Nastia Goddard
I remember most clearly how he stood in the middle of the insufferably quiet park square on that last day: defiantly motionless against the hot Arizona sun. I remember the remnants and remains of colored water balloons that littered the cement by his worn shoes. I remember how everyone else had gone home triumphant after the morning of chaos, crawling into their beds with satisfied exhaustion. I alone had come to say goodbye to the man, hopeful for some private, meaningful resolution to our brief friendship. I remember how a single bead of water rolled from his cheek to his chin, leaving a jagged streak through his metallic silver face paint. Though I had been watching every pore of his with desperate anticipation, I had missed the source of this little droplet. It must have been a bead of strained sweat dripping from his throbbing temple. After all, he had endured the hottest day of that dry, cruel summer without so much as a breeze to relieve him. But the sliver of that streak, the mechanics of its curve, the way it tenderly traced his cheekbone, paved the way for a grueling possibility. Perhaps that man of pure resilience- a man with steel for flesh- had shed a single tear. The thought was unthinkable. It would mean a complete rewriting of that glorious memory into one of unsatisfying complexity. And yet it continues to gnaw at me, for only a few hours before, I had seen him smile for the first time.
As the sun began to set behind the man, his silhouette had an ephemeral, celestial glow. His skin danced with the haze of a divine sparkle. Though the magnificent glare momentarily kept his eyes hidden from my lone gaze, it could not hide the slight shiver that went through his body. I remember that final ripple of holy endurance.
—
As with a major historical event, any citizen of Red Creek, Arizona, can tell you where they were when the statue man first rolled into town. I was only nine years old at the time, but even those of us who were toddlers can recall the way the air changed in the cribs that afternoon. Our town’s equilibrium had definitively changed that otherwise unremarkable morning in early June with the churchbells’ second chime for 9 o’clock in the AM.
I was by the market with my Ma buying peaches for a cobbler when some bright reflection nearly blinded me. Imagine my shock when I turned to see the source was a man made of indestructible silver.
“Ma! Look! A robot!” I said, tugging at her denim skirt.
“Sweetie, I’m busy,” She muttered, turning over peaches and squishing them beneath her orange acrylic nails.
“Ma! Ma! MA!!!” This time, I took her by a belt loop and yanked her around to see for herself. Annoyed, she slapped my hand away but was intrigued enough to look over and see the source of my commotion.
“Now what the hell is that thing?” She removed her sunglasses and squinted.
And it was at that moment that the rest of the town had glimpsed their first sights of the statue man, too, as he passed by our main strip. Our eyes glued to this reflective, metal figure, we were pulled magically out from the drone of our morning duties and chores to take in this strange sight.
He was a skinny man painted from head to toe in that remarkable silver shine and in clothes that blended with his metallic tone. Even his black hair was slicked with metallic balm. A beaten duffel bag slung over his shoulder, we wanted to believe he was some dirty peddler who had lost his way and would soon be back on his path. But this perception was complicated by the fact that he wore a silver-painted fedora and a matching silver-toned suit-and-tie. He seemed straight from a black-and-white picture of gentile class and civility. The only bummish thing about him was his fraying silver dress shoes, so worn they nearly looked like socks upon his giant feet. He had an equally worn face. Although he could not have been any older than twenty-five, wrinkles molded his forehead and the brim of his nose into a series of deep, mysterious crevices. His cheeks were hollow but not ghoulish. He had a wide, crooked nose that almost kissed his thin, dry lips. His jawline was sharp and jutting. Maybe he used the silver makeup to highlight and shape it to be so. He would have been a man of menacing stature if not for his paper-thin physique. His clothes, though well-preserved and wrinkle-less, hung loosely over his weak frame. The shoulder pads of his suit jacket extended unnaturally over his feminine shoulders, slightly resembling a child in his father’s clothes.
We silently watched the statue man as he strolled into the park square at the center of town, and, with his arms swinging, set down his things next to the old, dried-up fountain. He unzipped his worn grey duffle bag to reveal a crimson bucket that he placed on the ground, the word “TIPS”scrawled across the front in thick, blockish letters. And on the last chime of the hour, he assumed his artistic residence in the center of the park.
