Paul Lamb - The Lively Arts in Kansas City!

Short Story

Story by Paul Lamb.

Published: Monday, January 7, 2008

Had anyone been paying attention, the first moments of the interesting events that summer might have been noticed. One sultry evening two legs of the gigantic Louise Bourgeois spider sculpture in front of the Kemper Museum slipped off their concrete pedestals and rested lightly on the grass.

Some blamed the vernal equinox. Others sought signs in the weather or the general state of moral decay. But most people didn’t give the matter much attention once the shock had passed, and after all, these were the kinds of things most people never gave much attention to before anyway.

The ensuing surprise was spectacular. Commuters driving up Main Street the next morning were astonished to see a giant steel web strung between the twin American Century towers and the Bourgeois spider resting at the center.

Traffic was thick as gawkers marveled at the stunt. Yet the novelty passed quickly as people remembered, while stuck at the lights on Main Street, that they had jobs to get to, that they had errands to run, or that
they were missing their favorite shows. By mid-day, the crowds had diminished, and only those who] deliberately drove by to see the spider added to the regular traffic, and that wasn’t many since by evening everyone realized the whole thing would be on the news.

Frenzy at the Museum over the free-spirited spider was doubled when it was realized that the other Bourgeois sculpture, a dog-sized spider mounted on the wall beside the entrance, was also missing. A quick search turned up no sign of this sculpture, and for the present it was considered lost, though the staff stapled flyers to telephone poles in the neighborhood reporting a little lost spider and offering a reward.

Nonetheless, the museum opened that day as it normally would, and soon after, the Botero statue standing before Kemper East, La Pudeura, a zaftig bronze woman who had for years been trying to hide her shame fore and aft with pudgy hands, jumped down from her pedestal, tugged her heavy feet from the yielding earth, and was off.

The Crying Giant statue was also stirring to life. He sat on his plinth, holding his head in his cartoonish hands and blubbering audibly. He gave his head an occasional shake, looked up inconsolably, then fell back into his hands to renew his wailing. As La Pudeura passed him, she hissed “Oh, grow up,” then pushed on.

La Pudeura added briefly to the carnival on Main Street, but her purposeful gait warned the gawkers to get out of her way. “Look at that fat, naked statue,” someone in the crowd guffawed, but her single-minded, clanging stomp down the sidewalk showed she wasn’t intimidated, so the crowd lost interest and turned back to the spider. This being Main Street, a large hole had been dug in the pavement, and an orange plastic fence was strung around it. La Pudeura confiscated the fence fabric, wrapped it around herself with evident relief, and continued down the hill.

Farther uptown, more artwork was stirring. Having been on the march in the same place for more than 70 years, the collection of figures known as the Pioneer Mother, began bending and stretching to work out their sore muscles and stiff joints.

Intended to honor the families that had joined the Westward Expansion, these two men and a woman with babe in arms astride one of two weary nags had been placed headed south toward the Santa Fe Trail not far ahead. Thus they hadn’t seen the spires that had since sprouted downtown, and these glass and metal structures looked menacing to their 19th century eyes, so they turned in the opposite direction and continued their southward march, this time actually moving. Soon they found themselves on Broadway, passing between the tall buildings, and weaving through the automobile traffic that honked and braked and swerved around them. The drivers, unaware of similar events unfolding several blocks east on Main, found the living statues a diverting oddity at first, but soon tired of the congestion.

The sculptures continued south on Broadway, passing other bronze work that was curiously unmoving, but when they came to the vigilant stone lions perched before the Kansas City Life building they watched the pair yawn mightily, lift their hindquarters to stretch briefly, then rest their heads on their massive stone paws and fall asleep.

Several blocks farther down Broadway, they came upon three bronze sculptures in Pioneer Park at the heart of Westport. Westport had been a bustling town that saw much of the Westward Expansion pass through. Indeed, a stretch of the Santa Fe Trail is now known as Westport Road, though not many people know this. The three bronzes depicted Alexander Majors, John McCoy, and Jim Bridger, who were early boosters and town builders, though even fewer people knew this. Kansas City eventually outstripped and absorbed Westport, and the area is now best known for revelry, which everyone knows. Yet something of the old spirit must have resided in the three bronzes, for they were engaged in a lively discussion as the pioneer statues approached afoot, having lost their horses to a large pot of tasty flowers they had passed. The bronze horses munched away merrily on the brightly colored flowers, and no one thought it prudent to stop them.

“I’m not a man for sitting,” said Bridger, who had been sitting in Pioneer Park for 20 years. “I must be about to be alive!” He slapped his oversized hat across his knee with a crack.

“Nor I,” said McCoy. “Yet where would we take ourselves? This is not our world.”

“As you two have sat on your hinders these many years,” said Majors, “I have held my gaze to the west where our great nation has grown. As I recall, Boone’s Store is but a block west of here, and I believe if we go there we may find a way to understand this modern age.”

A man of decision always attracts followers, and when his two companions rose to join him, the two male statues from the Pioneer Mother fell in step behind them. Thus they had finally set foot on the Santa Fe Trail, though they weren’t to go far.

The mother, still carrying her baby, would have none of this, and instead had a different thought. She gazed further down Broadway, spied what she sought, and leaving the menfolk heading west, turned her steps south.