Talker's Graduation

Mrs. Rose—can I answer that in just a sec?” He turned
    back to Talker and then spotted someone over Tate‟s shoulder.
    “Look, baby. Aunt Lyndie and Doc Sutherland showed up just for
    us. I haven‟t had a chance to say hi—how about you go say hi for
    me and take them to see it.” Brian blinked, and for a minute, it
    looked like he might cry. Tate was appalled, instantly, and
    determined to do anything to keep that from happening. “I really
    want you to see it,” Brian whispered, and Talker took his hands and
    shook them a little, then kissed the knuckles.
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    “Okay,” he murmured. “I will. I‟ll go see it. And I‟ll love it, I
    know I will, okay?”
    Brian smiled a little, and forced some of the brightness from
    his eyes. “You gotta promise you‟ll tell me, okay? You‟re the only
    one who can tell me if that piece is good.”
    Tate didn‟t know how to tell Brian that Tate himself was the
    last person to be able to pass that judgment. Everything Brian
    made was beautiful, perfect, amazing, just because Brian had
    made it. He had no objectivity—but then, Brian didn‟t seem to
    require any from him. But Brian needed this from him, and Talker‟s
    job was to give his dream boy anything he needed, right?
    Aunt Lyndie greeted him with a hug that almost took his breath
    away, which was funny, because he and Brian had just been up to
    her house a few weeks before at the end of September. They went
    every year because the leaves up near her house turned pretty
    colors. Her dyed black hair was up tonight in a smooth chignon,
    and she was wearing an understated little black dress that made
    her look like a sophisticated matron and not an artist who had
    raised Brian with a tiny income and lots of self-reliance. It didn‟t
    matter—she still smelled a little like pine and a little like paint, and
    her blue eyes were all teary and her hug held nothing back. Her
    boyfriend Craig—a big, bulky man with gray curly hair and a
    mustache who said less than Brian in any given social situation—
    kept squeezing her shoulder like he was trying to support her.
    “Isn‟t it amazing?” Lyndie said excitedly, taking Talker‟s arm.
    “Oh my God—do you realize I‟ve never had a show this big? I‟m so
    thrilled for him! This is like… I mean, when he was a kid I gave him
    everything, paint, papier maché, models, crayons—nothing took. I
    even gave him modeling clay, and he just played with it, enjoying
    the texture—but whenever I looked to see what he‟d made, he had
    already squashed it and was kneading the clay again. It was
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    like….” Her voice trailed off, and she stopped and caught Doc
    Sutherland‟s eye.
    Tate looked up long enough to see him grimace. “He didn‟t
    want you to see,” Doc said, and Talker was a loss.
    “Why wouldn‟t he want anyone to see?”
    Lyndie cocked her head, pursing her lips like she was keeping
    something bittersweet behind them. “You‟d know best, sweetheart.
    Has he ever had a voice?”
    They were coming up on a sculpture, and Talker paused to
    look at it. He‟d seen it before—it started out as a building with a
    sound foundation but flawed walls. The glazes on the bottom were
    intentionally rough, cracked, awkward brown and pebbly. Each wall,
    though lengthened, became sound, more graceful, until the top of
    the building was nothing but spires and arches, as graceful as
    Asgard or Rivendell, lovely and pure beyond belief. (Brian had spun
    the spires on the potting wheel, Tate knew, because he‟d wanted
    the absolute symmetry.)
    “He has one now,” Tate said quietly, and Lyndie looked at the
    sculpture and gave a little hiccup. Craig‟s arms came up around her
    shoulders, and the big man bent his bulky body over Lyndie‟s tiny
    one in a gesture that was as tender as it seemed unlikely.
    “It‟s beautiful, Lyndie,” Craig said softly. “If that‟s his soul, you
    did good, you know?”
    Tate was about to agree, when he felt a hand on his arm. He
    looked up and almost elbowed Mark Skeezenbacher in the chest.
    He held back at the last minute, but his initial reaction—hostility and
    disgust—wasn‟t going anywhere.
    Skeezypervenbacher knew it too. “Hey, can we talk for a
    minute?”
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    “I‟m here with Brian‟s family,” Tate said defensively, and
    Skeezenbacher frowned a little at the motley assortment of people
    there.
    “He