by Julie Weston
“Ha, ha, ha!” Mr. Campbell’s laugh filled the room. “Sure, Lassie, and then I came back in and helped him while you dithered like a stupid ewe!”
The policeman looked from one to the other and then spoke to the other two men. “Take a look around and see what you see.” And back to Nellie. “Who else was here this morning?”
Nellie did not want to answer the question. It could have been an accident. If she mentioned Sammy, judging by the reaction of the night before, he would be blamed. But what would be the reason? Late prints surely weren’t enough to cause mayhem, and if they were, she indeed would be in danger. Sammy and Mrs. Ah Kee both knew she had an appointment with Mr. Levine at “ten sharp,” thanks to Mrs. Olsen. Whether they knew the negatives belonged to her, she didn’t know. “Sammy was here,” she said. She didn’t know his last name. “Mrs. Ah Kee’s companion.”
“I knew those Chinamen would be trouble,” Mr. Campbell said. “Now they’ve beat up a white man. When we threw ’em out of town last time, we should have strung ’em up instead. Damned foreigners.”
“Sheriff Azgo in Ketchum is looking for you,” the policeman said. When she said nothing, he continued. “Why were you in the darkroom?”
The other two policemen returned. All four men looked at Nellie, assessing her. At that moment, she felt as if she were the foreigner—a woman surrounded by men who apparently thought she was in league with Sammy.
Nellie stood, and immediately felt less intimidated. The Ketchum sheriff must have been angry, but she had explained where the body was. He didn’t need her. Sheriff Azgo may have told this policeman about the dead man at Last Chance, that Nellie had found him. She wanted her coat, her negatives, her prints, and her camera pack. She wanted to leave. “I was helping Mr. Levine develop proofs. I am a photographer from Chicago and I have extensive experience with portraits.” All true. “I’m cold and I want to go back to the Clarion Inn. Can I see Mr. Levine?”
She felt faint from the blood and no food since the early breakfast. No one stopped her as she moved to the closet and donned her coat. Steady, she told herself.
“Do you want to see the darkroom before I go?” She led all four men to the door, opened it, and pointed to the proofs hanging on the clothesline. “We worked on those.” Then she stepped closer to the first one. “Oh, dear, look at the spot on this one. Mr. Levine will be most unhappy. Maybe it was on the film.” She stooped to a cupboard filled with negative sleeves and pulled out the top strip, then turned to the men.
“I’m sorry, you can’t stay in here. You’ll get dust on everything and possibly ruin all the work we did this morning. As you can see, no one is here. I’ll need to re-do this proof. Now, more than ever, Mr. Levine will need my help.” She took off her coat, walked back to the portrait room, sidestepping the broken glass, draped her coat over the chair, returned to the darkroom, and gently closed the door on the men, keeping as apologetic a look on her face as she could muster.
Nellie turned the lock and sat on the stool in the dark, totally spent. One dead man and one disfigured man in less than a week. What kind of world had she rushed into? Chicago and safety were a million miles away. Even Moonshine was seventy miles to the north. Tears threatened.
There were things to do and no time to cry. Someone knocked and she said, “Go away! I’m working.” Men’s voices murmured. She took the negatives from her pack, turned on the metronome, feeling as if the tock, tock, tock could restore her balance, turned off the white light, and switched on the red ones. For a moment, she felt bathed in blood and her throat caught. She opened the glass plate, slid in paper and negative, and went to work.
CHAPTER 11
At the doorway to Mr. Levine’s room in the hospital, Nellie stopped. Would he even want to see her? He lay in a white iron bed in a room by himself, his face almost covered with bandages. Only his eyes, nostrils, and mouth showed. He looked so much like a mummy, Nellie smiled and controlled a giggle. This was not a laughing matter.
“Do I look that funny?” Mr. Levine asked. “I do not feel funny.” Swollen lips made his words fuzzy, but he didn’t abandon his careful grammar.
“I’m sorry. This is my fault.” She hurried to his side and took his hand. Antiseptic smells hovered in the green-painted room, making her feel queasy.
