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Show -162 the end with something like this. It's good. Where did it spring from?" "Did you notice that it's a self-portrait?" Jacob said. I looked closer. It was true; the centaur's head, as yet only roughed in, was unmistakably Adam's. Those were my father's lips; the heavy bony ridges over the eyes, once smoothed, would resemble my father's; the Skinner nose was there, and also the deep grooves of sadness that ran down to the mouth's outer corners. I saw the resemblance: an animal, apish Adam. My dad transfigured. "Why now?" I said. Jacob shrugged. The horse part of the figure was only half-disengaged from its block of stone, the legs still caught up in it, the beast's belly of a piece with the rest. "He never did anything mythological before," I said. "Damn him anyway." "Why are you angry?" "Why aren't you?" I said. "He was your father too." I walked around the bench to see the centaur better; there was something awkward and almost clumsy about the way it was made which engaged the imagination and caught the heart. Adam's craftsmanship had gone to hell and the loss had finally made an artist out of him. Knowing that he had had some talent after all made me angry. nT . , _,, • L. it T c^id I looked around the I wish I'd never seen it, I saia. |
