The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey

by Orenduff, J. Michael;

  “My studios are always full and have waiting lists,” said Hockley, smiling broadly. “The only studio courses that don’t fill up are watercolor and ceramics.”

  Armstrong bristled at Hockley’s comment. “Blass was a painter. Eliminating his budget line had nothing to do with ceramics.”

  “It was a target of opportunity,” said Helga. “Melvin and Junior are both tenured. The administration can’t get rid of either of them. So they eliminated another line that came empty and probably expected us to shift around teaching assignments.”

  Armstrong asked rather loudly, “Did those Philistines expect Junior or me to suddenly become painters instead of ceramicists?”

  “The only reason the aqueous media studios are not full,” said Jollo, stressing the phrase “aqueous media” and glaring at Hockley for using the word watercolor, “is because the students know that is not my medium. If I were teaching oils, my studios would be packed.”

  “Not going to happen,” said Jack Wiezga, causing Jollo to shift her glare from Hockley to Wiezga.

  There ensued a long and heated debate about painting, for which I was grateful, since it led them away from discussing ceramics. But the discussion eventually circled back to ceramics, specifically to the lab fee.

  Armstrong asked Shorter why the ceramics budget was a thousand dollars in the red.

  Given that I had nothing to do with budgets and that Armstrong’s question was addressed to Shorter, I wondered why he was staring at me as he asked it.

  I found out when Shorter answered. “The shortage results from the fact that none of the students in ART 2330 have paid the lab fee. It’s not unusual to have one or two students pay a fee late because they’re short of money, but having an entire class fail to pay is unprecedented.” He looked at me. “Do you have any idea why no one in your class has paid the fee?”

  “Yes. I told them not to pay it. The fee is to cover the cost of clay. They dug up their own clay. So there’s no reason to pay the fee.”

  “The clay is in the storeroom and has already been purchased,” said Prather. “We need them to pay the fee to cover the cost of the clay.”

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I said.

  “I’m not talking to you. I’m discussing a motion.”

  Jollo noted there was no motion on the floor regarding ceramics.

  “Okay,” said Prather, “I move that we discuss the matter of the lab fee for ART 2330.”

  Jollo said, “Robert’s Rules of Order do not allow a motion to discuss. All motions must be to take a specific action.”

  Here we go again.

  Prather modified his motion. “I move that we order the students in ART 2330 to pay the lab fee.”

  Armstrong seconded the motion.

  Helga spoke up. “You can’t order students to pay for supplies they are not using.”

  “Of course we can,” said Prather. “We are the faculty. It is our right and our duty to direct the students what to do.”

  “With an attitude like that,” Helga said, “it’s no wonder one of your classes failed this semester to attract any students.”

  He clenched his jaw but didn’t speak.

  To break the awkward silence, I made a suggestion. “Could we send the clay back and get a refund? That would balance the budget without making the students pay for something they aren’t using.”

  “If you hadn’t let them dig up their own clay, we wouldn’t have this problem,” said Junior.

  “The title of the course is Anasazi Pottery Methods,” I said. “The Anasazi didn’t buy clay. They dug it up.”

  “It’s called authenticity, Junior,” said Helga. “You should try it sometime instead of constantly copying the merchandise in Bed Bath and Beyond.”

  Junior was steaming. “I move that Professor Ólafsdóttir be censored,” he yelled.

  “I think the word you’re looking for is censured,” she replied coolly.

  “How would you know? English isn’t even your native language.”

  To which she replied, “Já, ég lærði í raun það. Of slæmt gerðirðu það ekki.”

  Now, that’s a conversation stopper.

  After the meeting eventually ended—you should thank me for not telling you about the convoluted steps it took to make, second, discuss and pass a motion to adjourn—I asked Helga what she had said in Icelandic to Prather when he yelled that English wasn’t her native language.

  “I said he was correct. Unlike him, I actually had to learn it.”

  By the time I walked from the university to Sharice’s condo on Silver Street, I had managed to convince myself that the lab-fee issue would be satisfactorily resolved.

  Prather’s motion to force the students to pay the fee had ended in a tie vote.

  Shorter had declined to exercise his tie-breaking authority, opting instead to see if the bursar would agree to count the expense against the next semester if we told him the clay would not be used until then.

  Prather’s motion to censure Helga Ólafsdóttir had died for lack of a second. Not even his pal Armstrong would go that far. In a room full of people with loaded guns, no one wants to fire the first shot.

  I now understood Helga’s question about whether I liked circuses.

  15

  I am not going on another field trip,” Aleesha announced at the beginning of the next class.

  “It’s not a field trip,” I said. “We’re not even leaving the campus. All we’re going to do is walk around and collect dry twigs.”

  “No way. The class schedule says we meet in this room. I’m not leaving this room, and you can’t penalize me for staying here.”

  Marlon asked, “What’s wrong with you, girl?”

  She shot back, “Ain’t nothing wrong with me. And if there were, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  He shrugged.