“Besides,” he said, “if I laugh, it is very painful for my lips.” He squeezed her hand. “Do not blame yourself.” His fingers felt warm to her skin.
“Sammy did this, didn’t he? If I hadn’t come to Twin Falls, I would never have known he had my negatives. You would have made his prints and nothing would have happened to you.”
“Sammy? Yes, he was in the studio, demanding his prints, but . . .” Mr. Levine looked puzzled. Because Mr. Levine did not have his glasses on, Nellie noted, for the first time, the unusual gray of his eyes. The bandages emphasized his dark lashes as well. “I cannot remember what happened. I would not think that Sammy did this. Mrs. Ah Kee would . . .” His voice trailed away. “Sammy would hardly dare cause trouble for a white man, not with all the strong feeling in town against the Chinese.” He shook his head. “But were you hurt? I told the police that you were there.”
“No one touched me. Mr. Campbell thought I did this to you.” She withdrew her hand, as it was getting hot. She could hardly keep an offended tone out of her words.
“Gwynn was there?” Mr. Levine moved his hand away, as if embarrassed by her grabbing it. “I did see—. No, that is not right.” He stopped talking when a nurse, crisply starched from hat to hem, came into the room, but he seemed troubled.
“I finished your second set of proofs,” Nellie reported. “The ones of the baptism. That baby was beautiful. How did you get her to smile so broadly?” Business might be a better subject with a stranger in the room, fussing with Mr. Levine’s bedclothes and removing a dinner tray. “Keeping her still long enough for the photo must have been difficult.”
“Babies like me. My beard tickles them and usually calms them down.” He touched the bandage that covered up his chin. “The doctor shaved my face. I will not miss the hair. It is a nuisance to keep free of food.” The nurse left.
“I have to return to Ketchum tomorrow. I hate to leave you like this. I could do some more of your work tonight or early tomorrow, but I leave for the train around 10 o’clock I gather.” Mrs. Olsen had said “10 sharp!” and then amended it to “10:15 sharp!” “I’d like to help as much as possible, and I need to buy some supplies from you and find a metronome and more film. And I need to order lights. Is there any place in town to buy these things?”
“The music store will have a metronome. What kind of film do you want?”
The two of them discussed film speeds and quality and finally settled on film Nellie could buy from Mr. Levine. He pulled a key ring from a side table drawer and handed her one so she could work that evening in his darkroom. She felt she should leave, that he was getting tired, but she had one more request.
“Could I show you the prints I made of the negatives that caused all this trouble?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but took them from a folder in her pack. All were 8×10s, large enough to see detail better than the contact print size. Before he could say no, she lined them up against the bed railing beyond his feet.
In the first one, to her eyes, the wheatgrass almost trembled, its shadow was intense, and the aspen branches cast trailing skeletons on the snow. The Last Chance Ranch in the second appeared desolate in the moonlight, while the moon itself looked like a paper cutout suspended in the heavens and the star streaks gave it an unworldly feel. Sadness permeated the photo, and she didn’t know why. But the last photo was the strangest. The dead man’s face was distorted by the ice, so that he was a mask of Tragedy, sorely needing a Comedy face for balance. The firelight had been sufficient to give only the broad impression of the rest of him, except for gray matted hair on his head and one hand shown in minute detail—the fingers grasping as if trying to snatch life back from the edge. In place of the
last two fingers was a smooth, shiny, very short stump. Even the bitten fingernails on the remaining digits showed their ragged edges, and small scars and scratches marked his skin like spider webs. She hoped Mr. Levine’s face was not going to look so terrible.
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know. He’s a dead man that I stumbled over when I entered that house.” Nellie tapped the cabin. “I have to return to Ketchum because the sheriff thinks I’m involved in his death somehow.” She looked directly at Mr. Levine. “I wasn’t. But the next day, I went back to scout around and I found the pile of snow where he was buried after he—” She bit her lip. How could she possibly explain?
“It’s too complicated. What I need help with is enhancing the image of his face. I want to make it as clear as his hand. Can I?”
