shore, or people whoâve been hanged. He does, however, have a nice, fat face.
âGreat,â Mr. Jacks says weakly.
âThanks, Mr. Jacks,â you say, backing out of the office quickly. âIâll just get back to work then.â
âHold on,â he says, dropping the gnome onto his desk hard, as he comes to shut the door. âI havenât even given you your next assignment yet.â
âDo I really need one? I mean, canât I just go back to doing what I feel like?â
âWell,â he says, âIâd really rather see some more of . . . your best stuff. Frankly you seemed to be losing your way for a while there.â
Ah.
There it is.
Your way.
Canât be losing that.
Not again.
Thatâs why you are where you are, isnât that it? Itâs not because somebody might have topped somebody and then did himself. Itâs not because one day you had parents of a sort and the next day you didnât. That stuff happens to people every single stinking day, and you donât get framed for it.
No, youâre here because of you, Will, not because of anybody else. Because you lost your way once.
And how many chances you suppose you get with that? Two? Yes, two sounds about right, doesnât it? We canât let you get lost again. You hear? You hearing? Who are you listening to? We canât let you get lost again. Listen to what youâre hearing.
Lost a second time means you donât come back. Do you understand? Lost twice is gone for good.
âAre you listening? Will? Are you listening to me?â
Who are you going to listen to? Whoâs a boy going to listen to?
âI didnât lose anything, Mr. Jacks. I just wanted to do something besides gnomes and furniture.â
Apparentlyâand surprisingly, considering the population he works withâMr. Jacks does not have a great gift for handling situations like this, situations like you.
He puts his hand on your shoulder. âWe really need you making gnomes and furniture, Will. The world needs something from each of us, and what the world needs from you is gnomes and whirligigs and furniture.â
If he had been joking, it would have been very funny, and relaxing. He wasnât, and it wasnât.
You are walking out the door as he tells you, âSo no more of those things you were sculpting, okay? And the rest of them, just leave them be. Weâre not going to make an issue of the ones that have gone missing, but in exchange you donât remove any more school property. Fair enough?â
âFair enough,â you say.
You havenât a clue what that even means, do you? Fair enough. Is anything fair enough? Itâs like thereâs this arrangement where we acknowledge that we wonât ever have fair , so weâll just settle for fair enough . And itâs never enough, is it?
You walk out into the workshop and it comes to your eye as if it is in neon. It has been there all along, since the beginning of time or at any rate since the beginning of yourtime in this place but you never quite noticed it before. But you must have. The words have been in there, burned in your head, all along, all during your confinement. The sign that loomsâcarved capably in wood, of courseâabove the shop door. You walk under it every time you come into the class and you walk under it every time you go out again and you work almost directly under it when you are working.
BE NOT IDLE.
Well, of course. Isnât that what shop, shops, workshops are all about? Alternatives to the devilâs workshop, right? Busy hands. Flying woodchips for snow, falling over fevered young brow.
Except, what idleness do we mean?
You know what they mean.
âFair enough,â you say out loud. âFair enough. I wonât be idle. Not anymore.â
So you go, or anyway, you attempt to go. Marching straight across the room, not stopping at your station, not cleaning