He held his hands bent before his torso, palms facing towards the sky. The slight cock in his head tilted his gaze just slightly downward. His face was unmoved and seemingly blank, his lips and brows hanging loosely and unconcerned. I thought it was the gesture of a man trying to remember some crucial information he had forgotten: his fingers trying to count the list of things he could piece together while racking his brain for some crucial clue. My Ma would later scoff that it was a position of guilt, a man looking at the hands that had just committed some horrible crime. The Pastor would come to be offended by its “blatant mockery of the Virgin Mary.” Within moments of assuming his pose, he carved each of us with a deep impression of his character. That was where the hatred began.
With the magnetism of childish curiosity, I and the other children of Red Creek all flocked to him immediately. We stood a few yards away, unsure of his potential danger. We studied his silvered pores and unwavering stillness. And then we began to interrogate him.
“Are you a human being or a robot?” I heard Jim Thompson’s nasally voice ask to my right. For once, I was glad to hear that little buffoon speak. He dared to ask the question we all wanted answered. With the initial seal now broken, one by one, we all began to chime in.
“Is that the real color of your skin?”
“How old are you?”
“Is this your job?”
“Aren’tcha hot in that suit?”
“How long you gonna stay still like that?”
“Do you bleed silver, too?”
Though we swarmed him like peevish flies, he did not utter a single response. He did not even lift his gaze to acknowledge receipt of our prodding. The thought inevitably crossed our minds to extend our grimy little hands and try to touch the statue. If we could shove him into movement, then we could break his silly facade. After all, what chance did one skinny man have over a gang of curious, impatient elementary schoolers?
Being the pioneer he was, Jim Thompson was the first to pick up a nearby stick and poke the newcomer. The man did not so much as flinch. Challenged by his indifference, we followed suit. Those of us without sticks began to poke him with our fingers. Something deeply vicious within our human nature took hold, for somewhere in the span of a few seconds, our light pokes turned to punches. We set upon him like wolves: ripping his clothes, clawing at his metallic skin with our scrappy nails, and kicking his shins.
The spell that had so enraptured our parents was broken. Some of them rushed into the square and began to pull our little, struggling bodies off the man. Some whistled and screamed from afar. They eventually managed to tear the sticks from our hands and quell the adrenaline from our brief mob session. They made sure we kept our distance as Diner Dave and the Pastor helped the fallen man back to his feet. His clothes were in an even worse condition now with added holes and frays, and his hat was askew with defeat. He hobbled to his feet and winced with a quiver of light pain. It seemed our mob had done minimal surface damage, for the only open wounds were a light scratch to the temple and a deeper gash protruding from the torn pants on his right knee where he must have first hit the ground. Perhaps the greatest injury, as we had so maliciously intended, was to his once-stoic psyche. He did not utter so much as a sound as he was ushered across the street to Diner Dave’s place for a healing apology breakfast on behalf of the town’s mortified parental community.
Once he was safely out of our grasp, our parents began their tirade of disappointment and anger. The park square became a symphony of angry hisses through gritted teeth and children’s wails. Jim Thompson’s father dragged his son away by the ears. I looked around for my ma, but she must have been content with the parenting from the other adults, for she went back to smelling and fondling the peaches, shaking her head with tired frustration. I suppose she wanted to take advantage of the now empty check-out line.
Although our faces were hot with tears, I still gathered a lingering sense of evil triumph seething beneath the surface. When we met eyes with one another, we would give each other a well-masked, satisfying smirk. Although the park square was quickly cleared after the attack, the blood from the man’s knee still glistened like red jelly on the pavement.
It would appear he did not bleed silver after all.
—
The next morning, and every subsequent one of his week-long residency, we were shocked to see the statue man saunter back to his spot at nine o’clock on the dot. We had assumed he was long gone, that our parents had certainly arranged for a cab to drive him home and escape the shame of his first day at Red Creek. Yet here he was, traipsing almost defiantly through the main strip and back into the park just like before. The only thing different from yesterday’s parade into the square was the new patch added to his right pant leg, the gash now covered from view. He continued every action to the syllable of his previous routine, not the least bit disheartened nor frightened to resume his place in the exact spot where we had attacked him less than 24 hours before.
