The Monument by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page B

highway going into town.
    He nodded his head when I finished each one. “You must do this and do this—for years. Draw and draw until you think your hands will fall off. Just to know the line—the way the line works.”
    “What about color—all the rest of it?”
    “It’s because you’re young, isn’t it—the impatiences? The small impatiences.” He nodded. “That’s fine—just fine. It’s all right to be impatient as long as you keep working. But remember that—to keep working. Work is all there is, all of everything. That’s enough from here.”
    I put the pencils back into the box and he put the pad and pencils in the back of the wagon again. The engine roared again.
    “Where are we going now?” I yelled.
    “Graveyard.”
    “Oh good,” I said, but he didn’t hear me.
    He seemed to know things—knew just how to drive to the graveyard, which was on the south edge of town, opposite from the way we had been.
    I don’t know about other small towns but Bolton takes care of its graveyard. I had never been there except to walk past, but the grass is always mowed and it’s always clean and neat. Many of the graves have plastic flowers by them.
    Mick stopped the wagon by the entrance to the graveyard. “Get your pad and pencils.”
    He walked down the small road that led into the graves and I followed, Python at my side.
    About in the middle of the graveyard Mick stopped, looking around. “The old section—where’s the old section?”
    I didn’t know, but after a moment of standing rubbing his nose, he nodded and walked down a side path to some older-looking headstones.
    “Here. The old ones are the best.”
    “Best at what?”
    “Best to tell us what the town is really like—how the soul is. There, look at the stones, how they’re different from the others.”
    And they were. The newer stones were just square blocks with the names carved out, sometimes stacked on another square block. Here, in the old part, there were sculpted figures and flowers and on one little stone a lamb, lying on its side.
    “See?”
    I couldn’t get my eyes off the small stone.
    CLAIR MILLER
BORN MAY 5, 1887
TAKEN OCT . 9, 1890
SHE BIDES IN HEAVEN ,
AT PLAY WITH ANGELS DEAR
    “She was just a baby,” I said. “Three years old.”
    Mick nodded. “Draw.”
    “Here?”
    “What you see—draw.”
    So I drew the headstone and it was going fine until I started on the little curled-up lamb on top. It was so small and alone. I remembered theorphanage and how it had been sometimes alone in the room when I didn’t think I would ever get adopted, alone like the little lamb. I wondered how Clair Miller had come to die and I started to cry.
    “Ahh, yes, there it is, isn’t it?”
    “It’s not what you think.”
    “Well, of course it is. You’re crying, and that’s the way it should be.”
    “I’m not crying. I don’t cry.” Not at the orphanage and not since the orphanage. I didn’t cry. Not ever. And here I was, crying.
    “It’s all right to cry,” he said. “I cry each day—my soul weeps. It means you’re seeing something as it is, as it’s meant to be seen, doesn’t it? Oh, yes, crying is the tiling to do.” He smiled. “As long as you keep on drawing. Know the line, always that, know the line.”
    And I kept drawing and only dripped a little on the paper. When I finished I looked and saw that Mick was standing in front of a plain white stone, a rectangle, small and straight with no decoration.
    I went to it and read:
    CLELL MILLER
BORN SEPT . 8, 1843
DIED NOV . 27, 1862
INFANTRY
    “Was he a soldier?”
    Mick nodded. “Civil War.”
    “Killed in battle?”
    “Maybe. Probably not. Most of them died of disease—four to one. Four soldiers in the Civil War died of dysentery—the black squirts, they called it—for every one that died of battle wounds. So he probably died that way.” He sighed. “Heroes all, weren’t they? All of them heroes. There were four, you know.”
    “Four