  “Anyone who doesn’t want to go can wait here in the studio,” I said. “No penalty. But it’s a beautiful fall day and we need twigs to make pots, so let’s head out.”

  I donned my Tilley hat for protection from the desert sun, and ten people followed me out of the building.

  No, Aleesha did not change her mind. There were ten people following me because Carly had brought her son, Luke. The teachers at his school were having an in-service day. I don’t understand how teachers can be in-service only when they are not serving students, but I was glad to have Luke join us.

  There are more than five thousand trees on the UNM campus, all of which had to be planted by the groundskeepers. The campus is, after all, located on what was originally a high desert plain.

  The earliest trees, a grove of ponderosa pines, were planted when the first building was constructed in 1892 and are still providing shade, scent, habitat and beauty just to the west of that building, now called Hodgin Hall.

  When I attended classes in Hodgin back in the ’80s, it was scheduled for demolition. They wanted to tear it down to make room for a loop road around the campus. Given what he said about loop roads, Abbey must have been proud of his alma mater when that plan was abandoned because of protests.

  We didn’t go to that pine grove, because pine twigs have too much resin. We needed hardwood twigs, preferably from native species since we were trying to replicate the method of the Anasazi.

  I had consulted one of the UNM arborists, who told me they use a software program called TreeKeeper, which employs aerial photography software to locate and identify the trees on campus.

  I guess walking around and looking at them would be too old-fashioned. But that’s what the students and I did.

  My students know everything about popular culture and digital gadgets but nothing about the natural world around them. They all claim to be avid environmentalists, but they couldn’t identify a single tree. I took Desert Solitaire out of my pocket and t
old them about it.

  “You should read this. Learn about the natural world around you. I’m going to give you a guided tour as we search for twigs,” I said.

  Most of the tress I pointed out were not native species, a fact the students could have deduced from names such as the Kentucky coffeetree, the European linden and the Siberian elm.

  It was at this point that Bruce said, “No offense, Mr. Schuze, but could we find some trees we can actually use?”

  After searching for another fifteen minutes, I came to the conclusion that there are no native trees on campus.

  We passed by Hodgin Hall on the way back to the art department, and I took the opportunity to drop in. Hodgin no longer has classrooms. It houses the Alumni Office. I had my paycheck for the course and handed it to one the staffers, Elaine Chew, who had convinced me that my wages from the course were so small that they weren’t worth keeping.

  Why do you think universities have alumni-relations offices? It isn’t just to keep track of their graduates. It’s to raise money.

  Her office was like an oven. “The old air conditioners don’t work well,” she explained.

  “It’s a beautiful day outside. Why not just open the windows?”

  She pinched her nose. “The smell from the Dumpster is worse than the heat.”

  I looked out the window and smiled at the offending metal container. Cottonwoods had sprung up behind it.

  I imagined the TreeKeeper software didn’t know about the cottonwoods, called alamos in Spanish. They were obviously not part of the landscaping plan. They had probably escaped being chopped down merely because no one goes back there.

  I looked inside the Dumpster and saw fast-food containers and some long things that were either cottonwood twigs or petrified French fries. Also some decomposing burgers. No wonder the thing stank. There were also greasy paper bags, plastic forks, straws, broken bottles and a shoe.

  I told the students to fill their sacks with cottonwood twigs.

  As we walked back to the Art Building, I thought about Faye Po, who buys pottery from me and quotes Chinese proverbs, one of which is, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

  I wondered if she might know Ms. Chew in the Alumni Office. Then I realized Sharice would probably accuse me of pigeonholing them simply because they are both of Chinese ancestry.

  When we got back to the studio, I told the students I was going to give them my third lecture.

  “Fourth,” said Alfred.

  “No. The first one was about clay. The second was about firing. This is the third one.”

  He was smiling as I spoke. “The third one was about trees.”

  I laughed. “I stand corrected. This is the fourth lecture. It’s about shaping pots. The Anasazi didn’t have wheels. They made their pots from sheets of clay, not hunks of clay like we do today on wheels. In order to form sheets into a pot shape, you need an armature—a framework to hold the clay. They made their armatures from twigs.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Raúl.

  “Obviously, we have no written record, but we do have evidence. The only materials they had access to were wood, stone and animal parts. You could find a rock with a nice shape or even sculpt one into the shape you want, but removing the rock after the pot was dried would be next to impossible. You could use hide or bones, but no pot has ever been found with internal indentations compatible with such materials. What we have found are pots with internal charring. They removed the armature by burning it.”

  “Maybe the internal charring was from burning something in the pot,” said Raúl.

  “And maybe they used Popsicle sticks,” I said, and they laughed. “Burning things in the pot could explain the charring, but it still wouldn’t explain how the armature was built. There’s another reason to favor twigs. They are flexible enough to be woven into shapes and strong enough to hold sheets of clay while we work with them.”

