The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle by Leslie Connor

Author:Leslie Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 41

DRAWING THE AUROCHS

I am standing in the root cellar. Looking at the pale wall. I have a stick of charcoal. Carbonized. Keep running my finger along that. I keep closing my eyes. Calvin clicks around on his tablet. He says, “Do you want me to bring up that image of the aurochs?”

I say, “No. I don’t need the photo. I see him. The aurochs. I’m not sure why. But he’s right there when I shut my eyes.”

Calvin says, “Hmm. Well. Okay then. Don’t let that blank wall stop you, Mason. Have at it.”

Maybe Calvin knows that I don’t want to make a mess of the clean pale paint. Can’t help thinking how the Buttles have been. The way we’ve been subtracting instead of adding. The root cellar is different. It is a place with progress to it. True since the day Calvin and I opened the door.

So I do it. I put the first charcoal mark down. And it is a long line. The long back of the aurochs. I walk a full step to make it. I put a dip in the middle. I like how the charcoal stick feels. How it is soft and gives itself onto that wall. And I go. I put up the lines my brain remembers. One after the other. I close my eyes. Then open them. Big parts first. That’s how this is going. It looks right. Then it does not look right. But I think that is because I have to finish what I started. So I add the low belly. Then I add wideness to that rump—and don’t you know it, a bump in the wall helps with that. Like it is meant to be. I draw the hinds of the aurochs. Can’t believe it. Looks like I have done them right.

I draw a line upward. That’s his chest. Then I draw the throat of the aurochs. His snout. Then the sloping face. I listen to the charcoal whispering along the wall. I draw pretty much a cap of a head. Like something I could cup my hand over—if I got myself close to an aurochs. But I won’t. He is extinct. I step back and breathe. Next would be the eye. But I am not so ready to draw it. I give him his legs. The thick upper and thin lower. The knobby bend in the hind ones.

It is now that I hear myself. I have been humming. Grunting. Snorting like an ancient cow—the aurochs. When I turn I see Calvin is not drawing. He is watching. And listening.

He whispers, “Don’t stop, Mason!” He makes a rumble in his throat. Like me. Like the aurochs. He points to the wall and says, “The horns!”

So I turn back. Got that charcoal in one hand. The piece is smaller now. I raise both arms, curl my hands like the horns of the aurochs. I dip my head. Keep a rumble in my throat. I reach up and draw one curved horn. Then the other.

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