A Statues Price

• Roisin Murphy, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2022

Wherever he walked it was cold, even though the builders were sweating in the heat. There was a silvery like way that his fingers hung from his palms. Dripping and sharp, immobile inside a grey sheen. But it was only in the past few days he had felt stiff.

The yellow men carried out a long and detailed project, until their eyes no longer had to see what gave them aches grateful for sleep. The highway held a sharp corner where the yellow men worked, the cars screeched to the edges of their small lanes; not flowing as it were on other straight parts of the freeway. It would appear to be flowing traffic to the plane that sat kilometres above, where the passengers aboard were not limited to the eyes of someone who could only see just ahead of them.

The man glazed a path down the street, with no pedestrians protruding his lane. Every now and then he raised his head to see children who kept their heart on their parents' sleeve, cementing his lane into the street. Passing each shop window, he felt each movement becoming fragile, heavy.

They had a sketch, and the parts.
“No time for gold here” the chubby builder reacts to the pieces given to them.
“Expensive”
“Not in a good enough place to be spendin’ money like that”
Behind schedule, the crane arrives with lolloping arms and charmed metal. The yellow men drive the machine to pick up the concrete slab, place it on the crest of the hill on the corner of the freeway. The browned grass beneath the cement will remain years later, for when the statue is removed, it will be more permanent than the statue itself.

“Left” the chubby builder exclaims
“Right” he pulls the lever and the arm of the crane responds to its command.
“Wrong” He yells before dropping the slab.

But the statue became more unrecognisable as the sun rose. With each part being added, the builders murmurs hung as that mornings’ fog. As the crane tossed the pieces, crunched together on top of each other, drawing astray from the page.
The yellow men pause for a moment, look up at the statue, confused with the crooked angle, teetering a fine line from collapse. But that moment passed, and they continued on with their work.

His small frame was brittle, a candle that no longer kept its own warmth. The man felt his steps slow, each leg heavier to move than the last. His breaths dove deep into his stomach, each time becoming harder to summon. He felt steady, as his body became dense. Until he could no longer walk, was when he froze; caught between two movements. The openness of the world suddenly seemed so rigid.

The builders leave the statue on the side of the freeway, careless with their work. The man looks up into the sky, unaware of the ground below him. The cars pass the statue without a red light.