Iron Alchemy

Page 11

WE MANAGED a pleasant evening. Celia brought a bottle of wine as well as her grillables.

“I figure that when you are in town this week, you can replenish my wine stock if I share it with you,” she said.

“I could just drink beer,” I answered.

“Oh, the brawny lad needs his ale. What a waste of good wine!”

“If you are attempting to seduce me, kind words are as good as fine wine,” I said.

“Seduce? You? Hah! Married on Thursday morning and betrayed by a strumpet Thursday night. Now the straying husband wants me to seduce him! I think not.” She glared at me. I was frozen. What?

“Uh… Celia. It was… I mean… I didn’t…”

“Didn’t enjoy your time with Aurora One-Night?” she asked coyly.

“I won’t deny that I enjoyed a night with Princess Aurora,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean we’re lovers.”

“Very well, then. I accept,” she said.

“You… Accept what?”

“Your offer of more wine, thank you. I never could hold a grudge.”

“You are more of a tease than Aurora One-Night and the Kissing Wench combined,” I sighed, pouring more wine.

“So why are you leaving our little piece of paradise?” she asked.

“Well, my gear all has chains and padlocks,” I said. “I need to replenish some supplies, dump my tanks, and find an assistant.”

“What tanks?”

“Waste water.”

“Eww, gross. And why an assistant?” she asked.

“I discovered that it is difficult to keep the demonstration going while still trying to sell goods. There’s just too much to keep track of,” I admitted.

“That’s why I don’t really make anything when I’m sitting at the wheel. Everything I throw is immediately cut and reshaped. If someone wants something, I just stop what I’m doing and conduct the transaction.”

“Very smart of you. I guess I just had too high an expectation of what I could do while I was here. I actually thought I’d do some serious smithing instead of just trinkets during demos,” I said.

“It probably won’t be as busy next weekend.”

“Labor Day. Four days instead of three and bigger crowds.”

“Oh. I forget American holidays.”

“You’re not American?” I asked. “I wondered how you got such a consistent accent.”

“I didn’t have to learn it. I was born with it.” We sat in lawn chairs and sipped our wine.

“I’ve an idea. How much did you plan to pay your shill?”

“Hmm. Cast members work for tips. But she won’t really be able to get tips because she’ll be selling. I think $75–$100 a day would be about right. After all, it is fun. And I’d provide food,” I said.

“And a bed?” she giggled.

“Oh shit! I’ll have to get a tent,” I said. I couldn’t really expect someone to come out to the grounds in the morning and leave at night. The traffic out was terrible.

“What? She doesn’t get treated as well as the princess?” I blushed. Celia laughed. “I have an idea. My friend Leslie Cravens was here today, moaning about how she’d gotten back too late this summer to audition for a cast role. Hire her and she can sleep with me.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of my wife sleeping with another woman,” I said.

“It’s most men’s fantasy,” she teased. “Just imagine what might be going on in our tent late at night.”

“Most men would rather be present.”

“Master Smith! A ring is the only way you will nail either of us.”

Leslie Cravens was everything I could have wanted except a bedmate. She was a cute blonde grad student in theater at the University. Great at improv, she also had a clear and ringing voice that carried without being harsh or shouted. She quickly adapted some of my lines and interacted well with me during the demos. When I returned to the park on Wednesday, she came with me and immediately tossed her bag in Celia’s tent. I arranged credentials for her and we spent that afternoon and all day Thursday rehearsing.

In addition to adapting my lines, she added a number of her own as Friday progressed, often pointing out the fine art I was displaying. People were showing much more interest in it than they had the previous weekend. In the evening, I was the designated cook. Though Celia contributed to the food more than I thought necessary, I grilled something every night. And we shared a bottle of wine and a lot of flirtation each evening before Celia and Leslie retired to their tent.

“You know, if you were making swords and armor instead of metal birds, you’d sell a lot more of the expensive items,” Leslie said.

