The Monument by Gary Paulsen Page A

for now.”
    We were standing—Tru, Mick, Python, and I were standing by the end of the monument area. It was done and in some way looked like it had always been there. The last truck had brought in fresh sod and Mick and Tru and I—Mick finally let me stop drawing and help—cut and fit the sod around each tree and the stone benches inthe middle so that no new dirt showed and it seemed to have always been.
    “Tonight is the official showing,” Tru said. “It is beautiful, Mick—what you’ve done. It’s hard to look at it.”
    And it was—without crying. Next to each tree on a small stand stuck in the ground was a brass plaque with the name of a soldier and the date he had died. Later, when the trees were grown, each plaque would be fitted to a tree so that it would grow into the wood.
    “Like the peaches, don’t you see?” Mick had explained to us. “So that they are truly part of the wood and will live because the tree lives.”
    But it was not possible to look down the row of trees and see the names and not cry. It was in the same way as the Degas painting made me cry. They were all gone and I would never know them, and their lives did not go where they were supposed to go, but ended. Just ended.
    “Tonight people will come and see what you have done,” Tru said. “Are you proud?”
    Mick looked at her and something passed between them that I did not understand, someknowing thing. He shook his head. “No. Not this kind of art. Any pride for me came when my art stirred up the hornet’s nest in the courthouse that night—when I found you, found Tru, Mrs. Langdon. If it takes killing eighteen young men to get a piece of sculpture, you cannot be proud, can you?”
    I knew then. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. “You’re not going to be here tonight, are you?”
    “Didn’t I tell you she was cunning?” Mick said to Tru. “And isn’t she?”
    “You’re going to leave.”
    “And I’m going with him,” Tru said.
    “It was always going to happen,” Mick said. “I was always going to leave, wasn’t I? And she was always coming with me. It’s just that now it’s time.”
    “But the monument …”
    “It’s not mine. It belongs to the eighteen men and to Bolton. There is other work to do now.” He smiled. “Somewhere there is a place about to be overrun by paintings of Jesus and Elvis on black velvet, about to be swamped by ghastlypictures of blondes with large breasts being saved by avenging heroes or gushy pictures of little girls and boys with large eyes.”
    “And only you can save them,” I said, and as sad as I felt, I couldn’t help smiling.
    “There it is, isn’t it?” He looked around at the town. “The Lone Artist rides again.”
    “And Tonto,” Mrs. Langdon—Tru—said. “Let’s not forget Tonto.”
    “Not a bit of it,” he said. “One can never forget Tonto.” He looked at me and was serious—or as serious as I’d ever seen him. “You will note what happens tonight, won’t you? And draw it, catch it, and we will send a card from … where was that, my dear?” He looked at Tru.
    “Westfalia,” she said. “Westfalia, Texas—they want a statue in front of their new mall.”
    “Ahh, yes. Texas. We will send you a card from there and I wish a full report on the reaction.”
    “I’ll do it.”
    “Then there is nothing else, is there?”
    And I thought,
Oh, yes, oh dear God, yes, there are a thousand things to know and I want
to talk to you and listen to you
but nothing came out, not a word. They climbed into the station wagon which I saw now was full of cardboard boxes, and it started with smoke and noise and drove away, turned a corner, and was gone.
    Gone.
    And I should have been sad and maybe I was, a little, because I knew there were tears on my cheeks and I was pulling and twisting kind of hard at Python’s hair, but I was smiling because I couldn’t help thinking:
    God help Westfalia, Texas.
    Dear Tru and Mick:
    I’m sorry to hear you had to