The Last Conversation He looked his eighty years: eyes fluttering behind closed lids, his head tossed aimlessly about the pillow, skin translucent, stained the yellow of old age, sweat beading mist onto his forehead as he groaned at pain. I stood above the bed and stared at him and tried to understand what twist of life brought death alive upon a living face. He’d told me once: "The artist doesn’t give a damned. When Wright stood on a hill, a cape around his shoulders, every eye glued on his back, he didn’t give a damned. The moment was, and when he swirled around, the cape swung out against the dark green backdrop of the hills, he knew that universes flared to life and died inside his gesture, every eye of every man and woman on the hill a record of that moment made alive inside a time lost just as it was made." But now, a stranger to the man who was, but never was, my father--in my grief-- I knew that artists give so many damns that every moment flares to life, then dies, then dies again in hope that somehow men and women will remember how their cape swung out against the backdrop of the hills. And, waiting in that room of coming death, I listened to the rattle in his breath and raged against those fools who would forget and wondered at the callousness that locked us all into small particles of sand caught up inside the torrent of a river-waterfall that thundered down into a chasm deep beyond the possibility of deep. He’d told me once: "We’re animals without the grace of soul possessed by animals." And I’d raged back that we were men with minds and said that it was mind that made us more than animals, that gave us greater grace of soul. And he’d barked back that we had minds, all right, but all they’d ever given us was grief and knowledge that we’d been agrieved. And then he’d said: "Wright haunts me like a dream. He was a glorious bastard, giving life, but making those around him feel both small and great. He wasn’t fair. A bear is fair: Enraged, it kills; in heat, it boils with sex; surrounded by a wilderness, it lives. I am a sculptor, Wright an architect: He was a bastard making art from life. The bears are mindless. Only bears are fair." At ten o’clock he started mumbling. Dreams and troubles grown from pain caught in his throat and tumbled incoherently into the room. And then he opened up his eyes and saw me sitting watching him. "It’s Tom," he said, suprised. Then chuckled. "Tom," his voice so soft I had to strain to hear. He closed his eyes again, then turned his head toward my chair. "I told you not to come back here," he said. "You’ve got to make a place inside the world. This little town can’t hold you. They’ll pick your bones bleach white with pettiness and jealousy." "But you came back," I said. "A well-known man," he countered. "Sculptor. Lover of the space beneath a jumping horse above its rail." He turned his head away again. He talked about O’Brady going wild inside a bar. He’d told me once: "A man can’t be a man without the feel of Irish coffee in his mouth." I thought about the town outside hospital walls I’d left. He’d said that I should leave to find a bigger, better place. The townsfolk, honest, true to small town rhythms, didn’t quite know what to make of him. He wasn’t comfortable with peace. The four grim horsemen of apocalypse he’d sculpted on until his strength deserted him had always leapt to life inside his eyes. But now I wasn’t sure. I’d learned that art exists where artists are. I felt like shaking him alive and forcing him to face that truth. He owed me that at least. He’d taught me. . .everything. And teaching puts a man eternally in debt to those he’s taught. Near dawn his mumbling stopped. He looked at me again, his bloodshot eyes so blue with courage that they made me blink. "Tell Ruth," he said. "Someday. That she’s still loved. All this means nothing." I looked at him, but didn’t speak. He’d told me once: "An artist should be hands and belly, eyes and brain, all working overtime." I didn’t weep. He mumbled incoherently, until, at last, he slept.