Mr. Levine lifted his hand for the photo and Nellie handed it to him. He studied it a moment. “I am not certain. Without my glasses I have difficulty seeing clearly. But his face is blurred. Given how clear the hand is, that is puzzling.”
“It was covered with ice.”
“Ice?” Mr. Levine closed his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Clearly, he was too tired to have this discussion. “Never mind.” Nellie took the photo and placed it and the other two back in her pack. “I’ll stop by tomorrow before I leave. What shall I do with the proofs?”
He explained that one of the customers would come by in the morning—the Stutz Bearcat fellow—and that the others would be picked up the following day. By then, he fully expected to be back at work, but if she could print proofs of a bride and groom, he would appreciate the help. Nellie gathered up her things to leave.
When she was at the doorway, he said, “Miss Burns.”
She turned.
“The moonshadows are stunning.”
Nellie studied him a moment, seeking assurance that he believed what he said, nodded to him, and left the room. Joy gripped her heart.
Speculation about the attack on Mr. Levine swirled around the dinner table at the Clarion Inn. No one mentioned the Chinese who sat by a table near the window, although a few pointed glances left no doubt one or both were suspected. Nell reported that Mr. Levine was able to talk but couldn’t remember the events. Otherwise, she said little and excused herself early. She went up to her room and waited until she heard the other guests disperse. Then she slipped downstairs, found Franklin, and told him what she planned.
Entering the studio at night made Nellie nervous. Each shadowed corner could hide a man, each door opened could reveal someone waiting to steal her negatives, destroy her camera, harm her. But no one was there. She re-locked the front door after she was in and switched on lights as she made her way to the darkroom. It, too, was empty, although the mess she had left still awaited her. She talked out loud so she wouldn’t seem so alone.
“Proofs. Mr. Levine wants proofs. The negatives are in the negative cabinet. Makes sense. He is so organized.” She retrieved several sleeves, finding a series of photos of a woman in a wedding dress and then a man and woman together. “Young bride, handsome groom. I doubt if I’ll ever be in a series such as this.”
Was that a noise?
She listened and heard nothing. But she locked herself in.
Whispering seemed in order, so she could hear any strange sounds. “First, I’ll develop the film of my day shots. Can’t have any light for those.” She mixed developer and fixer and poured them into trays, then retrieved her film holders and lined them up on the counter so she could do all the rest of the work in complete dark. She started the metronome—so much easier to count tocks than rely on counting to herself—extracted her film out of the holders, placed them one at a time in the tray, agitated, then dipped each into the stop bath, then fixer, and hung them up to dry. The tocking of the metronome soothed her and kept her moving at the same time.
When both negatives were fixed and in trays of water, she turned on the lights again. The photograph with clouds looked good; the other seemed busy and without a balanced composition. She’d see. While they dried, she set about printing the proofs of the wedding couple, humming the march from Lohengrin and imagining them walking up an aisle to commit themselves to each other for life. Would they have children and raise them in Twin Falls? It seemed a nice town. Would she keep house? Was he a farmer, growing sugar beets for the sugar company? It sounded like a quiet existence and held no appeal for Nell. She mulled several ideas while she worked her magic on celluloid negatives.
Why not photograph the miners at work? Light might be a problem, but not if they worked outside. Photographing them inside the mine, which is what she really wanted to do, the flash powder would be difficult to work with, creating smoke and a smell that a miner might not appreciate. Perhaps electricity would be available. And what about loggers and sheepherders? None of the books she studied in Chicago showed people working. The crux, though, was who would buy photographs of such subjects? The public wanted movie stars—Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish. They wanted their art to reflect Egyptian motifs and Greek columns. And so many people took their own photographs now with those Eastman Kodak cameras. Newspapers wanted photos, but only to reflect the news.
The telephone rang as Nell turned the white light back on. The sound surprised her. Who would be calling Mr. Levine at this time of night? Her timepiece showed almost eleven. Goodness, it was late! Perhaps she should answer the telephone. Then the ringing stopped.