“Unfortunately, they don’t teach sword-making and armory to union apprentices,” I said. “I don’t want to work with steel for swords. It is a long and arduous process.”

“Arduous! Listen to that vocabulary, Leslie,” Celia exclaimed. “Master Smith is educated with more than his hammer and tongs. Hammer and tongue, perhaps!”

“Oh, he does know how to heat things up,” Leslie joined in. “Let us not forget that.”

“People rave about his nuts,” Celia said.

“All right!” I said. “I shall have to praise your beauty with poetry if you keep this up.”

“Oh, please do!” Celia said. I turned to her.

Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside,
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows.
When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide
Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! Fair in sooth was the maiden.

“Oh, my. Celia, you didn’t warn me,” Leslie said, faking a swoon. Celia held my eyes and I realized she really did have remarkably dark, almost black, eyes.

“Good evening, Master Smith,” Celia finally sighed as she stood. “Thank you for your recitation. We really need to get our rest now.”

“And good evening to you, Mistress Potter. And you, Maid Leslie. Until the morrow.” I watched the sway of their hips as they walked away, thinking I would like to join them.

Hmm. Armor.

There are many industrial uses for sheet metal. Think about your automobile. A big sheet of metal is laid over a form and a high-pressure mate is stamped down on top of it. Voilà! A car door. A hood. A grille. A bumper. We used formed sheet metal—usually aluminum—to make window frames for buildings.

But a lot of art is made from sheet metal, as well. Most of it is flat or nearly flat art. Material is embossed, chased, bent. The processes are cold. I like the heat. I like the hammer. I started creating deeply three-dimensional art from sheet metal by using the forge and hammer. That’s how I arrived at making birds. I could heat the sheet metal—usually 14 gauge mild steel, just over a sixteenth of an inch thick—and hammer it into the shape I wanted on an anvil. It takes a lot of twisting and turning with the tongs while I hammer on it. Inside curves are easier than outside curves. With the right hammers and enough patience, I could create a bird’s body, wings, legs, and head. I had a lot of hammers and a lot of patience. Once the body was created, I stamped out feathers and welded them to the body.

Saturday morning, I was at the forge at seven. My stock included various bits of sheet metal and I chose a sheet of the eighth-inch bronze I used to cold stamp my coins. Most of my stock had been punched for the inch diameter coins, but I had a piece that was 12″x12″. Bronze has a much lower melting point than iron—only a little over 1700°. It becomes quite malleable at lower temperatures and hammers well.

By eight-thirty, my hammer rang out as I began shaping the hot metal.

When the Saturday crowd started showing up at eleven, a man’s chest had begun to emerge from the sheet. It was all repoussé work, hammered from the inside to create the shape of the outside. Later, I would work on a pitch-covered form that would allow me to chase the shape from the outside of the curve and emboss the front.

Leslie and Celia admired the work when they arrived.

“Les, you aren’t showing him enough boob,” Celia laughed. “You’re so flat-chested in this sculpture.” Leslie adjusted her peasant blouse down so it exposed the maximum amount of breast legal for the festival.

“I think it must be yours he’s using as a model,” she said. “Even the village smith couldn’t miss these.” And we were right back into our somewhat suggestive banter. Leslie surprised me when she wandered out farther from my stand and began to sing. People began to gather around to listen to her and as they did, she moved ever so slightly up toward the booth. I knew the words and wondered where she’d found the music. “Under a spreading chestnut tree…” When people were near enough, she began talking about the smithy and the work I was doing. At the appropriate time, I joined in the spiel to talk about my tools.

We sold half a dozen rings and three coins. Leslie pointed out the artwork and a couple people stopped to talk about it as I pulled the first batch of roast chestnuts out of the oven and served them to our audience. We were beginning to really click as a team.

Being with Leslie and Celia was fun. I was really enjoying their company and Leslie and I were working together like a real team. She’d sold two of my higher priced pieces, which would have been enough by themselves to pay for my participation in the show, my expenses, and provide a nice profit. Leslie’s voice was clear and enchanting. She’d made up the music for ‘The Village Blacksmith’. I was impressed. I was going to give her a nice bonus at the end of the show.