Once again, we stopped in our tracks. This time, however, we looked at our parents’ reactions. The adults pursed their lips and shook their heads in disbelief. They huffed at this man’s indignation from yesterday’s lesson. Whatever sympathy they held for him the day before began to drain from their faces. They looked at one another and eyed the man with the coldest of stares. And we began to see something of ourselves grow in them as well. Perhaps they did arrange and pay for a cab after all. Perhaps he had refused their kindness. Perhaps they were angry at our childish excitement for his unexpected return. Whatever it was, the parents were unpleased and baffled once again at the man’s arrival, and they began to move together in search of gossip and answers.
Amidst the chaos, the Pastor waddled up the front steps of the church at the edge of the park square and, as he did before Sunday Sermon, waved his arms frantically. He called the town, parents and children alike, to collect together inside. As it was not a Sunday, we knew this would be one of his pitiful attempts at an Emergency Town Meeting.
The Pastor doubled as the Mayor of Red Creek, and the church could charade as a Town Hall. Usually, he would blend his Sunday Sermon on religious sacrifice and redemption with updates on the lack of communal funding to restore the park’s fountain or petitions for zoning permits to add a new “Red Creek History” wing to the public library. But every so often, the Pastor would create a raucous trying to gather the town together for an Emergency Town Meeting. The last Emergency was in April when the Pastor had heard rumblings of a bobcat family that had been found sleeping on the local elementary school playground of a nearby town. He urged us to keep vigilant and secure our trash to avoid “luring unwanted predators near our kids.” Now, he stood huffy and red-faced at his podium, his jowls swinging as he shook his head wildly.
“It has come to my attention that yesterday’s visitor, presumably a panhandler from our less humble neighbors in the City of Sin… Las Vegas… has reappeared this morning against my demands that he remove himself from Red Creek. As we are unaware of this man’s motives and his potential for danger, I plead with you to stay away from him as we continue with negotiation. And under no circumstances are we to have a repeat of yesterday’s fiasco, the nature of which shall be discussed at our regularly scheduled Sunday Sermon. Keep vigilant against the vagrant,” he smiled smugly at this last remark, pleased by his alliteration, and we filed out of the church.
With the new forbidden nature surrounding the statue man, the children of Red Creek became more fascinated with him than before. We kept close to the park that day, hanging around to chalk the sidewalks by the library or catch grasshoppers nestled in the storefronts’ flower beds. We waited all day for the Pastor’s promised attempt at negotiation, eager to see how the statue man would be forced to speak and even more eager to hear the tone of his voice.
When the Pastor finally made his way to the park square early that evening, hopeful for a triumphantly peaceful mayoral settlement, he was met with complete silence and stillness. It would seem the statue man’s commitment to his craft was not reserved merely for us pestering children. It was a matter of core principle. As a few of us pretended to dig in the dirt of the flower beds, we eavesdropped on the Pastor’s absurd confrontation with the man. We snickered as his face grew redder and redder, blubbering at the statue man’s stubbornness. Amidst the Pastor’s monologue about “vagrancy laws and public humility,” the church bells began to chime out seven o’clock. To our amazement, we saw the man shift ever so slightly. I wondered if it was merely a trick played by the mirage of the setting sun or my wavering to the exhaustion of Arizona heat. On the last chime, the statue man casually dropped his pose and gathered his empty “TIPS” bucket into his duffle bag. I felt my mouth agape as I watched him pick up the styrofoam box and give the dumbfounded Pastor a polite nod before walking out of the park and towards the town bar.
—
The statue man was back in the park square by 9 AM the next morning.
It was clear that the statue man was not leaving Red Creek anytime soon. With the Pastor’s failed attempt at peaceful negotiation and the growing confusion about the man’s true purpose in our town, the adults began to grow angry. They scoffed at his meager appearance, offended by the condition of his shoes. While they all regarded him with the pitiful disdain one harbors for a homeless, aimless beggar, the sense of mystique surrounding him was deeply unsettling. No one really knew where the statue man slept. His presence was so silent that not one of our parents could reckon where he disappeared after he visited the bar. More intriguing still, none of us knew where he made the money to purchase beer or food. The only tips he received were from his increasingly curious audience of children. Perhaps to egg on his defiance, my friends and I began offering what little we had stored in our piggy banks for ice cream and toys behind our parents’ backs. The statue man made a living on our pennies and dimes. Speculations of horrific scenarios and possibilities began to float about. Patsy the Librarian and Diner Dave’s wife collected a group of concerned mothers behind the Post Office each day to discuss the matter.
“He could be camping out in our sheds.”
