Samuel "Sketch" Tibodeau

Sketch was too big for himself; too tall and long. He could never quite control his feet when he moved and his hands fumbled with everything he held. Everything except charcoal. Somehow when he held the charcoal his hand was steady and did exactly what he wanted it to do. It was for that reason alone that he was hired by the Kaden Hollow Weekly.

His Aunt was the first person to call him “Sketch.” From the time he was seven years old he was never without a pencil and paper. He drew religiously. The walls of his room were lined with images of anything and everything, from trees to buildings, from clowns to rainbow trout. Being abnormally large and irreparably awkward made him an easy target for name calling as a boy, and he subsequently gave up on the idea of school at an early age, devoting his time to nothing but his drawings. His parents had died earlier than he could remember and his Aunt had long since moved to Ohio, abandoning him in Kaden Hollow, and he was alone in the world.

A kind hearted nurse named Olivia Mott found him in back of the general store one night when he was eleven years old. He had run out of people to stay with and had resorted to sleeping amidst the bags of thrown out paper goods. She couldn’t tell how long he had been there, but ever since, he had been allowed to stay at the Kaden hospital. His room was small and hidden in a back corner of the basement, but it was indoors, and he didn’t mind. Though she could never get him to go to school, Nurse Mott did her best to raise him the ways she new how. He was an orphan and she had no children of her own, so the experience was new to both of them, and in time became a relationship much the same as any parent and child. They loved and respected each other.

When he turned eighteen, she instructed him to find some kind of work.

“What it is doesn’t matter so much,” she had said. “Not as much as you bein’ able to pull some weight around here.”

He understood, wishing most in the world to never be a burden, and set out the next day to find something. He applied to grocery stores, book stores, gas stations, restaurants and anything else he came across in his search. He had no luck. Standing almost seven feet tall, his long arms and jerky, clumsy movements made him a strange and intimidating figure. Most employers turned him away based solely on the thought that they may at some point need to reprimand him for whatever reason, and no one wanted to see him angry. In reality, Sketch was harmless, and had no intention of harming anyone. His only intentions were to have people like him and to draw pictures.

As he sat alone on the town square one day, having given up on the thought of being hired by anyone, he began to draw on the back of an application for the movie house. In front of him were the courthouse and the clock tower. Tall oak and cottonwood trees stood on either side of the buildings, swaying gently in the April breeze, brushing the deep red bricks with the thin branches that reached out from the massive bows above his head.
As he drew, he disappeared inside his drawing, and didn’t notice the man that happened to walk up and stand just behind him. The man watched intently as Sketch laid out the entire scene in moments. His hand flew over the paper and a vision of the courthouse, the trees, the sky, the grass, the shadows, the textures, came into stark view. When Sketch finished he sat staring at his work.

“Well, I’ll be,” said the man in disbelief.

Sketch jumped in fright, thinking he was alone.

“Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to scare you. Name’s Lloyd. I run the Kaden Hol…the newspaper.”

“The Weekly?” Sketch asked quietly.

“That’s the one,” replied Lloyd. “That’s somethin’ of a picture you got there.”

“Thank you.”

“You do that for fun?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d you like to do it for a paycheck?”

Sketch didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t imagined one might get a paycheck for doing what they were going to do anyway.

“Okay,” Sketch said feebly, not sure how to respond.

“Yup, we can sure use a man like you at the weekly. Pictures of events and the town and such. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay then. You come by my office tomorrow and we’ll get you started. What’s your name, son?”

“My mama calls me Sketch.”

The man laughed a loud and full-bellied laugh. It sounded friendly and Sketch smiled.

“Well, that’ll be just fine then, Sketch. See you tomorrow.”

And so it was. It had been four years since Lloyd Carter hired Sketch, and Sketch loved his job. He stayed in his room at the hospital and walked to work every morning at 5a.m. There was never a moment he wanted for anything more than what he had.

That is, until the day he came home to the hospital after a day of drawing wedding imagery and profiles of past presidents, and walked through the halls of the hospital to get to his room. As he turned the corner before the stairs, he passed a room with its door open and glanced in. An elderly lady lay in a bed, looking up at the ceiling. Sitting beside her, eyes red from crying and head rested on the old lady’s shoulder, was a young woman about his age. He paused in the doorway and the young woman began to look toward him. Embarrassed at having looked in, he moved swiftly past and didn’t stop or look around until he got to his room.

Once there, he got out a blank sheet of paper from his desk drawer and a pencil from the cup by the lamp and began to draw. As his hand erratically traversed the paper, an image began to take shape. An image of an old lady lying in a bed in the hospital. Her hands were folded over her heart and she looked blankly upward. And then he drew the younger woman. He recalled every contour of her face and how her hair fell in the dingy yellow hospital light. He finished the drawing and reached for another sheet of paper.

He began again, but this time the image was different. There was no older lady, simply a larger, closer picture of the young woman, every line perfect, every detail preserved. And he did it again and again. Page after blank page filled up with the face of the young woman, locked in a moment of untold sorrow. He drew faster and faster and each time, tossing each one aside until the floor was covered in repeating images of the young woman in the hospital room.

Finally he stopped. He was out of breath and his hand hurt. He looked down at the sweet, sad face staring up at him from the floor. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.