The Last Blue

by Isla Morley

  Havens interrupts. “I think there’s a way to incentivize Eddie to keep his mouth shut.”

  Massey starts mumbling something about not meddling any more than they already have, but Havens cuts him off. “You explain to Eddie that you’re writing a story that’s going to make headlines, and we offer him the role of hero.” Havens has given this a lot of thought. Given the effect his camera had on Eddie, he’s convinced it will work. “Eddie’s picture in a national magazine with a caption describing him as the one man who stood by a family persecuted by everyone else in the town—he’ll lap it up.”

  “I don’t know,” Massey mutters.

  “If he doesn’t go for that, we make a not-so-subtle suggestion that he could end up being portrayed as the scumbag who sold out his own family.”

  Massey looks like a man being asked to split his inheritance five ways. “I think you’re forgetting something. Buford’s consent.”

  “You’re going to talk to him anyway, so do it today.” Havens is about to suggest they march inside right now for a consultation with the farmer, but Willow-May plods out of the house clutching her doll to her cheek. Except for the dress sewn from a flour sack, she could be a child from any neighborhood in Cincinnati. Customarily chatty, she is now pensive, and takes a seat on the top step without paying any attention to Havens and Massey.

  Havens nudges Massey and nods toward the girl.

  Massey gets the message, leaps over the porch railing, and calls out to her from the patch of soft grass in front of the house. “Do you by any chance know how to do a cartwheel?”

  She doesn’t answer so Massey performs a handstand, making his legs wobble before falling over onto his back.

  She puts her knuckles against her lips to keep from smiling. “That’s not a cartwheel.”

  Massey vaults to his feet, dusts off the seat of his pants, and scratches his temple. He does a forward roll, springs to attention, and gives a curt bow to his audience member, who is now standing on the lower step.

  “That’s not a cartwheel either.”

  “Yes, it is. A very good one, I might add.”

  “No. You have to go sideways.”

  Massey makes a show of pondering this before lying flat on his belly with his arms stretched out in front of him and rolling himself over and over, which succeeds in making her set her doll on the step and run to the grass and flip herself over arm to foot.

  “How’d you do that?” Massey assumes the pose of a man who does not trust his eyes.

  “Here, I’ll teach you.”

  Massey mimics her every move, each time ending up in a contorted mess on the ground, which makes her laugh. When he sticks out his hand for her to help him up, she takes it only to find herself pulled into the grass beside him for a big tickle. Her roaring brings the rest of the Bufords to the porch.

  Massey rises to his feet with the girl on his shoulders and pretends to teeter one way, then another.

  “Look at me, everyone! Look at me!”

  “Get down from there before you break the poor man’s neck.”

  Willow-May ignores her mother and fixes her sights on Havens. “Take a picture of me! Take a picture!”

  Massey carries Willow-May to the porch, but she grips his neck and orders him not to put her down. “Please, Mr. Havens, take a picture. The one you took yesterday isn’t going to be good.”

  Gladden Buford informs her husband of Eddie’s stunt yesterday.

  “Papa, please let him.”

  “Havens can develop the pictures here and give them to you.” Massey explains that it would just be a matter of fetching the developing supplies from the boarding house and using his cellar as a dark room. “Go on, Buford, say yes. Havens has been racking his brain on how to repay you, and this way, you’d have a beautiful portrait of your girl.”

  “No payment is necessary for what’s the decent thing,” Buford replies, but Willow-May keeps pleading, and the man eventually nods.

  Bouncing and cheering from her perch, the girl orders Havens to fetch his camera.

  He scans for Jubilee to see what she makes of this, and instead of paying any attention to the matter, she walks Thomas over to the bird bath.

  “You have to sit still or you’ll be a blur,” he tells the girl. He doesn’t take near as long as he usually does to shoot the picture.

  “Another one!”

  “One’s plenty, Willow-May,” says Gladden, but the child is accustomed to getting her way. She slides down Massey’s arm and insists Havens take a picture of her and her doll.

