Shaking the Nickel Bush by Ralph Moody Page B

the hallway.”
    I sailed my hat for the top of the bedpost, and I happened to have good luck. It lit like a horseshoe over a peg, and spun around a couple of times without falling off.
    â€œGood eye!” Ivon said. “No wonder you can whittle a horse. Can you make them look like any special one?”
    â€œIf people know the horse himself I don’t have to tell them which one I’ve whittled,” I told him.
    â€œTie him up somewhere and use him for a model?” he asked.
    â€œNo, I never tried that,” I said. “If I’ve known him well I can remember what he looks like, and I guess I just kind of see him in my head.”
    â€œGood! Good!” he said. “Now let’s get at that armature. How big a horse do you want to make?”
    That evening Ivon showed me how to twist the wires and make an armature for a horse a foot high. I never knew anyone, except my own father, who was so patient. He didn’t try to do it for me; just showed me how and let me do it by myself. And with all the horses I’d whittled, he told me something I’d never noticed—that the average horse is square; his body the same length as his height at the withers, with his forelegs, neck, and head each about half of that length.
    Before we started he took a piece of charcoal, knelt, and with a few quick strokes he sketched a rearing stallion on the floor. “The armature is simply the skeleton,” he told me as he drew a heavy black line that looped through the head, along the arch of the neck, curve of the back, and length of the tail. “There’s the main stem,” he said. “Now we’ll attach lighter wires to it and shape them into the bones for the shoulders, hips, and legs.” As he spoke he drew in the lines to show me exactly how the wires would be bent and shaped, so as to be hidden inside the clay. And how those for the tail and hind legs would extend down through a wooden base to hold the framework firm and solid. Then along the back he sketched in hanging wires, with heavy crosses at their lower ends. “Those are wooden bats,” he said, “to support the weight of the body instead of ribs.” The whole thing hadn’t taken more than five minutes, but when he’d finished I knew everything I’d need to know about armatures.
    The second evening Ivon showed me how to moisten the clay, work it pliable in my hands, lay it on the armature with the face of my thumb, and scrape it into the shapes I wanted with his tools. The third evening he watched me as I finished the head and neck of my horse, making suggestions to help me here and there. Then, when I was putting the damp cloth on it to keep it from drying out until I could come again, he asked, “Why don’t you move in here with me? That would save you a long walk these evenings, and you could be quite a help to me with some tricky castings I’d like to make this winter.”
    â€œI’d like to,” I told him, “but I couldn’t afford the rent.”
    He asked me how much rent I was paying for my room, and when I told him he said it would cost me the same there. My eight dollars a week couldn’t have been a quarter of what that apartment cost in wartime, but it was the nearest to a home I’d ever had away from home, and Ivon taught me all that I had the ability to learn. By the end of the war I’d made hundreds of horses, and eight or ten portrait busts of friends we had at the plant. They didn’t have the lifelike look that Ivon’s did, but anyone could tell whose portraits they were.
    My hands were itching for the feel of the clay again as I stood there on the sidewalk in Phoenix, watching the old Mexican build up the sides of his jar with his wet hands. I waited until the jar was finished, then went in and asked him what he’d charge me for a bucket of clay. He started off with a dollar, but I worked it down to sixty cents for the