She provided the bonus for me.

“Where’s Celia?” I asked when Leslie came to dinner alone the night before our last day of the festival.

“Um… Not feeling well. You know. Girl problems.”

“I should take her something to eat,” I said.

“I covered it. What’s for dinner, Master Smith? I brought wine.”

“I was preparing an entire rack of pork ribs. We might have to refrigerate some.”

“Pork ribs? The kind you eat with your fingers?” she asked.

“Well, you can try to eat them with a knife and fork. I think fingers is the better choice.”

“Sounds messy. Delightfully messy. We’ll have to clean up each other’s fingers afterwards.”

“I have wet wipes,” I laughed.

“How about if I lick yours and you lick mine?” she asked.

That was the start of the flirting. The end was with my cock buried in her to the balls. Unlike Princess Aurora, Leslie had no intentions of stopping short of the main event. It had been a long time since I’d had a girlfriend and I really liked Leslie. In fact, I liked her all night long. Several times.

“We’d better find showers this morning,” she whispered when she’d climaxed again. She gripped my cock with her pussy muscles and I fired off. “I love the way you just keep coming and coming. I’ll miss that,” she said.

“How about we plan a repeat tonight,” I said.

“Um… I’m headed back to town tonight. Classes started this week and I just cut the first week. Sorry I can’t stay to help pack up. I’ve got a ride back as soon as we close tonight.”

“Well, I’ll call you later in the week,” I said.

“Sure.”

I really appreciated Leslie’s lush curves, though our banter was perhaps a little off on Sunday. The crowd was a little smaller and mostly repeats. Some of the vendors were beginning to pack up their shops by three o’clock.

“Grant,” Leslie said after the small crowd disappeared from my last demo. “I want you to meet my boyfriend, Jim. He’s working on his MFA in theatrical design. If it’s okay with you, we’ll leave now and try to only spend an hour in the parking lot.” Her boyfriend? Her what??

“Sure, Maid Leslie. Let me grab your pay for the weekend,” I said.

“Oh, just give it to Celia and she’ll get it to me,” Leslie said. She leaned into her boyfriend and gave him a serious kiss. Sending me a message. “’Bye!” They took off.

“Fucking hell!” I breathed. I considered closing my shop, but I needed to pound on something. I pulled down the bronze bust I was working on and heated it in the forge.

I plunged the hot metal into my bucket of water and it was still hissing when Celia spoke. “How about if I go get dinner ready and you clean up now?”

“Don’t bother. I’m not hungry,” I lied.

“Grant, don’t be hard on her.”

“Hard on her? Why should I ever be hard again? I fucking hate women!” I practically shouted at her.

“Gee, thanks a lot,” she spat back.

“You knew! You even helped her. She’s got a boyfriend! Why in five weeks did that little detail not come up?”

“She wanted to flirt and be playful.”

“Well, she got it, and a lot more, too. I’ve never had a one-night stand before in my life, and now I’ve had two in six weeks. Neither one of which would have happened if I thought there wasn’t a chance for a relationship to build. There’s no way I’m trusting another woman. Period. End of paragraph. End of story.”

Celia stood there with a tear running down her cheek. I didn’t care.

“I really underestimated you, Grant. I’m sorry.” She left and a few minutes later I saw her car pull up to her booth and she pushed boxes of her remaining stock into the back. Like most of us who had a craft to sell, she had a large vehicle. When the boxes were loaded, she pulled around to the back of her booth where her portable kiln was located.

I sighed. I wasn’t much of a gentleman if I didn’t go help with the heavy equipment. I stuffed the envelope with Leslie’s pay in my pocket and walked over to the Potter’s Shed.

“Can I help you move the kiln?” I asked. She spun around and looked at me. There were still tear tracks on her cheeks and the threat of more to come.

“I’m a woman!” she spat.

“It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends,” I said. “I’m just a little sore right now. I’d like to help you if you’ll let me.”