“Or under the porch.”
“Keep your cars locked.”
“He must be eating out of our trash.”
“Or sleeping in it.”
Given that it was summer and none of us had anything really important to do, the children of Red Creek aged twelve and under decided to form a sort of secret cavalry. As we had seen our mothers meet behind the Post Office, we convened one morning behind the church. We found it necessary to share our own ideas on the matter of the statue man.
“He’s not do anythin’ wrong.”
“Maybe he jus’ needs friends.”
“He’s prob’ly so hungry.”
“I betcha he’s got a good story.”
“What if he’s under a spell?”
Despite or perhaps because of our parents’ dismay for the visitor, we made the statue man the fixation of our minds. We established our sole mission: to crack the statue man and pester him until he satisfied us with answers about his life and work. If he was under a spell, we were going to break him out of it. That morning, we drafted our plans and ideas in the sand behind the church and then set off to accomplish our humble mission of the day.
The quest to break the statue man became our life’s meaning, one which had to be kept hidden from our parents at all costs. If any of them found out that we were engaging with the “homeless beggar” statue man, we knew it would mean a summer confined to the indoors, forced to do our summer work in painful solitude. Moreover, we had to ensure the statue man’s residence was protected. Should there be any suspicion that he was “influencing the children” in a negative manner, we were almost sure the Pastor would hurry the district’s lone Constable to take the statue man away. For now, the statue man was protected by the fact that he posed no obvious or immediate danger to the children of Red Creek. Without any evidence of his disturbing the peace, we were sure the Pastor could not use the law against him. So we proceeded in a shroud of secrecy and deception against the adults. We had a job to do, even if it was against their wishes.
We began that morning with a game of psychological warfare. Annoyance was our key weapon. By repeating the same word over and over again until our throats grew hoarse, we thought we would get him to break his statue mold from pure insanity. Jim Thompson kept guard against the adults, ready to warn us at a moment’s notice and preserve our secrecy. Each of us picked a different word. Amy Whitman started by repeating “bubblegum” to statue man until not only the word itself but every letter in it lost its meaning and sounded like hot mush. We cycled through “toilet,” “popsicle,” “elbow,” and “scooter” until we were sure we could never say or hear these words the same way again. That afternoon, speech lost its meaning.
At the chime of three o’clock, Patsy the Librarian went on a late lunch break. The sound of the library door opening was deafening and incriminating, but Jim Thompson quickly whistled to us. It was a sort of Peter Pan “cock-a-doodle-doo” that made it difficult not to giggle as we ran into the bushes, seeking shelter from Patsy’s scrutiny. If she saw any of our little shoes poking out from the bushes, she didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she turned to Jim Thompson with a disapproving look and told him to “use his real words.” When she was out of sight, Jim whistled again, and we set back to work.
My word was “watermelon.” I began swiftly and confidently, saying those four syllables with as much nasal annoyance as I could muster. Three minutes into my endeavor, however, I began to feel my tongue loosen. The word began to fall into a seeming oblivion. My jaw grew sore. My teeth felt like they were ringing against the sides of my mouth. My lips grew chapped from perpetual smacking against one another. My throat became dryer and dryer until my voice became a hollow croak. After about ten minutes of pure physical and mental strain, I bit my tongue so hard I was sure I severed it in half. My hot tears were a sign for the next person to resume the game. Dejected that I had fallen victim to the same fate as my peers, I pinched my
bleeding tongue until it stopped throbbing with pain and joined my fellow fallen soldiers on the grass.
I fell asleep in a pile of exhausted, hoarse children and awoke when the church bells chimed seven o’clock. As if he had not endured an entire day’s worth of pestering annoyance, the statue man dropped his stance with nonchalance. As the final chimes signaled the end of his (and our) work day, we eyed him with frustrated exhaustion. We were dejected at how much work had gone to waste, how easy it was for him to move by the strike of an inanimate clock. As he did each night, he packed his belongings, gave us a polite nod, and headed to the local bar.
—
We reconvened behind the church the next day while our mothers gossiped at the Post Office. Per Jim Thompson’s suggestion, we settled on today’s strategy: insect-driven torture. When the adults went off to their respective daily duties, we scurried to the various flower boxes and sand pits that we knew to house a variety of critters. We clawed away at the dirt, grime piling beneath our fingernails. We collected an army of rolly-pollies, grasshoppers, crickets, ladybugs, and even a few cockroaches in our pockets.
