Like Chalk and Cheese

by Jeff Baker

I was sitting at the easel staring at the blank canvas, tapping the tray of chalk with my fingers, regretting taking an art class. Especially since I was in the hallway outside the classroom at five thirty in the evening. One of my classmates was letting me use the easel that was out by the art that was being put on display.

My project was due tomorrow. I stared. The canvas looked really, really blank.

What to draw. I didn’t have the damnedest idea.

My teacher, Sister Mindy Hortense would be okay with it as long as I was finished in time. She wasn’t expecting masterpieces from me. And the way it was going I wasn’t expecting anything from me, either.

I sat. I stared. I kept thinking of an old Norman Rockwell cover that showed him from the back, sitting at a blank easel. I sighed.

If I did something that inspired we’d hang it in the lobby of the dorm. Maybe rename the bunch of us that hung out there “I Draw Nada,” instead of “I Study Nada.”

I’d done cartoons for the school paper and I’d never drawn a blank like this and I’d been under a bunch of deadlines and had never lacked for an idea.

Just draw something and get it over with. It’s chalk so you can just smear something and say it was raining in the picture. You can put it on the wall of your dorm. Or burn it in the parking lot.

You can draw, dammit! Just put something on the paper so you can be back in the dorm.

I stared at the paper. The dorm. The brownish-red brick, those green corners the pale yellow around the doors.

I sorted through the chalk. In another minute or two I began to sketch.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I took the prompt pic in the hallway outside the art class at my old college (Newman University) the one that inspired the dorm stories I write occasionally (like the chili story last week!) Didn’t expect to write another one so soon! Oh, and the title is an old expression. —-jeff