What was the safest place for her negatives and prints? She had made duplicate negatives and prints of her moonshadows and the dead man, and decided to leave one set with Mr. Levine, just in case he had to respond to Mrs. Ah Kee. She put them in paper sleeves and added them to his negative store. Her 8×10 final prints she placed in with her paper supply in the camera pack. After some thought, she decided to place her original negatives into film holders. The contact prints would accompany her, too, and they went into a side pocket. Those, she would give to the sheriff.
The new negatives she had hung to dry tempted her. After such a full day, she was tired and aching, but having a darkroom to use was a treat. It wouldn’t take long to develop a print of each. Again, she made certain all was in readiness, then turned off the white light and turned on the red lights and the metronome. Within twenty minutes, she had two test prints in the water bath and she turned off the metronome. Except she could still hear a quiet tick-tock sound. With the white light back on, she listened. The sound came from outside her door, almost as if a clock were being held up against the door panel. Her insides squeezed. Was someone listening?
“Who’s there?”
No answer. She placed her ear against the door. She thought she could hear someone breathing. Then the ticking stopped. After a moment, she heard a thick scratching sound. She grabbed her negatives and shoved her camera pack down behind the negative cabinet, dropped to her hands and knees, and scrunched as small as possible, pulling the cabinet in front of her.
The door exploded in white light, blue fumes, and a series of loud shots like a gun firing. Nellie was pushed back against the dry counter so hard she thought her heart would stop. Then, the impact released her. She gasped for breath and choked with the sulfur in it. She had to get out and into the fresh air beyond or she’d suffocate. All the chemicals might explode and the film would surely fuel a fire.
Fire! She couldn’t let Mr. Levine’s hard work go up in flames. Before she could think, she grabbed the stop bath and poured it on a few licks of flame that had begun around the door frame and then dumped the developer down the sink, along with the fixer. The proof sets, all neatly waiting to be delivered to customers, she stashed in the negative cabinet. She pushed the cabinet in front of her as a partial shield, and shoved through the broken door, dragging the camera pack behind. Pounding filled her head. She held the apron up as a mask and lowered her face to stay as much as possible underneath the smoke of the outer room. She feared a hand would grab her, or a weapon would slam against her head. She scuttl
ed like a crab, pushing and pulling. When pieces of glass crunched under her shoes, she knew she was in the portrait room.
The pounding intensified and then the front door crashed open.
Voices shouted. “Fire!” “Bring water.” “Get away!” and last “Nellie! Where are you?”
“I’m here.” She tried to shout but coughed instead. And then arms pulled her up, tried to pry her hands from her pack, and then carried her and it out of the building. “The negatives—!” She struggled to free herself to run back for the metal cabinet. Someone stopped her.
“We’ll get them. Don’t worry. The building won’t burn.”
Much later, she was in her nightgown and in bed, her hand still grasping the camera pack on the floor beside her.
“For goodness’ sake, Miss Burns. You’d think you carried gold nuggets around in that bag of yours.” Mrs. Olsen’s voice scolded but Nellie felt comforted at the same time.
“Mr. Levine’s negatives? Did the cabinet get pulled out in time?”
“Nothing burned. When you didn’t answer the telephone, Franklin decided it was high time to see what you were up to. You musta stopped any flames after that explosion. We saw it from the windows and Franklin, he ran down to the fire station. Lucky thing it was so close.”
The horror that she was responsible for the possible destruction of the studio left her. Thank heavens for snoopy older women.
“Was anyone hurt?” Nellie hoped whoever set off the explosion was damaged in some way, but she was glad that person had left before she got out of the darkroom.
“No, and they can’t figure out what caused the explosion. Now you get some sleep.”
“Don’t leave me!” How could she have said such a thing? “I mean, when you leave, could you lock the door?”
Mrs. Olsen patted Nellie’s cheek. “I’ll lock it, but Franklin is going to sleep on a pallet right outside. We figured you didn’t set that bomb. Someone else knew you were working late. When I take a person in, I’m going to send them out again all in one piece. Mrs. Bock would have my hide if something happened to you.”
