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a Link in the Chain
cc&d (v247) (the January / February 2014 Issue)




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a Link in the Chain

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Unclaimed

Daniel Stockwell

    Most of the passengers on Delta flight 0028 were sleeping, especially those in first-class. The plane, flying over Greenland, was approximately half-way through the trip.
    Jacob Wyatt, sitting in between two strangers in economy seating, was not sleeping. Instead, Jacob was using the tray-table to draw in his sketchpad. The bottom of his right hand was smudged with graphite. He worked quickly, and every so often his left hand would change the angle of the paper, but the movements of his right hand were so fluid it might have looked like Jacob had picked up an already completed drawing and was simply pretending to be the one who had created it.
    Jacob withdrew his hands and looked at his drawing. For a moment, he smiled. Then, almost immediately, he looked sideways to his left. The older man who had been reading Game of Thrones earlier was sleeping. He even wore a sleep mask. Jacob shifted his eyes to the right. The girl with the University of South Carolina sweatshirt was sleeping as well. Her head was leaning against the window, her mouth open.
    Satisfied, Jacob looked again at his drawing. Of course, it was just a sketch, and it was not easy doing so on a plane, in between two strangers, but Jacob smiled again. He had drawn a man in a suit walking up a winding staircase into the sky. The stairs were laptops and tablets, and the sky too was a giant tablet. The man was trying to reach the sky, trying to touch it, to open one of its apps, but his right foot had sunk into one of the “steps.” Already, his right leg was becoming pixilated. Jacob had drawn the staircase in such a way as to have the man’s face visible to the viewer. The man’s cheeks still showed corners of a mouth tightly pulled back from a smile, but the mouth was open from a shout of horror, and the eyes were wide in sudden revelation.
    Jacob saw that the assistance light in his row had turned on, but he hadn’t pressed it. He looked to his left, the man was still sleeping. Jacob looked to the girl on his right, but as he did so her left elbow nudged against his right arm as she stretched and yawned.
    Jacob closed his sketchpad and turned off his overhead light. A few moments later a flight attendant arrived. Her eyes were puffy, and her bleached hair was coming out of the ponytail like strings of angel hair pasta.
    She leaned down and asked, “How may I help you?”
    “Yeah, um, how much longer do we have left?” the girl scratched the back of her head and covered up another yawn with her hand.
    The flight attendant closed her eyes for a second and breathed in. Then, she leaned across me and turned on the monitor in front of the girl.
    “If you select this option, it will tell you the remaining flight time and show you how many miles we have already covered. It also shows you where we are in the sky. Can I help you with anything else?”
    The girl, still yawning, just shook her head in response. The flight attendant smiled and walked back toward the front of the plane.
    Jacob looked over at the monitor and saw that the remaining flight time was four hours. He locked his tray-table and put away his sketchpad. He knew he should try to sleep, should do his best to avoid jetlag. He closed his eyes and leaned back his chair.
    Before boarding the flight, Jacob Wyatt had just finished his sophomore year at Gainesville Community College. Currently, he was studying business administration there, but he really wanted to drop that and study painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design. In fact, he had never wanted to start taking classes in business administration at all. Straight out of high school, Jacob had wanted to go to SCAD. He had even toured the campus several times, and the school’s website was the number-one site in his browser’s “most visited” list. Still, Jacob had not even managed to apply, for a portfolio and list of awards or achievements were required. He had not been able to compile anything that he felt was even worth submitting.
    Well, one time, in March of his senior year of high school, Jacob had put together a portfolio to submit. He brought it to his art teacher, Mrs. Cahn. Though she would never have said this out loud, Jacob was Mrs. Cahn’s favorite student, the very favorite, out of over twenty years of teaching. She admired Jacob for his talent, of course, but also for his unique vision and perspective. Also, she admired his humility. Even though Jacob was the most talented high school student she had ever seen, he had never seemed prideful or treated the other students’ work with disdain.
    Mrs. Cahn gave Jacob a few tips on how to organize his portfolio better, to make a stronger impression. She also suggested he add a few of his pieces that she found extraordinarily striking, but she did not suggest he take anything out.
    “You will do great,” Mrs. Cahn told him then. “I know you’ll make me proud. Just don’t forget me when you are a famous artist, okay?” Mrs. Cahn laughed and gave Jacob a hug.
    Later that day, Jacob took the portfolio Mrs. Cahn helped him compile and burned it in the woods behind his house. Then, he applied to Gainesville Community College for business administration, was accepted, signed up for classes, and when graduation came, he did not look Mrs. Cahn in the eye.
    So, two years later, aboard a flight to Germany, Jacob hoped that spending his summer break touring Europe and painting would allow him to produce something, at least enough for a first-year student’s portfolio. Otherwise, it would be back to business administration and internships.
    Before taking off, Jacob had decided on staying a maximum of two weeks in each country he visited, and whenever possible, to keep his visits to a week per country. He would stay in the cheapest hostels that provided him with a private room.