We brought our soldiers to the park square and let them run about the statue man’s feet. We placed them on his shoulders and tried to tickle his ears with their wirey limbs. Amy Whitman casually placed a cockroach under his hat, and we all awaited his panic. However, as usual, the statue man did not so much squirm. He did not even flinch.
Determined, we looked for even more disgusting creatures to entice him with. I found a dead mouse behind Diner Dave’s dumpsters, and the others all gasped when I placed it on the statue man’s thin silver shoe. It was mangled and bloody, but it was not nearly disturbing enough. We had to end our day prematurely when Amy Whitman got a little too confident in her insect-wrangling abilities. She found a scorpion under a rock and was stung promptly after trying to pick it up. To avoid parents’ suspicion, we decided to abandon the insect-infested park and carry Amy home together. When her Ma asked how she was stung, Amy Whitman told her the scorpion flew at her in the wind.
Only Jim Thompson stayed behind that day to see the statue man disappear at seven o’clock. He said the statue man took off his hat and shook the cockroach out of his hair before packing up his things. He said the statue man still gave him a polite nod like every night before he left for the bar. And once the statue man was out of sight, Jim said he went to see if the cockroach was still alive. But only its hollow silver shell remained.
—
The next day was Sunday, and so we had to rest.
At Sunday Sermon, the Pastor chided us for attacking the statue man on that first day. He preached to us about righteous forgiveness and radical love. He made the children alone recite verses on being kind to our neighbors, and our parents hummed along in agreement. At the end of the Sermon, the Pastor had a boyish grin on his face. He announced that he had procured a pricey ticket for Solicitation that he believed would end the vagrant’s defamation of Red Creek once and for all. As we filed out of the church, we watched as the Pastor waddled over to the statue man.
“Mr. Statue Fellow. I have procured here a ticket outlining your violation of the town solicitation policy.”
“…”
“Mr. Statue, as it is the Day of our Lord and as I have just preached about the power of forgiveness, I shall grant you until tomorrow to procure a license for your business here or else leave this town forever. The choice is yours.”
“…”
The Pastor waited for a response or hint of acknowledgment of his mayoral triumph. None came. Before his face could redden or steam could fly from his ears, the Pastor angrily scurried back into the church. We looked at one another nervously. As our parents left the square arm-in-arm, ecstatic by the legislative news, we glanced at our silent hero in the park square. Although the light was hitting him at high noon, he did not glisten the way he usually did.
I called an Emergency Calvary Meeting behind the church. We only had a few minutes before we had to return to our respective homes to begin helping our parents with Sunday dinners, so we eagerly set about our task of contriving a plan that would definitively bring us victory.
As we boiled under that hot sun, we concocted our most elaborate plan yet. Most of us practically sprinted home that evening, anxious to begin the necessary preparations for tomorrow’s final crusade before settling down to Sunday feasts. Knowing full well that my Ma would simply point me to the cabinet of canned foods when I complained of my hunger that evening, I left the church lot in pursuit of the more enticing purchase of a peanut butter sandwich.
When I crossed by the park square, I could see heat waves radiating off the statue man’s shoulders. Little squiggly lines created ripples in the cement around him. The ground seemed to dance mockingly around his still figure. I wondered if he ever saw mirages- if the heat made an oasis of the empty fountain behind him. Maybe he could imagine a little mist spraying and cooling him as he stood burning under the sun. As I enjoyed my diner sandwich, I wondered if he felt phantom droplets tickle his skin or gentle breezes wiggle into his suit. How else did he manage to survive those long days?
With my feet dangling from a barstool, I sheepishly asked Diner Dave to package the leftovers of my lunch. He handed me a styrofoam box for the uneaten half of my sandwich and looked at me skeptically.
“Your Ma know you’ve been hanging around the bum in the park?”
I felt my heart drop. We had never suspected our mission would be compromised by Diner Dave’s clear view of the park from his small kitchen window. It was a naive and potentially ruinous oversight. With the weight of my entire cavalry resting on my shoulders, I looked at Diner Dave with despair welling in my eyes and finally managed to croak a desperate plea.
“Please don’t tell.”
Diner Dave waited a moment before cracking a soft smile. He looked at the styrofoam box clutched in my trembling hands and shook his head.