“Thank you,” she said. There was a specific packing order for the pieces and I loaded them in the van as she directed. When it was all packed up, she said, “Thank you, again. It would have been a bitch to get it loaded by myself. I’m headed home. I’ll see you around.”

“Celia, I… um… I have Leslie’s pay envelope. She said to just give it to you. Please tell her the bonus was already figured and set aside before… before last night,” I said.

“She’ll appreciate that. She really liked working with you, you know. I’m sorry for what happened. I should have known.”

“Let’s just forget it,” I said. “There will be other shows. I’m sure we’ll meet again. Good luck.”

I watched as she silently got in the van and drove off.

Fuck. Women.

I was a week late for classes, too, but I’d gone in last Monday and confirmed my space and met with my advisor. My entire year was guided self-study, meaning that at the end of the year I would present an exhibition of my work for review. Assuming it would pass, I would receive my MFA in May. I had a series of drawings that I’d presented with brief descriptions of each and was approved for my final project. As part of my school benefits, I was given what was loosely referred to as studio space. It amounted to a designated section of a warehouse. A couple dozen 3-D art students who were working on their final exhibitions would be housed there. Another section was a large teaching studio.

Over the summer, I’d discussed my needs for the kind of work I would be doing and was granted an outside wall near the huge garage doors that opened into the space. I would be able to pull my trailer in and set up in almost the same fashion that I used at the festival. The big difference was that I would not have the display section or customer counter set up. Instead, I would have another workbench where I could set up my welding and plasma cutting equipment.

I locked up my trailer and pulled it out of the Ren Faire as all the temporary buildings were being dismantled. There were a few buildings that held kitchen facilities and fair offices that were permanent, but the majority weren’t designed to withstand a Minnesota winter. They were essentially stage props. The crews would be working there another week or more to store the pieces.

It took me the rest of the day to set up the trailer in my designated space in the studio and connect the big exhaust fan that would be on anytime I had the forge lit or that I was welding. Basically, anytime I was in the studio. Everything had to pass a safety inspection, and an open charcoal forge was a big red flag to our fire department. And OSHA was very interested. They’d be in the next day to inspect and I couldn’t do any work in the studio until afterward. If it weren’t for my union credentials, I don’t think I would have passed inspection.

I headed for Art Iron to see if they had any work for me.

“Oh, my god! What is that stench? Don’t tell me!” the voice behind me said in richly accented English. I spun around and nearly dropped the hot plate of metal in the process.

“Celia?”

“At least you aren’t burning chestnuts, as well,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

“What are you doing here?” I asked stupidly.

“What do you think? I’m working on my MFA project.”

“I didn’t know you were a student here! In pottery?”

“In clay. I don’t just make jugs for your grog. Barbarian!” she scoffed. She stomped off to a studio space some yards away.

Between us were all the ‘hot boxes.’ My forge was in the slot nearest the door. It wouldn’t take too much for me to back the truck in, hook up, and leave. It was tempting. Next to me was the kiln. This wasn’t a little portable like Celia’s propane kiln. In different compartments, people fired all kinds of things. Mostly, it was for the people who did castings and had to fire their molds. Then, of course, were the crucible furnaces where metals could be melted and then cast in said molds. There were different furnaces for precious metals—in which a small amount would be melted for casting jewelry—and for larger projects like bronze casting. It was the hot side of the studio and supplemented the heaters during the cold months for the entire space.

The other side of the studio was the cold side. The most common form of 3-D art was the bronze casting. That started out with clay and the artists who worked with it. I wasn’t quite sure what Celia meant when she said she worked with clay if it wasn’t pottery and it wasn’t molds. In the front corner of the studio opposite me were the stone artists and carvers. The studio tended to be a noisy place and everyone in it wore ear protectors. I watched Celia as she moved to her section of the studio and cast one more look at me over her shoulder.

“What a bitch,” I mumbled. “Why does she have to be so fucking cute?”