    Jacob stuck to his plan, and on his tour of Europe he visited Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, the Ukraine, Hungary, and Austria. He stayed longer in Russia than in Belarus, and in Austria longer than in Hungary, but most importantly, Jacob had managed to produce one painting for each country he visited. Out of the eight paintings, Jacob liked three the best, for he felt they were the least forced, the most honest, and they made him smile.
    The remaining five Jacob thought he would keep just in case his opinion of them changed, but he felt they lacked the originality and unique perspective of his favorite three.
    The first of the three was inspired by the Berlin Wall and an observation: sex sells in Europe. Really, Jacob thought, sex sells everywhere, but especially in Europe. So the first painting Jacob completed, he titled “The Wall of Shame.” In the painting, a wall made of flatscreen televisions starts in the bottom left corner and curves out of sight behind some charcoal-colored buildings. The perspective is such that the televisions seem to bulge in the center of the painting. It is night, and the bright colors from the screens illuminate the sidewalks and viewers, of which there are many. From both sides, crowds of viewers with bright red, blue, and green faces watch the screens, their mouths slightly open, and their necks straining forward. All of them are naked. Women on the left and men on the right. They are watching a pornographic film that spreads all the way across the screens until they bend behind the buildings.
    From Germany, Jacob took a train to Krakow, Poland. The city has its own mascot, so to speak, a green dragon. Jacob first learned of the dragon’s importance when he toured Wawel Castle. There, a metal sculpture of a dragon actually breathes fire, and it is under the castle where the dragon’s den is said to have been. Some legends say that a man surnamed Krakus defeated the dragon, built Wawel Castle, and established the city of Krakow. This legend inspired the second of Jacob’s paintings, “Photodraconic.”
    In the foreground is a huge statue of a dragon, surrounded by tourists taking pictures and posing. A few daring children hang on the wings of the dragon while their parents photograph them down below. In the background are green rolling hills, and on top of one in the right third of the canvas is a real dragon fighting a knight. The knight is down on a knee using his shield to block the fire spewing from the dragon’s mouth. No one in the painting notices the epic battle.
    Finally, Jacob completed the third painting in Budapest, Hungary. As in many of the cities Jacob had visited, graffiti stained the facades of the beautiful buildings like ink splatters on an old document. On the subways, graffiti. On the trams, graffiti. On the statues, graffiti.
    The painting is a sky at sunset. Purple, pink, and orange burst through holes in the fluffy, multidimensional clouds, which look almost like islands in a sea of pink. The clouds are covered in graffiti tags and mottos, and Jacob named it “Sky Scribbling.” It was not a very complex painting, but Jacob liked it.
    Jacob spent his last day in Europe back in Berlin. In his hostel room he packed his paintings. He put a cloth over them, bound them in bubble wrap, put a foam lining around them, and slid them into individual boxes before packing them in his suitcase. This task took hours, but Jacob wanted to keep them safe because, for the first time since he left high school, he was excited about applying to the Savannah College of Art and Design. Jacob could think of nothing but compiling his portfolio as soon as he landed, and he dreaded waiting through the nine hour flight back home. He also dreaded waiting another night before heading to the airport.
    He walked through his room and checked under the bed and in the bathroom one last time to check for any of his things he may have forgotten to pack. Then, he decided to walk outside for a bit, to get one last view of Berlin, before leaving.
    In the early evening of a clear day, Jacob walked to Brandenburger Gate. A man carrying a British flag and a megaphone was giving a tour of Pariser Platz in English. Jacob kept his distance but followed near enough to the crowd to hear at least a little of the information the guide presented. The guide directed their attention to the bronze statue that sat on top of the gate. The statue was of a chariot drawn by four horses and commanded by the goddess of victory.
    “The Berlin Quadriga was designed by Johann Gottfried Schadow in 1793. It originally stood for a symbol of peace, but one little man from France didn’t like that at all. This little fellow—anyone know his name?”
    After a few members of the tour looked sideways or at the ground, one man volunteered an answer, “Napoleon?”
    The tour guide dropped the megaphone to his side, peered at the man who had answered, and smiled. He wagged his finger for a second and said, “You’ve been on this tour before haven’t you?”
    The crowd laughed. The man shook his head, turned slightly red, and looked at his hands.
    “Ja, Napoleon, during the French occupation, took the Quadriga to Paris in 1806, but that did not last long either. You see, you have a saying. What did Napoleon meet? And don’t answer if you’ve been on this tour before, you!”
    A different man gave his answer, “his Waterloo?”
    “Ja, that is correct. Napoleon met his Waterloo, and the Quadriga was returned to Berlin as a symbol of Victory. ‘V’ for Victory, right?”
    Jacob stopped listening to the guide. He had done it, he had pushed himself and his creative ability more than he ever had in the past. He had completed eight paintings. And what was more, he liked them. Some more than others, of course, but he liked them, and he was excited to include them in the portfolio that would get him accepted into the Savannah College of Art and Design. Yes, Jacob thought, this was an appropriate way to end his trip to Europe, feeling like he had conquered himself, while standing under the Quadriga of Victory.