“You’d have to be a damn idiot to wear a suit like that in weather like this.”
He turned to the kitchen and whistled as he flipped some hamburgers. Relieved and slightly bewildered, I slid two dollars worth of quarters over the counter before heading back to the park. I put the styrofoam box by the statue man’s feet and tapped it with the toe of my dirty blue sneaker.
“PBnJ,” I said softly, “I can close my eyes or turn around if you wanna eat it real quick. Don’t worry. I won’t tell the others.”
But the man did not so much as blink at my offer. Dejected, I took a seat on a nearby bench and sunk my heavy head in my hands. And there the three of us sat: the statue man, the sandwich, and myself, all baking in the arid heat. With the sunlight sinking into my skin, I began to daydream about silver knights and their shining armor. I wondered if there were any places in the world where knights still existed. If, in some perilous country or other, the knights were simply never told that the medieval ages had come to an end. Unaware of the centuries of progress, they must have still hand-made their heavy steel armor and rode from village to village on horseback. They must have still taught their children to fight their fears with swords and to live as wanderers. I wondered what such knights would have thought of Red Creek.
When seven o’clock came, the statue man dropped his pose and began to pack up his things. He swiftly picked up the peanut butter sandwich and put it in his near-empty “TIPS” bucket. I couldn’t help but smile. He politely tipped his hat and, to my great surprise, he winked at me.
“My favorite,” he said before casually turning around and heading to the bar.
I never told the others.
—
As the bells chimed 9 o’clock in the AM on that last morning, the statue man sauntered into an eerily silent Red Creek.
Behind the church, we spoke in whispers. Each of us unzipped our backpacks to reveal hundreds of unfilled water balloons and a dozen water guns. It was a beautiful culmination of about a week’s worth of lunch and ice cream money our parents had naively supplied us with. We eagerly set to preparing our weapons with the hose by the back door of the church. The climbing sun cast a shadow of the cross over the backyard of the church as a stream of water ran through the sand, past our backpacks, and into the open desert beyond. Once they had all been filled and tied, we stuffed our backpacks full of jiggling water balloons and set out in a single-file march to the town square.
Jim Thompson no longer played the guard. He stood with me in the center of our battalion as we lined the pavement in front of the statue man. With our attention focused on one task, we did not care about the consequences. The statue man would be evicted from the park square by tomorrow morning, and our summer joy would come to an end without his presence. The repercussions would be menial in the face of our inevitable triumph. Summer work could be endured so long as we had the memory of this day.
Amy Whitman halted our movement. We stared at the lone statue man, his head still cocked at that odd angle. From the edge of the park square, we could see the whites of his eyes shift rapidly. There was no mistaking it: he saw the outcome of this battle before it had even begun. We became keenly aware of his vulnerable stance. Perhaps it had been a stance of surrender all along.
Amy Whitman let out a battle cry that rang louder than the church chimes that followed it. We quickly unzipped our backpacks and charged the statue man with our balloons. Our cries carried across Red Creek, drawing the adults to the windows of Dave’s Diner and out of the nearby storefronts.
I remember the battle only in a scene of slow motion and little vignettes. I remember Jim Thompson’s snaggle tooth bared like an angry carnivore as he launched that first water balloon at the statue man’s torso. I remember Diner Dave peering out his diner window to see the commotion, and I remember his booming laugh traveling through the open door and across the street to the war in the park. I remember my Ma covering her mouth with those acrylic nails, shielding her hearty giggles from the rest of the mothers who stood appalled outside the Post Office. I remember the Pastor coming out of his church and shaking his fist with anger. I remember how he ran inside to retrieve a Bible to start quoting verses against us. I remember Patsy the Librarian taking pictures that would one day go into the Red Creek historical archives. I remember the shrill screams of ecstatic children ready for the onslaught of watercolor blood. I remember the feel of the plastic trigger of my water gun and the way the stream of water danced in the clear sky before hitting the man’s silver ear lobe. The way it momentarily created a rainbow technicolor in the sky. It distracted me just long enough.
Because, for the life of me, I can’t remember when the statue man finally broke character, lifted his arms to protect himself from the water, and smiled.
—
When the church chimed 9 o’clock the next morning, the statue man was long gone.
Nastia Goddard is a junior in the School of Communication majoring in Theatre