  “How many frames do you have left?” asks Massey.

  “About half.”

  “There’s no point in letting them go to waste.” Massey turns to Buford. “What do you say, how about letting Havens take one of you and the missus?”

  Buford’s uncertainty is no match for Massey’s charm. The farmer adjusts and readjusts his hat and stands where Massey instructs and squints into the glare with a serious expression while Gladden stifles a sigh, unties her apron, and pulls tendrils of hair from her face before reluctantly joining her husband’s side. Havens takes three shots, then looks over at Jubilee, who is coaxing Thomas back into his cage. In a confiding manner, Massey leans to Buford and explains that black-and-white film will make no distinction when it comes to the skin tone of his other children and that perhaps they ought not to be left out. How can Buford object?

  “Why not.”

  “Right, one with everyone!”

  Levi will not be persuaded, and stalks off around the house, so Massey coerces Jubilee by carrying the bird cage. “You too, Grandma.” Massey helps the old woman to the swing beside Gladden and situates her suitcase on her lap, then poses Willow-May, kneeling in front with the bird cage, and stations Buford and Jubilee at the back, where Jubilee immediately shifts so her father mostly blocks her. Massey is setting up something other than a nice family portrait—he’s both winning Buford’s trust of the camera and acclimating Jubilee for when she will be photographed later in color. Jubilee covers part of her face with her hand and averts her eyes.

  How can Havens put her at ease? If he could somehow convince her that she belongs in the frame every bit as much as a white-tailed spotted deer in a still meadow. “Hands to your sides, everyone,” he says instead. A split second before he takes the picture, Jubilee’s gaze falls to her feet.

  “Keep your eyes on the camera, and let’s have a less serious one this time,” Havens suggests. When he looks through the viewfinder, no one but the grinning Willow-May seems to know what he means, and Jubilee has disengaged entirely from the process. Again, she looks away just as he releases the shutter. He has one shot left. This time he counts aloud to three, but takes the picture on four when everyone has shrugged off their poses and Jubilee’s eyes turn to the lens. Havens can’t remember ever having shot so many photographs in so short a time, but with this last frame comes more than a small sense of accomplishment.

  * * *

  Buford has given Massey a ride to town to fetch the remainder of their personal items, and Massey has promised to return with Buford’s consent. Before evening, they will pay Eddie a visit. Gladden, Willow-May, and the old woman are inside, leaving Havens and Jubilee and the bird alone on the porch. She’s asked if she can look at more of his pictures, so he’s given her a batch of black-and-whites and warned her that she’s not going to like them. Poring over each one as she does gives him an excuse to study her. Everything registers in her face, even if momentarily—her curiosity, her sympathy, and now a wrinkle in her brow at the portrait of welterweights at the Cincinnati fight club.

  “We’ve never had our picture taken before,” she says.

  “I hope you aren’t going to be disappointed with the results. People aren’t exactly my strong suit. I once had a boss explain that the reason people look stiff in my photographs is because I make them uncomfortable, but it’s ten times worse when I pose them.”

  “What is your strong suit?”

  Explai
ning the technique for achieving high contrast garners a polite nod, so he says, “I used to think I was pretty good at nature photography. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Pictures of animals.”

  “And landscapes.” He tells her about Charles Strasser, the tutor his father hired to help Havens keep up with his schoolwork, who was the first person to nurture his aptitude for nature photography. “I don’t know how much of his own money he spent buying me film, probably everything my father paid him, but we’d go out on a trail in the countryside and he’d be so patient while I shot the same scene over and over, from different angles and as the light changed. Sometimes it was a meadow, sometimes a tree or a row of sunflowers. Nobody except Charles could appreciate what I was doing, but in the end we were both a little naïve to think people were going to buy pictures of trees and rock formations and slightly out-of-focus flower close-ups.”

  “I would buy one.”

