

  What? How did he tell me that? Oh, I went to KC every few months to visit him. By then I knew I was that poor, talented little boy’s only hope. I met him during the noon recess of his school, a dreadful place full of coarse children and underbred teachers. It disgraced the name of education. I took Walt to a decent tearoom for lunch, and I brought him art supplies, and most of all I encouraged him. Never give up, I told him over and over. Look at Van Gogh. Look at Paul Cezanne, with his own dreadful father. There is more in life than daily drudgery to bring ephemeral journalism to uncaring philistines.

  More tea?

  Yes, Walt did continue to draw during those years. I remember a lovely still life, a fruit piece, a little bit in the style of Cezanne. Very promising. Of course, nearly all his time was taken up by the newspaper route, and finally I saw that something would have to be done. So when Walt was fourteen I went to see Elias Disney.

  “You have to send that boy for Saturday lessons at the Art Institute,” I said.

  He squinted at me with his mean little eyes and didn’t say anything. Walt had told me his father used to beat him. He’d stopped that by now, but he looked as if he wanted to beat me. But I stood my ground. And all the while his timid, ineffectual mother cowering in the background. I’m sorry, Mr. Snelling, but I really cannot respect a member of the fair sex who will not fight for her young. Had I ever been privileged to bear a child like Walt. . . But that’s hardly germane to our interview, is it?

  “I am prepared to pay for the lessons myself,” I told Elias Disney. “All you must do is excuse Walt from work on Saturday. His obligation to his own talent is a higher one than to commerce.”

  Elias looked at me and spat his tobacco on the ground—a filthy habit, that, and one I was glad to see disappear. He said, “I always heard you was an interfering old maid.”

  Well, you can imagine the effect that had on me. I am directly descended from Ebenezer Zane, the frontier hero who saved the Ohio Valley from the savages. On my mother’s side. I just drew myself up to my full height and said calmly, “Mr. Disney, I don’t care how you insult me, that boy must have his chance. Art has called him, and your feelings and mine are irrelevant. If you will not allow me to give him the opportunity he deserves, then I will see that he wrenches it from you by moral force.”

  Well, Elias looked a little confused, and to tell the truth, so did Walt. He was still very young. But Elias’ older three sons had already all run away from home, so maybe that’s what made Elias back down. Or maybe Art can even touch a man like him, in his secret soul—would you be so rash as to deny the possibility, Mr. Snelling? I think not. At any rate, he spat again and said, “Ain’t my lookout how you spend your money.” Immediately I pressed my advantage. “Then Walt may have Saturdays off? And carfare to the Art Institute?”

  Elias nodded. I hid my triumph—it wouldn’t have been Christian to gloat—and the very next week I took Walt to register at the Institute.

  He didn’t? Not anything about the Institute? Well, I’m afraid there’s a reason for that. Let me just find the words to put this diplomatically.

  There, I’m ready now. Are you writing this down? The Art Institute is a good and worthy institution. But Kansas City, after all, is not New York. Had the young Walt Disney enrolled in an art school in New York, the greater sophistication and perspicacity of the teachers would have immediately led them to recognize his unusual talent. But in Kansas City, provincialism meant that his teachers were not as impressed with Walt as they should have been. That explains the mediocre response he received there. As I’m sure you know, the same negative reception initially greeted the Impressionists and the Pre-Raphaelites—why even Rosetti and Burne-Jones were initially scorned!

  Not, of course, that I can approve of Rosetti’s manner of living. But his art—

  Please don’t keep looking at your watch, Mr. Snelling. I assure you I’m telling this as fast as I can without leaving anything out.

  Walt actually made good progress at the Art Institute. At the proper time, I bought him oils, brushes, and an easel. As much of my salary as was necessary went to support his art. That’s what the profession of educator once meant to some of us. It was a calling, no less sacred than that of physician or minister, not merely a job to be unionized like any common workmen, as we see happening today. Put that in your paper.

  The next thing that happened was that Elias Disney moved his family to Chicago. The newspaper route scheme had failed, of course, and now Elias was ready to try something else. A jelly factory, I believe. Walt went, too. I was devastated. Chicago was too far to visit regularly. But the Lord helps us to bear what we must, Mr. Snelling, and Art anoints her servants. Walt found a place on the McKinley High School paper, doing drawings and photography both.

  Here I must trust you, Mr. Snelling. I want to tell the whole truth—you remember that I told you at the beginning of the interview that I revere truth—and yet not give you the wrong impression. Walt and I were as close as ever. We wrote each other every week. He was studying at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and every month he sent me his work to critique. He relied utterly on my guidance, my greater education, my superior taste. But at this point in his life—he was seventeen, remember—young men are apt to be rebellious. That’s only natural.

  So sometimes—only sometimes—he sent me crude little line drawings, sketches of cute animals or smiling flowers. They were amusing, I suppose, but they represented a regression. He was so much better than that. His still lifes and rural landscapes were beginning to have real power. I remember especially a
pastoral, somewhat in the style of Turner, that was remarkable for a boy his age. And then to spend his talent on debased line drawings!

  Do you know the Biblical story of Onan, Mr. Snelling?

  There, I’ve shocked you. Well, I did warn you that a life dedicated to Art can brook no evasions. And that was what young Walt, in his inexperience, was doing. Evading service to the highest ideals of Art and turning to the vulgar because it was easier.

  I wrote him so, in the strongest possible terms. He replied by sending me drawings illustrating a children’s fairy tale. It seems that he had gone to the motion pictures with a friend and seen Marguerite Clark in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It had sparked something in his fertile mind, and he had translated that crude film into line drawings that, he thought, might illustrate a children’s book.

  How can I tell you what I felt? What would any mentor feel who sees real talent turning, in its youth and inexperience, to the lures of commerce that will corrupt it utterly?

  I caught the next train to Chicago. I found him after school hours outside his father’s factory, a pitiful concern already on the brink of failure. When Walt saw me, he turned as white as your shirt, Mr. Snelling.

  “You are betraying yourself,” I said quietly. I wanted him to be shocked by my lack of social preamble. I wanted him to realize how important this was.

  We went to a tearoom and talked for hours. He had grown; he was good-looking, manly in figure but still unformed in soul. Oh, can you blame me that I fought so hard for that soul to belong to Art? If only more of our young people had someone to care about their futures!

  And I reached him. At least, I think I did. He was sullen, which is certainly natural at seventeen, but he did promise me he would not stop painting what was best and true in the world. However, he didti’t promise not to continue with his vulgar little line drawings.