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By Root 462 0

his only window facing the courtyard, and waited. While Camille kept watch for Hobart, Caleb began the process of assembling the M1 Garand, his father’s rifle from the war, a piece of his inheritance after his parents had died. His father had shown him how to operate the weapon, but Caleb found it difficult for his hands to obey the memory of his father’s instructions. With each click of the gun assuming its rightful shape, he questioned the soundness of his decision, the ramifications of failure. By the time he had assembled the rifle, loaded the ammunition, tested the heft of the weapon in his hands, he was almost certain that he would not go through with it. And then Camille whispered, “It’s him,” and Caleb felt the drug-like rush of inspiration, of making something worthwhile, and he leaned out the window and aimed the rifle at his mentor.

He watched Hobart walking through the courtyard to the Arts Building, all of his weight on his toes, looking as if he would fall forward with the slightest touch. There was an ongoing sea of movement that swirled around the professor, each person, by their proximity to the event, now a part of the piece. He took a deep breath, held it, felt his body slip into a calm that he believed preceded sound decisions, and fired the rifle. Camille, standing just over his left shoulder, made a tiny yelp, bringing her hands to her mouth, and Caleb watched Hobart fall to the ground as if the bones had been instantaneously removed from his legs. A handful of onlookers, realizing what had just happened, began to run in all directions, the sound of confusion echoing through the courtyard, and Caleb quickly pulled away from the window. He was unsure of where he had hit Hobart, how significant the damage was, but he focused on the frustrating, time-consuming work of breaking down the rifle. Camille stowed the pieces of the rifle in the duffel bag and, before she left the office and returned to Caleb’s apartment, where she would wait for him, they kissed. “It was beautiful, really it was,” she said, and then walked confidently out of the office, down the hallway, and out of sight. Caleb sat on the floor, knowing that he needed to get moving, to get as far away from the event as possible, and willed his hands to stop shaking. He calmed himself with the knowledge that, whatever the outcome would be, he had made it happen. His hands had made the thing in front of him.

He managed to sneak into the hospital the next day, the radio and television still buzzing with the news of Hobart Waxman, shot in the right shoulder, tearing up quite a bit of necessary musculature, all in the name of art. In his pocket, the police had found a typewritten note that read, simply: On September 22nd, 1975, I was shot by a friend. The friend had not yet been located, but there were serious charges in the offing. On the local news, the police chief had been interviewed, saying, “I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you just cannot go around shooting people. That’s going to be a problem.”

When Caleb met Hobart in his hospital room, tubes and machines and the antiseptic smell of delayed death, Hobart could not manage even the tiniest smile. “I’m sorry,” Caleb said. He now realized how ill-equipped he had been, how horribly wrong it could have gone if not for dumb luck. Hobart managed to speak, a hissing radiator, “It was beautiful, Caleb. I felt the impact and then I was on the ground. I could hear the chaos around me and I could see people’s feet moving in all directions. And I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, from shock, but I kept telling myself to stay awake, to soak it in, that I might never see anything like this again. And it was beautiful.”

Caleb knew what would have to come next. He would turn himself in to the police, hand them his own typewritten letter, explaining the piece, signed by both Hobart and himself. There would be jail time, though less than a reasonable person would expect, thanks to the strangeness of the crime, and he would lose his job, having discharged