  He has to keep from reaching for her hand and squeezing it. “The best thing about nature photography is you don’t have to pose a mountain or a tree. You just have to wait, and it’ll show you everything that’s special about it.”

  She thumbs through more photos and stops at the picture of a dozen or so children in a one-room schoolhouse. Each looks whipped by life.

  “Pretty glum, I know.” He tries to take the photographs from her, but she pulls away from his reach.

  “I like to look at them.”

  “Then that makes you the only one.”

  “When you see a picture of someone who’s sad, maybe you don’t feel so alone.”

  On this Havens has to set her straight. “All these pictures are of things as they seem, not as they are. People always say photographs don’t lie, but they do. They omit, and omission is much more devious than an outright lie.” He points to the schoolchildren. “Ten minutes after I shot that, those kids were running around in the playground, laughing their heads off.”

  “Then why not take that picture?”

  “Because those who employ me have certain ideas and they want pictures that will confirm those ideas.”

  “Must be very one-sided ideas.” As she sorts through the rest of the pack, she says, “Folks around here have one-sided ideas, too, and go around acting like their ideas are facts. If they had cameras, I’m sure they’d use them to get their proof.”

  “I’m glad they don’t,” he says. Their eyes meet, and he wishes he could promise her he won’t be one of those people. “A photographer who is committed to the truth doesn’t set out to document the first fact he comes across. For example, if I were to take a single photograph of a barren tree just to propose some irrefutable fact, everyone would agree that it was a dead tree, and not be any the wiser about it ever budding or blossoming or the hundred other magnificent things that characterize it.”

  “You’d have to spend a lot of time with the tree,” she agrees. “You’d have to take many pictures of it, from many different positions, to depict it as it truly is.”

  Havens isn’t sure they’re talking about trees anymore. “You’ve just described my problem.” And were he to submit a hundred pictures of the tree, there is always that editor who selects the barren one. “I’m not proud of any of these pictures.” He takes them from her. “If I was any good at what I do, a viewer wouldn’t feel more certain of the world looking at my pictures; he’d become aware of how little he knows of it. It would make him wonder.” If a picture isn’t a portal to wonder, it’s as useless as a reflection on a rippled pond.

  Neither of them blinks. Her eyes are apertures opened up all the way as if to assess his motives, his surely pinholes against her shine.

  “Maybe you should go back to taking pictures of what you love,” she suggests.

  His attention is drawn to how perfectly framed she now is, resting on the porch rail, her shoulder leaning against the post. Backlit, she has assumed an attentive posture, and he’s never had a more urgent impulse to shoot a picture. Never mind trees—behold essence.

  “Mr. Havens?”

  Against the glare of a white sky, she is dazzling, and so utterly unaware of it. If only he could reproduce her likeness without exaggerating her or distorting her, without her one uncommon feature overshadowing her kindness, her sensitivity, her intelligence.

  She stands up, smooths her dress.

  “Birds,” he blurts. “I’ve also always loved taking pictures of birds.”

  She walks over to the flicker. “What about Thomas?” She crouches in front of the cage. “You wouldn’t mind having your picture taken, would you, mister?”

  What Havens most wants is to load a full roll of film and photograph her. Her, from every angle.

  “Shall I fetch your camera?” she asks.

  As Havens is setting up the shot, she says, “When your foot’s a bit better, we can go to my aviary and you can see if you’d like to take pictures of my patients.” She smiles. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  JUBILEE

  Mr. Havens has told Mama he can no longer keep her from her own bed, insisting he bunk with Mr. Massey in the barn, and because it’ll be a couple hours yet before Pa and Mr. Massey return from town, Jubilee has volunteered to move his things and make up a cot while he makes use of the wash shed. In his room, she lingers beside his bed. Her thoughts have turned to him all afternoon and she has found reasons to go to him. The poor man drinks every cup of coffee she brings him. No one, not even kin, has ever paid her the kind of attention he pays her, as if everything she says matters.