~


    Most of the passengers on Delta flight 4569 were awake, especially those in economy class. Once again, the plane was flying over Greenland and was close to half-way through Jacob’s trip home.
    The flight had taken off in the morning from Berlin, so for most of the passengers’ internal clocks, it was just around lunch time. They were watching various movies on their monitors, headphones in, laughing or crying.
    Jacob’s screen was off. He had his sketch book out again, but the woman next to him was awake. Her screen was off too because she was reading. Jacob grinned when he noticed that she was reading Game of Thrones. Then, he looked back at a blank page in his sketchbook.
    What to draw? What do I want to say? Ah, yes, I can draw a man, talking on his iPhone. I’ll keep enough features so the viewer knows that it is a phone—roughly the same shape, buttons on the left side, home button—but the phone itself will be twisted and have the features of an insect. That’s it—I’ll make the phone an insect, an insect that crawls into the man’s ear as he is trying to make his phone call. Should the man scream? No, he won’t notice. He won’t notice the insect crawling into his brain. No one does. Okay, here we go—
    Jacob picked up a pencil and moved his arm toward the paper. As he did so, he bumped the lady next to him. She looked over at him.
    Jacob dropped the pencil to the floor. “Excuse me,” he said.
    The lady nodded her head and waved her hand a few times. “Don’t worry about it, dear,” she said. “We don’t have much space do we?”
    Jacob closed his sketchbook. “No, we don’t. Sure don’t.”
    “What do you have there?” she asked as she pointed to his sketchbook with her paperback.
    “These, these are just some sketches I do. Sometimes. When I am bored.” Jacob took his seat belt off, put the tray up, and leaned down to find his pencil as he spoke.
    When he returned to his seat, the lady still had not resumed her reading.
    “May I see some of them?”
    “Of what? Oh, my sketches?” Jacob scratched his leg and then the back of his head.
    “Yes, some of those sketches. I’m bored too. I’ve already seen the first season of the show, so reading the book is a bit boring.” She pointed to the title on the book cover.
    “Well, um, sure. I guess you can look at them, but they are just sketches. I actually am more of a painter.” Jacob handed over his sketchbook.
    “I won’t judge,” the lady said.
    Waiting for her to finish thumbing through his work was torture for Jacob. Each time she turned a page to look at a new drawing, Jacob stared at her face, her forehead, her eyes, her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks, her lips, her neck. Every detail. He thought he wanted to see her smile, but that might mean that she was laughing at him. He thought he wanted her to be stoic, but what if that meant she was even more bored with his work then her book? He wished her lips would part even just slightly to show surprise at his skills, but, he thought, what if the jaw dropped in disgust?
    The lady had, quite simply, looked through each page, without a word or question. When she handed Jacob back his work, she said, “Very interesting drawings, young man. Thank you.”
    Jacob put away his sketchbook for the rest of the flight and pretended to sleep. For the next four hours he repeated back to himself the same questions: What did “very interesting” mean? Good interesting? Or bad interesting—like when a parent tells a child that something is cute? What kind of interesting were my drawings? Did she like them, or did she pity me? Worse, what if the highest praise my work will ever receive is “very interesting, young man”?
    Jacob was still, more or less, going over the same questions while waiting for his luggage at baggage claim in the Atlanta Airport. He had been waiting for about half an hour after the other passengers’ luggage had first appeared. Now, he did not recognize anyone from his flight.
     Jacob sat on a bench near the conveyer belt and waited another half hour.
    “Shit,” Jacob said aloud. A little girl with a pink backpack looked back at him with a scrunched face. Jacob shrugged his shoulders.
    “You’ll understand one day,” he said, more to himself than to her, and he walked toward the Delta Baggage Service Center.
    They better not have lost my bags. What if my paintings get ruined? What if someone opens up my bags and looks at my paintings? What if that person laughs at them? What if that person hates them? What if someone at SCAD laughs at them? What if someone there hates them? What if someone says, “very interesting, but no”?
    At the Delta Baggage Service Center, Jacob spoke to a representative, filled out the paperwork, and got a file reference number. They told him to fill out the online claim form and they would return his bags as soon as possible.
    Jacob returned to his apartment, showered and ate a late breakfast. Then, he got on his laptop, checked his email, looked at the Savannah College of Art and Design homepage, checked out a few samples of student work, but Jacob Wyatt never filled out his online claim form.



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