Cute was the operative word. I liked to look at her. Well, I liked to talk to her when we weren’t fighting. Nothing had been quite the same as it was back at the festival. She was about 5'3" and probably didn’t weigh as much as my arms. What can I say? Lifting iron, sheet metal, torches, and a hammer all day tended to add bulk to the upper body. I’m six feet tall but weigh 225. A doctor tried to tell me that according to my height and weight, I should lose twenty pounds. Then he did a BMI. He decided that I didn’t have any fat to lose and shut up. He got me aware of my overall fitness, though, and I tried to do a lower body workout or aerobic workout every day. I rode my bike to the studio regularly.

Where I had almost black hair that covered my head and chest, Celia’s was more a reddish brown—sort of mahogany. And her eyes were so dark you couldn’t see the difference between the iris and the pupil. She never wore suggestive clothing, but all the 3-D artists tended to wear clothes that weren’t bulky. Celia had a nice shape. More slightly built than Leslie, it was still obvious that she had all the right pieces in the right places. Cute, damn it.

I tried not to pay attention to her. I’d sworn off women. And she’d been complicit in getting Leslie in my bed. That still irritated me. Still, when we found ourselves together for a few minutes, the banter was cordial and a little flirtatious at times.

“What are you firing today?” I asked her casually. The kiln was cold for loading. What she was firing would tell me how long the kiln would be in service. She turned toward me and sighed as she pulled off her gloves.

“It’s the first batch of porcelains for my project. They were a bitch to form and now I have to wait and watch for three days before I find out if it holds together,” she said. She set the temperature sequence to heat slowly and wandered over to look at the drawings I was working on. For porcelain, the kiln would heat to about 2,500° over the next 24 to 36 hours, depending on how she was monitoring it. Then it would cool for a day before she could unload it. It was a cold day at the forge and I was working on the designs for the bust I planned to create.

“And here I thought you were a potter,” I laughed. The glimpse I’d had of what was going into the kiln showed that these weren’t a bunch of coffee mugs.

“That, dear sir, is like calling you a coin stamper or a horseshoer. We have simple projects we can sell to wide audiences at a low price. Then we have our art.”

“What inspired you to work in clay and porcelain?” I asked. “As an artist.”

“I love the malleability of the material. I love the feel of the clay in my fingers. It allows me to have my hands in it. Unlike you. You use tools to shape the metal. You can’t reach in and bend the hot metal in your fingers,” she said.

“I could once, I suppose,” I laughed. Yeah. Then I wouldn’t have fingers left. “Clay, porcelain, glass—they all seem so temporary. I work in metal, mostly iron and bronze, but some other composites, because I want my art to last for generations. Doesn’t it depress you to think that what you create will be broken sometime? That it is fragile?”

“You are showing your ignorance, Grant Smith. Let me ask you this. When they dug up the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, how many iron soldiers were in his army?” she asked.

“Okay. I admit. They were all terracotta.”

“And well over 2,000 years old. How many iron artifacts told of the Greek gods and the culture of classic Greece?”

“I don’t think they had too much in the way of iron yet in the era you are asking about. It was mostly bronze until 1,000 years BC.”

“How many bronze artifacts were uncovered and used to tell the story of the culture between 3,000 and 1,000 BC?” she persisted.

“Most metal was used for weaponry and industrial purposes. It was recycled when broken and forged into new products,” I admitted. “I see where you are going with this.”

“Exactly. Most of what we know about ancient cultures is from the pottery they left behind. Not from the metal artifacts. Doesn’t it depress you to think that what you heat in your forge and bend with your hammer will one day be melted down to make an iron girder in a skyscraper or bushings for someone’s plumbing?” she asked.

“You have a great way of depressing people, Celia.”

“How about I buy you a beer to cheer you up,” she asked. This was a nice offer out of the blue and I started to pack up. It was Friday, after all, and nearly Christmas. Celia hesitated and ran her finger lightly over the sketch I’d been working on. She sighed but didn’t say anything.

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