The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [31]
The epithet did not make me flinch; in Little Rock in those days everybody called them niggers; I myself had sometimes referred to Samuel as “our nigger.” But except for Samuel, a loyal old family servant, I had never been in a room with a black man before, certainly not one, as this one was now doing, at Worthen’s command, removing his clothing. Before Tate removed his trousers, however, Worthen whispered something into his ear and handed him a rag, a long strip of bedsheeting, and pointed toward the part of the studio that was Worthen’s living quarters. Tate went in there and returned a minute later wearing nothing but the strip of cloth wrapped clumsily around his hips. Worthen made adjustments to it so that as much as possible of the pelvis was revealed without sacrifice of decency, then he commanded me, “Draw.”
I drew. For a dollar the black youth posed for three hours, never seeming to tire. He was extremely muscular, and his taut skin glistened with sweat. I did a front view, a side view, a back view, and an “action” pose of him holding a broom overhead as if it were a sword. The next time I came to Worthen’s I did details of the muscles of the latissimus dorsi, the rectus abdominis, the gluteus maximus. I devoted a whole afternoon, once, to his hands, getting the ligamentum carpi volare just right. I drew him asleep, or pretending to be. I drew him stretching and bending and twisting and throwing. I drew him, or tried to catch him, falling and leaping and running and jumping and kicking. I spent almost forty dollars on the Negro, and once when, accidentally, the loincloth slipped down without his notice or Worthen’s (the old artist had taken to sleeping through these sessions), I drew also what it had concealed, fascinated with the structure, although my face was so hot my eyes watered until I could hardly see.
That one drawing was my undoing. I kept it in my portfolio in my studio at home, along with the hundreds of other sketches of the Negro. Occasionally my father climbed up to my studio, and he was the only other person permitted there. Once when he came up for a visit, I had a group of the drawings spread out on the floor and was reviewing them.
“Jesus Christ, Viridis, who is this nigger?” he asked.
“His name is Tate Coleman, and he is Spotiswode Worthen’s janitor and occasional model.”
“Model? You mean he stands around like this with his clothes off?”
“When he’s asked to.”
“With you watching him?”
“That’s how I did these drawings, Daddy.”
“You drew these pictures?” He began to pick them up, one by one, and then to drop them, as if they were contaminated. He took my portfolio and opened it and exclaimed, “How many times did you do it?” I had momentarily forgotten about the one improper drawing, or I would have sought to stop my father’s ransacking of my portfolio. By the time I remembered, it was too late. He held the offending sketch at arm’s length and emitted a long whistle with his pursed lips. Then he said, not to me but to himself, “Yep, they’re long, all right.” Then he asked me, “Did you have to rub it to get it to be that long?”
“Daddy!” I said.
He ripped the drawing in two. Then he ripped it in four. Then eight, and into tiny fragments. He threw his handfuls of torn paper into the air and they drifted down like snowflakes. “Why don’t you give up this art foolishness and take up a nice hobby? Have you ever thought of riding? Would you like to have a horse?” I shook my head. “I’m getting you a gelding,” he said, and he walked out.
To preserve all of the art I had completed up until that point—several portfolios and a number of canvases—I hid it in the attic. My father removed all the rest of the contents of my studio, locked it, and bought for a high price a chestnut Arabian gelding, which I named Géricault after a famous artist who painted horses, although the groom, servants, and everyone else called him Jericho. Spotiswode Worthen had to go to a hospital. I sneaked away from my riding