  I handed them copies of a paper on which I had drawn some common Anasazi pot shapes. “Choose a shape you like and weave a frame.”

  I dumped one of the bags of twigs on the table, selected a handful and wove them into a gourd shape. “See? Nothing to it.”

  In fifteen minutes, everyone except Mia had woven a decent armature. Aleesha had chosen the duck shape and done a good job on the most difficult style.

  “Now comes the hard part,” I told them. “Roll out sheets of clay and spread them on the armature. Keep your hands wet as you work. It’s sort of like making a pie crust.”

  “You bake, Mr. Schuze?” asked Marlon.

  I shook my head.

  “I do,” said Carly. She started first and everyone watched. She got the hang of it almost immediately.

  Most of the others started while Carly was still working. Only Mia watched until Carly was finished.

  Mia returned to her station and made a halfhearted attempt at rolling clay into a sheet. When she draped it over the armature, it didn’t reach from top to bottom. When I told her she needed to start with a bigger ball of clay, she said she would just add a seam there.

  “The seams should be vertical, not horizontal.”

  “You didn’t tell us that.”

  That was obvious to all the other students, but I didn’t tell her that. She needed encouragement, not criticism. “Sorry,” I said. “Give it another try.”

  She removed the sheet, tossed it aside and started with a new ball of clay—also too small.

  “You might want to just add some clay to the first ball you used. You know it was a bit short, so that can guide you as to how much to add.”

  She shrugged and bumbled forward with too little clay.

  The next few class meetings were spent forming armatures and sheathing them with clay. The first day we tried it, I made the rounds of the workstations, giving pointers and doing a bit of hands-on work with a few of them who needed it. As the days went by, I gave less instruction and noticed the students who picked it up quickly were helping their classmates. It wasn’t long until almost everyone was producing unfired pots that were C or better, including one by Luke, whom I had invited to join in. Some of the pots were A work.

  Only Mia was failing. And she seemed unenthusiastic. When I announced that we had reached the last session of shaping pots and would begin the next time to fire some, she asked if she could see me after class.

  We walked to my office. She closed the door. It was awkward because there wasn’t enough room for two people and the chair. I sat on the desk to avoid invading her space.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.

  “Sure you can. You’re an art student. You know how to work with your hands.”

  She shook her head. “Actually, I’m majoring in interior design. We use software in all our classes. Point and click. Know what I mean?” She held her hand in the air and moved her index finger up and down to illustrate.

  I guess my ignorance of computing somehow showed on my face.

  “They make all interior-design students take three studio art courses, one in drawing, one in painting and one in 3-D, like ceramics or sculpting. I flunked the drawing class last semester. I’m going to have to take it over. Trying to do something 3-D is even harder than drawing, where at least we had a surface to work on. I think maybe I’m dyslexic.”

  “How can you use a computer if you’re dyslexic?”

  She smiled. “Point and click.”

  I nodded.

  “So I need to do something for extra credit or I’m going to fail this class just like I failed drawing.”

  “It’s a studio class in pot making, Mia. I’d like to help, but I can’t very well have you do a book report or something like that in a studio.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about a book report. And anyway, I don’t read too good. I was thinking maybe something
else.”

  She took a small step toward me. Given the size of my office, even a small step put her too close.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Anything you want.” She casually placed her hand on my knee. “I can’t afford to fail this class. I’ll do anything.”

  I swallowed. “Anything?”

  She nodded slowly. “Anything.”

  I thought about it briefly.

  “What’s your schedule tomorrow?”

  “I have classes in the morning, but I’m free after that.”

  “Okay. Meet me in the pottery studio at one tomorrow.”

  She brightened. There was no room to move, so I couldn’t dodge her kiss on my cheek.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said, and danced away.

  You may recall me saying that the new-faculty orientation sensitized me to sexual harassment, so I was alert when it happened. I did not, however, expect to be the victim. I believe the term is unwanted sexual advance.

  I hoped I was wrong. But in case I wasn’t, I stopped by Tristan’s apartment on the way home. He’s not actually my nephew. He’s the grandson of my aunt Beatrice, my mother’s eccentric sister who lives in Tucumcari.

  How eccentric? Well, for starters, she named her daughter Beatrice and called her Junior. I suspect eccentricity is not inherited, so the fact that Beatrice Jr. is eccentric no doubt stems from her upbringing.

  Beatrice Jr. plays the mandolin, which may explain why she eloped with a touring guitarist. Given that one of his stops was in Tucumcari, you probably realize it wasn’t Les Paul or Jimmy Hendrix. All I remember about him was that he drove a rusty Chevy pickup and went by the name Rhino.

  Most members of the family gave the relationship three months tops.

  Rhino brought Junior back to Tucumcari eight months after they left, one month before she gave birth to Tristan on December 17, 1992. Rhino was so happy after he held Tristan in his arms at the hospital that he stopped in a local bar and bought rounds for the house. And several for himself. Then he ran head-on into a big tree (hard to do in Tucumcari) and died.