Page 18 of Promise of a New Beginning
“You can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough at it,” Lou said.
“No, I can’t,” Aiden said. “I can’t be Superman no matter how hard I try.”
“How do you know unless you try?” Lou winked at Jack.
Pratt made atsksound.
That was all Jack needed to know that Lou had hit home with something.
“I guess…” Aiden scrunched his face and thought about the question. “I guess I have to try; then I’ll know.”
“Good plan,” Lou said.
“Pratt, tell me about what you do. Your registration form said artist.” Jack hoped his comment sounded innocent.
Pratt pulled at the edge of his black T-shirt. “I sculpt,” he answered.
Jack had heard his voice so rarely that each time he spoke, the deepness of it took him by surprise.
“What medium do you use?” Lou asked.
Pratt shrugged. “Mostly metals. Bronze, brass, aluminum, iron. I also do some smaller sculpting with clay and some wood carvings.”
Jack noticed the hint of excitement in his voice. “My mother is a sculptor and a painter. I’ve always been fascinated by her ability to create fantastic things out of her imagination. How did you get into it?”
Pratt shrugged again. “Friends, I guess. While I was at college, I studied on the lawn of the art building. That side of the campus had the most shade and the people were, I don’t know…more interesting.”
“Than?” Jack asked. He heard Savannah laugh and glanced behind him. She was holding on to Josie’s hand and they were both doubled over with laughter. Elizabeth had a wide smile on her face, and she waved to Jack. He smiled.
“Than what?” Pratt asked.
“The art students were more interesting than who or what?” Jack asked.
“Oh, than the engineering dudes. They were dolts. Repressed. You know the type. They think they’re smarter than everyone else and all that.” For the first time since they’d arrived, Pratt looked at Jack with a hint of levity in his eyes. “You’re not an engineer, are you?”
Jack laughed. “Not anymore.”
Pratt shook his head, and his mouth lifted to a crooked smile.
Jack felt a shift in Pratt’s attitude, and he was glad to see hints of a nicer guy beneath the sullen exterior. “It’s okay. I studied engineering, but I went into the military after college and ended up in the Special Forces.” That year, Jack had met the men who would become like brothers to him. And years later, after Linda’s death, he’d erased them from his life just as he’d abandoned his own family. He’d even removed their numbers from his cell phone. “You’re right about engineering school. It’s pretty serious stuff. So did you graduate?”
“Yeah,” Pratt said.
Jack could not reconcile the young man with the black tuque pulled down low over his forehead with the other eggheads he knew in college. Great men, but they were highly intelligent, and not one of them had a creative bone in their body. “So, why sculpting? Did you dislike the engineering field?”
Aiden pulled on Jack’s pants leg. “Excuse me, Jack, but what’s sculpting?”
“I’ll let Pratt answer that.”
“Well, it’s when you take something—like a hunk of metal or clay—and you reshape it until it looks like something else. Sometimes you have to use really hot fire, which is cool, and sometimes you can just use your hand or you use tools.” Pratt nodded. “Do you use Play-Doh?”
“Uh-huh,” Aiden said.
“That’s sculpting,” Pratt said.
“Cool. So I can be a survivor man and a sculptor.” Aiden beamed at his father.
Lou patted him on the head. “That’s right. You can do anything and everything you want, and if you need to learn how, we’ll find a teacher.”