  She removes his sheet and lays her hand on the pillow, still dented from where his head has lain. She picks up his white T-shirt from the floor, folds it, then brings it to her nose. The smell of pine being sanded smooth. At the table, she stacks his pictures, wondering about the lives of these people—who they love or used to love, or whether anyone stopped loving them and if that’s what makes them all appear so sad. She tidies around the basin, touching where he has touched, and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall. What would his camera make of her? What does he see when he looks at her? Does he see what she isn’t, what’s missing?

  She pauses in front of the cupboard where his jacket hangs. She leans forward. It has a different smell than his shirt, more like an old book. Her fingers trail down the sleeves. She lifts the cuff of one sleeve and drapes it over her shoulder, then, checking the doorway, she dips her hands into his pockets and puts her forehead against the jacket’s lapels. She pulls out a used train ticket, a spotted feather, and a white cotton handkerchief. She puts everything back but the handkerchief.

  Once she finishes making up the cot in the barn, she places a sprig of lavender on his pillow and goes outside, where she spies him sitting on the log bench outside the wash shed, carving on a small piece of cedar from Pa’s lumber pile.

  “You know how to whittle?”

  “I knit much better than I whittle.” Mr. Havens slips the wood into his pocket, puts away his pocketknife, and makes room for her on the bench.

  “Knit?” She misjudges and sits way too close, breathing in the smell of soap and shaving cream, much too aware of his shaggy wet hair making his collar damp. He explains about his father keeping him occupied during periods of bedrest with all manner of activities, but he’s especially proud, it seems, of all he’s knitted over the years. He’s in the middle of offering to knit her a potholder when she interrupts.

  “I was wondering if you might like to take some pictures now.”

  “Sure. Pictures of what?”

  “Will your foot let you walk on it for ten minutes?”

  Up he springs. “There’s only one way to find out.” Fetching his equipment, he asks her what she has in mind, but she tells him only to hurry, and leads him behind the barn to the upper trail, which is mostly just tall grass on both sides baking in the late afternoon’s full sun. The hill prompts its shadow to follow them and below, Willow-May comes out of the house and searches the barn and calls for them, wanting to tag along. Jubi
lee turns to Mr. Havens with her finger on her lips, ducking and having him do the same until they reach the trees.

  The forest is still damp from the shower that passed over in the early hours, the cool air smells salt-and-peppery and beneath the cottoned silence is the soft crinkling sound of beetles scurrying to their shelters, plants rolling up their leaves and cinching their petals together, tree limbs relaxing their hold on what’s left of the day. Golden beams of light fall from the uppermost branches like drapes.

  “Doesn’t an old woman in a cottage live in here someplace, the one with an appetite for little children and strangers from Cincinnati? Shouldn’t I be dropping breadcrumbs or something?”

  Jubilee waits for him to catch up. Grinning, she says, “I’m the one you ought to be afraid of, haven’t you heard?”

  He laughs, and she crooks a witchy finger.

  Instead of forking off to the newer path, which starts its drop into the ravine, she keeps to what’s left of the original, much-narrower trail for another fifty or sixty yards, and stops in a clearing about twenty-five feet from the dead end, a granite boulder and the downed tree unlucky enough to have once been in its way. Both boulder and tree have long been fused together with moss.

  “You can set up your camera now.”

  “What am I taking a picture of?” She points where he’s to aim. “A rockslide?” he says.

  She walks a little ways ahead, turns around, and drops into a crouch. “Aim here.” He has to lower his stand almost all the way to the ground before kneeling to see through his camera, and when he raises his head, he seems thrown. “Are you sure?”

  “Not me, silly.” Returning to his side, she has him sit, then whispers, “It might be a while, but be ready. And try not to make sudden moves.”

  They both face forward. When his shoulder nudges her shoulder, she pretends not to notice. He turns to her as if to say something, and she leans sideways just enough so he can whisper in her ear, but he doesn’t say anything, just holds in his breath. He swings his head forward. Not a minute later, he faces her again. Again, she tilts her head toward him.