Ghost Ship | Prison Renaissance Prison Renaissance Special Issue Volume One | Page 23

was almost uncomfortable to look at it but I had never seen anything so beautiful, or wanted any thing so much as I wanted this piece of stone I was holding.

“This is incredible,” I said. “What will you trade for it?” I mentally inventoried my possessions for anything I might own that was equal to this treasure—my van, maybe, but I needed that. My grandmother’s turquoise ring? My Zuni marriage basket? Maybe Alex’s beautiful old accordion with mother-of-pearl keys he’d left with me “temporarily” almost two years ago.

“It’s not quite done yet. I started it this morning, looking at you,” he said.

“What do you mean? I’m not pregnant.” I laughed nervously. There was no way I was pregnant right now, unless immaculate conception was an option.

He laughed. “No, I mean the face. I tried to give her your face,” he said. I looked at it again. Of course, it’s hard to look at something you think is beautiful and see yourself, but it did look a little like me, maybe. “You have a world face,” he said. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. “So you like it?”

“Like it?” I said sincerely. “I’d pay a hundred dollars just to hold it for an hour.”

His smile dropped and he reached out his hand to take it back. “I’m not interested in anything having to do with a hundred dollars,” he said.

“But I don’t even have a hundred dollars, I was just saying that,” I said as I handed it to him. I wasn’t sure if he thought it was worth much more than a hundred dollars, or if he just felt I cheapened it by talking about any amount of money in the same sentence as Art. You did run across occasional barter extremists at these fairs, who refused to take anything but trade. I

always wondered what they did at the gas station on the way home in those big old gas-guzzling trucks with whole little houses built on the back.

“I just meant it’s good, you’re talented, you’ve got a gift,” I tried.

“So I’ve heard,” he said with a sigh. “Not the gift I would have chosen for myself.” He squinted at the stone. “If you really like it, you can have it.”

“Oh, no, I have to give you something for it,” I said. “This is a barter fair. Anyway, I don’t mind paying for things I love.”

After some discussion, we agreed on an exchange of three days at my house in Mt. McCloud, about ninety miles south, with food and the use of my old treadle sewing machine. “Gotta make some shoes,” he explained. I was happy; the carving was exquisite, and a person who could make something like that on an idle morning was a rare find. I double-checked my intuition that he was safe to bring home, and I felt sure that he’d be all right. I could tell the first time our eyes met that his attention was not on female conquest. He was definitely preoccupied and restless about something, though, and I was curious to find out what it was.

We left that afternoon. My headlights had been unreliable lately and I didn’t want to drive at night. Zack didn’t seem to mind leaving before the evening music jam, normally a big reason people go to barter fairs. He had gone there looking for people who knew about seeds, and hadn’t found any. “What kind of seeds?” I asked, over the noisy putput of the motor and the loud blowing of the heater fan, which wouldn’t turn off any more.

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