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by Robert Giles
It was coming down to the wire and I still hadn’t started my assignment.
It was coming down to the wire and I still hadn’t started my assignment.
We were studying ancient Egypt. The assignment was to make a papyrus-like scroll displaying hieroglyphics. It was due Friday. Tuesday and Wednesday had come
and gone. Now it was Thursday evening. I hadn’t even started.
There was a picture of hieroglyphics in our book but I
didn’t want to copy it. Wouldn't all the other kids do the same thing?
Where could I find some other hieroglyphics to copy? Mrs.
Piper surely didn’t expect originality. Hieroglyphics were the Egyptian
alphabet, after all. Little pictures were substituted for letters and words. If
the scribes went in for originality, no one would be able to make heads or
tails of what they were writing. That’s what an alphabet was – a standard set
of symbols to be understood by others over time and distance.
What if I suddenly created a whole new alphabet and wrote a
story using it? No one would be able to read it. No, originality was not of
great importance to this assignment.
All this tortured thinking was making me anxious. I looked
across the kitchen at my mother, washing dishes at the sink. No, better leave
Mom alone. Egyptian hieroglyphics were not something I wanted to bother her
with. Grandma sat sphinx-like in her rocker. I could wrap her in cheesecloth
and turn her in as a genuine Egyptian mummy, but that wasn’t the assignment.
Dad was at the mill as usual, missing out on all the good stuff at home. Dad
always headed out the door just as we were headed in. Maybe he planned it that
way.
Maybe I could just explain to the teacher that I suffered one
of those creative “blocks” and had sat paralyzed all week, unable to get the traction
to move forward. That would be truthful … and a poor strategy. I could just
hear what Mrs. Piper would say --
“In my class, Bobby, blockheads always get an “F”.
Just then my older brother came in the front door. I was on
him before he could take off his hat and coat.
“What do you need, an Egyptian scroll with hieroglyphics?”
(I had caught him in a good mood. He had actually listened to what I had said.)
Chuck went to the refrigerator and made himself a sandwich
and poured himself a glass of milk. I stood patiently by while he ate.
Chuck wiped the milk from his lip with his shirt sleeve. “OK, Bobby, get me one of those brown grocery bags from underneath the bread drawer.”
Chuck cut the bag down the sides and laid it out in a long rectangle. "Get me a couple of those carpenter pencils from Dad’s work bench. I need a tin of water colors while you’re up.”
“What do you think, Bobby, should we start out with an entreaty
to Isis and Osiris?”
That sounded good to me. When you get in trouble, always
pray.
Chuck soon had filled up the rectangle with a lot of
squiggly marks and little pictures that looked to me like genuine Egyptian
writing. I could make out a rabbit, a snake, a tombstone, and something that
looked like a hybrid giraffe and lion.
It was all done in dark pencil with dashes of red and green
water color.
“Bobby that looks like a good start, but essentially what we
have now is a brown paper sack from Isaly’s with some scribbling on it. We need
to give it an ancient look.”
Chuck rounded off the corners of the rectangle and tore little
pieces out of the sides so that it looked like it might have had a life other
than as a grocery bag.
“We need to age it a little.” Chuck looked towards the gas
burners on the stove but after one glance at Mom, he went to Plan B.
We descended into the basement. Dad thought he had hidden
his propane torch but Chuck knew where it was. He screwed the brass nozzle onto
the thread of the canister.
Chuck turned the
knob. We heard the hiss of the gas. Chuck struck a match. There was a pop as
the gas ignited.
I held the paper to the floor as Chuck brushed it with the
flame. He moved quickly over the surface so that the paper scorched and didn’t
kindle. In a few spots he lingered to get a good brown glow.
Now Chuck took a sliver from a board and set it on fire. He let
it burn until the tip had turned to charcoal. Then he finished off the scroll
with a few flourishes of the blackened wood.
“OK, Bobby, now roll that up into a tight ball so we get a
little wrinkle. Don’t worry. We’ll flatten it out with Mom’s iron.”
Chuck cut a dowel to fit and blackened it with charcoal. We
glued the two halves of the dowel to the ends of the ironed and furled “papyrus”.
We took it back upstairs to get a good look at it in bright
light.
“Don’t worry about Mrs. Piper being able to read it Bobby.
She can’t read hieroglyphics any better than we can.”
It was a complete fake but after all, that was the
assignment, wasn’t it? It looked pretty darn good to me.
The following Monday, Mrs. Piper returned the graded
assignments. I sat there for a moment wondering where mine was.
“Class, I want to show you something really special. Here is
Bobby’s scroll. I’m going to keep it. Every few years, someone does something
truly wonderful and I put it in my private collection.”
I sat at my desk in silence, with a mixture of pride and
embarrassment, mostly embarrassment. I didn't have the heart to tell her my brother had done
the assignment for me.
Sometimes I dream that someone from Duluth brings an ancient
artifact to the Antiques Road Show. I am among the hangers-on. The appraiser
carefully unrolls the papyrus. “The provenance is doubtful but …
The TV audience waits with bated breath. Dollar signs appear
above their heads.
Wait a
minute … I can clear that up. I have personal knowledge of the artist. He is my
brother Chuck.
The appraiser clears his throat and swallows. “I’m sorry. In that case, it is worth … twenty-nine cents.
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