She walked through the opening in the iron fence that stood on the front line of the property.  That gate had never kept anything in or out.  My great grandfather had installed it in the time of Calvin Coolidge to let people know he had made some cash farming, and my father was too proud to recycle it.  Neither the shack nor the fence impressed the girl.

“You lost?” I said walking up to her, smelling the freshness of soap and perfume seeping through the humid air.

“I’m looking for . . .” she turned as if she might go back to the car to find the name.

“Ephraim Picard.  Graveyard Stones and Statues?” I said.

“Yes.  But I expected . . .” she paused, looking at me with soft deep-water eyes that made me want her so bad I thought I might explode.

“A sign that say the business here?” I said.

“A professional building.  Displays of the work.”

“Papa don’t do things up ‘head of time.’”

“I know that.  I just expected examples.”

“I show you something in the barn might satisfy you some,” I said and waved for her to follow.  We headed for our barn, not very big and without doors on the front or back so birds flew through without landing.  A rusted, out-of-gas forklift half-blocked the door, and I put out my hand for her, which she took, and helped her wobble in her spike-heeled shoes over the two prongs of the fork into the barn.

“Quite the gentleman,” she laughed.

Inside on the dirt floor sat blocks of stone and marble randomly stacked, mostly by me.  I led her to one corner that was in shadows, but with enough light to see the only sample I could think of showing her.  I pulled a tarp off a marble sculpture of a woman’s head propped up on two stacked wooden crates.

“Why has it got all those lines through it?” she asked.

“It got smashed,” I said.  Her hands lightly touched the surface, like a blind person trying to remember someone.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly.  But Papa had made it and destroyed it.

“Can I see the rest of it?”

I pointed to a rusted tub filled with marble chips, most smaller than an egg from being smashed with a hammer.

“Takes time . . . gluing it back together.”

She stood back, walking from side to side to see the whole head.

“Does he always do Negroes?”

“Not always.”

“Well, she must be beautiful in person,” she said.

“She is,” I said, but I didn’t really know.  I was only two.

“You Ephraim?”

“I’m Willie.”

“Well, I’d like to talk to Mr. Picard then.”

I led her out of the barn, helping her again over the forklift, but she said nothing about my manners this time.

We approached my father carving a marble angel.  She stared.  It wasn’t a typical graveyard cupid-looking angel made by Italians and chubby with fat as if it couldn’t fly.  That wasn’t Father’s way.  This angel had a small body with huge muscular wings stretched out on each side.  It looked like a hawk in a dive, the smooth-top head cranked back as if catching the full force of the wind, the legs bent back at the knees.  My father didn’t put clothes on his angels and I wondered what this woman thought about male private parts hanging down.

“You needing something?”  Father didn’t stop working.

“My father, well, my stepfather, was killed in Statesville, Georgia.  At a rally.  Maybe you heard of him.  Reverend Al Jackson?”

“That was your daddy?” I said.

My father and I had seen the Reverend once in a church we rarely attended up river about a mile.  He was campaigning for senator or governor – I don’t remember.  People yelled and cheered.  He had a fat stomach and bulgy eyes, and his solid black capped-toe shoes were polished so they reflected the sun like the mirror-surface of a still pond.

She spoke past me to my father.  “His will said he wanted a graveyard statue done by you.  He made special arrangements with a cemetery near New Orleans that takes Negroes.”

“Takes time,” my father said.

“He got special permission from the committee because of who he was, and he wanted it to be bigger than real.  Will you do it?”

It wasn’t his busiest time, and I thought he’d be eager.  But then again, he wasn’t a man to jump at anything fast.  I, of course, wanted to see this girl as much as I could.  With time, I knew I could get her to like me.  I was full-grown for fifteen and packed with muscle from lifting those blocks for my father.

She waited for an answer.  My father had this infuriating habit of not talking when the silences between him and others clearly demanded some words.

“He do it,” I said.

“Will you?” she said to my father.

“Bigger than life takes time,” he said again in his deep voice husky from not talking often enough.

“It’s in the will I should oversee the progress.”

“Why you?” I asked.

“A prerequisite for my inheritance.”  She added, “Everyday that I come, you’ll have to sign and date my book.  For the judge.”

“I do the writing,” I said proudly, “He don’t write.”  Father had worked cane; then he was cleanup boy for a white tomb maker near Lafayette for a while.  He learned to carve by watching.  I guess he never even thought about school; he’d worked steady and hard his entire life.

“When will you start?” she asked my father.  “I need to know when to come back.  To keep the terms of the will,”

“Pick the stone tomorrow,” Father finally said, still working.

“Not today?”

“You need to bring all his pictures,” he said to her.

She sighed and walked back to her car.  I ran to catch up with her.

“You miss him?” I asked.  “Your step daddy?”

“I hated his guts,” she said, with so much anger I stopped short.  I couldn’t think of questions to keep her hanging around, and she got in her car and drove off.

The next day I stayed home from school, eager to be with her, and she brought photos and newspaper cutouts of the Reverend for my father to work from.  The sky was heavy with gray clouds and a thin gentle rain came down.

Father led her to the barn; I followed.  He waved his hand at the blocks available.  She went straight to a slab of marble veined with copper-colored lines the shade of her skin, but my father shook his head and pointed to a huge block of granite.

“I’m supposed to supervise,” she said loudly.  “I like this one.”

“You ain’t doing the carving,” he said.  “That marble ain’t big enough.”

She walked away fast to let him know she wasn’t pleased.  Father went back to the angel.  She sat on a gravestone already finished and inscribed for a Baton Rouge preacher.  I sat down beside her.

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