Tombstone Etcher
It was a small farmhouse in Atlanta, Indiana, down a gravel driveway. There was no sign, just a name on the mailbox: Gayle Jordan.
“Is his last name Jordan?” I asked my mom, parking my Volt near a discarded wheelbarrow.
“What? No, Robert.”
“Robert Jordan?”
As we get out of the car, a blond woman in her sixties steps out, carrying tote bags to the nearby open van.
“Are we in the right place?” My mom asks.
“If you’re looking for the studio, yes! Just give me one second.”
Just then we see a face in the large window above the garage—a man with long, curly gray hair, beckoning us with a hand. He looks like an artist.
The woman puts the bags in the van and leads us into the garage and up the stairs, where the space suddenly transforms from a storage area filled with old sets of Monopoly and trampolines and a creepy antique locomotive with carved animals peering out the windows into an artist’s loft. It’s beautiful. A desk chair in front of a wooden drafting table, filled with pencil sketches. Two easels set up on different sides of the room—one perpendicular to the window and one directly in front, so both get light from the giant picture window where we saw him just a moment ago. Wooden floors, colorful rugs, bookshelves lining the walls. It’s exactly what I picture when I think of an artist’s studio.
Robert himself is 78, we find out later, though you wouldn’t guess he was that old. He moves easily, seems quick and nimble. When I first see him I think he looks like a civil war reenactor—his pink checked shirt is buttoned all the way up to the neck, the sleeves rolled up a bit. His moustache is full and droopy, his chin length hair curly and gray. Soon we find out he is a civil war reenactor—he opens one of the doors in the loft to show us what he calls his “war room,” with his costumes and American flags and vintage pistols. He’s a nice man, a talented man, who in addition to the tombstone etching he’s going to do for us—a soaring eagle to go between my grandma and grandpa’s names—illustrates children’s educational materials and something called Prairie Farmer magazine. He shows us posters he did with Mark Twain on them. He’s good. My favorite is an oil painting of a buffalo staring boldly, scratching his foot in the dirt. Many of his paintings and illustrations are scenes from the Civil War or the old West, or paintings of 1950s Corvettes parked next to buildings where teenage girls in poodle skirts walk on the sidewalk. He’s got a charcoal portrait of Doreen from the Mickey Mouse Club, wearing her white sweatshirt with her name on it and a bow in her hair.
My mom starts telling him why we’re here and quickly gets overwhelmed, telling him probably more details than he needs.
“It was very unexpected…”
“They were together for over 60 years…”
“My father doesn’t know how to be an adult by himself…”
“This is very difficult for him. He’s having a hard time…”
Robert is very nice and patient. He’s pulled different pictures of eagles for us. It doesn’t take us long to pick a soaring eagle in front of some mountains.
“I’ll add in some trees,” he tells us, marking the picture in his book. He doesn’t own a computer or cell phone, so all his records are on paper. I feel a moment of envy and nostalgia for his analogue world, his artist life, his sunny loft. In another life could I have had a career like this?
On the way home my mom says, “I liked him a lot. But I couldn’t help thinking as I sat there that he probably…”
“Voted for Trump,” I finished. “I had that thought, too.”