Carving Faces

by Colin O'Sullivan


They are carving faces on the huge rock.  They have their chisels out and the hard-hatted ones below are scratching chins, looking up and shouting instructions.  But they are getting the work done, all of them.  It is quite the enterprise.

      They are carving faces in the rock like the ones at Mt. Rushmore, only these people being etched into hard rock here are not famous.  In fact if you are not from the State you have to ask the chin-scratchers who the people actually are.
      "Are they meant to be obvious?  Someone we will immediately recognise?"
      "No, that's the point"
      "What's the point?"
      "The point is that these people, these huge faces they are carving into the rock, are not famous, are nobodies, just regular people like you and me."
      "Oh, I see.  That's the point."
      "That's it."
      "That is it."

      And so they keep carving faces in the rock, four faces in all, serenely gazing out over trees, fields, rivers and their tributaries.  One is of Paul the butcher, who has the best sirloins in the State.  Another is Bob the karate teacher, cleft chin and all; they had fun knocking off that one, careful though, not to lob off too much.  The other is Maurice Wilbur, the judge, who everyone knows, everyone in the State that is, but not beyond, never beyond; and they are carving the face of his wife next to him, Maud Wilbur nee Winslow, because she insisted, and everyone laughed saying that she would be next to him nagging, and nagging for eternity.  Isn't that a sentence?

      They are carving faces.  Chin-scratching.  Wiping the dust out of eyes.

      And though no one knew that these ordinary folk existed before, at least not outside the State, now everyone knows about it and it has made all the papers, far and away, and some reporters had trouble wondering if it was carving faces in the rock, or on the rock, and these people and their still living faces are now very very famous indeed.  Which was not the point at all.  Though Maud Wilbur is proud, oh so, and Bobby will chop anyone's head off, anyone who says he has an arse-face.  
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