“I guess I can stick it out a while longer,” he heard himself say. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
10
* * *
The gift.
THAT afternoon, while Mick was stretched out in the recliner watching a football game and recovering from a turkey dinner, the doorbell rang. He heard Layne open the front door—which was surprising in itself since nobody but the Jehovah’s Witnesses ever came to the front door—and then he heard Celly Weems’ sugary drawl in the foyer. He got up and went to see what was going on.
One glance at Celly and Aubrey told Mick all he needed to know. Celly had her Christmas face on, and Aubrey was standing behind her holding three wrapped presents. He gave Mick a little nod, barely noticeable, and then focused his attention on the wives. His face was stone. Mount Rushmore. Mick hadn’t seen Aubrey at all since the night they returned his mangled chainsaw, but that one little conciliatory nod told him the score. Celly must have figured Christmas Day was the perfect time to make peace with the neighbors, so she drug her husband over with presents for the kids to make up for his slamming the door in Mick’s face the night of the chainsaw incident. Mick had, after all, replaced the saw. Celly had no way of knowing that it wasn’t what Aubrey did that stuck in Mick’s craw. Given the way things played out that night, Aubrey’s reaction was perfectly understandable, but Mick wouldn’t soon forget what he heard over the intercom the next day. “Trash.”
“I’m sorry my house is such a wreck,” Layne was saying. It didn’t even occur to her that keeping it clean wasn’t her job anymore. Mick was pretty sure he could keep house for a hundred years and she’d still feel guilty about the mess.
Celly waved her off. “Aw shoot, it’s Christmas, sugar. It’s supposed to be messy.” But while she was saying it her eyes swept the foyer, lingering for a split second on a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. Mick could have sworn she cringed the tiniest little bit, but it could have just been his own prejudice at work. He fought back the urge to say something about “living in squalor.”
“Seems like months since we’ve seen y’all,” Celly went on, “so I thought we’d just drop by and give the children a little something, if that’s all right.” She was dripping southern charm so badly Mick was afraid for the carpet.
All three kids came running without being called. They clustered up under their mother, grinning like idiots at Celly and Aubrey, who had raised a couple of polite children and therefore thought these were being polite. Mick knew better. His kids could smell a Christmas present a mile off.
Celly took the gifts from Aubrey and handed them out to the kids, who scattered and ripped into them. Ben got a weird little RC car that went zipping around the room at light speed. When it ran into something it would do a backflip and go the other way. Toad—Celly made a point of calling her Clarissa, which was, after all, her name—got another Barbie doll. Mick was right proud that Toad managed to squeeze out a thank you between clenched teeth. He felt sorry for Barbie. That doll hadn’t done anything to deserve the afternoon it was in for. They gave Dylan some kind of plastic thing that he could strap on his arm and spray purple foam like Spiderman, and he tore off down the hall decorating the walls and ceiling.
Layne dragged Celly off into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, but before she left she glanced back at her husband. It was only for a split second, but in that second her plastic smile wavered and her eyes panned down to Aubrey’s feet. As fleeting as it was, the command was unmistakable: Stay.
Mick didn’t know what to say so he just stood there. Aubrey fidgeted, shifted his feet, glanced at the ceiling, shoved his empty hands into his pockets, took a breath and said, “Ah, about the night you and Mr. Harrelson brought back the saw—”
Mick shrugged it off. “Forget about it. Heat of the moment and all.”
“No. No, I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that. I was just upset, that’s all. I’d had kind of a bad day.”
Mick couldn’t help it. He started laughing again, and Aubrey shot him a hard look. But this time he managed to bring it under control.
“ You had a bad day!” Mick said, still chuckling. “Listen, let me tell you what really happened to your chainsaw, but you better come in here and sit down first. This is gonna take a little while.”
He steered Aubrey into the living room, the little front room dominated by Layne’s piano and the desk—the only room left after Christmas morning that wasn’t totally trashed—and told him the story of the chainsaw’s demise. Aubrey sat in the desk chair while Mick perched on the piano stool and spun his yarn. He and Hap had had time to embellish the story a little, and Mick left nothing out.
Aubrey started to chuckle when he told him about the tree pinning the blade underneath it, turning off of its own stump, and he laughed out loud when Mick held his arms up and mimed the great tree twisting slowly in the wind, grinding the remains of the saw into the dirt and falling on Hap’s house.
Then he told him about sailing his truck off into Earl Jones’s catfish pond, and by the time he was done Aubrey had to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes.
“Now I understand why you couldn’t stop laughing that night,” Aubrey said, putting his glasses back on.
“Yeah, well, I tried.”
“You know, when I drove by the next morning I saw the tree on Mr. Harrelson’s house, but I had no idea. The chainsaw story is priceless—and the pond!” He slapped his palms down on his knees and started laughing again. “You really did have a bad day, didn’t you.”
“I’ve had better,” Mick said. And then, suddenly, awkwardly, there was nothing else to say. In the end the two men had virtually nothing in common, and the emptiness crept back in between them. Fingers drummed lightly on knees. Heads turned, looking at walls, at nothing. In the quiet interval they could hear Celly talking in the other room. Aubrey’s gaze drifted to the door for a moment, and there was a trace of sadness in his eyes.
“So, did the new chainsaw work out okay for you?” Mick asked, mostly to break the silence. “Because, I mean, I wanted it to be—”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Aubrey said, shifting in the desk chair. “It’s great, thank you. In fact, it’s better than the other one. Newer model.”
“Really?” He knew, but Aubrey wanted to tell it.
“Oh yeah. The old one was a 310. The new one’s a 350. More horsepower, and there’s a compression release button—much easier to crank.”
“Wow, okay. Didn’t know that,” Mick lied.
“So, what’s happening with Mr. Harrelson’s house?” Nobody but Aubrey ever called Hap “Mister Harrelson.” “Are you two rebuilding it yourselves?” Aubrey was the sort who hired most things done despite the fact that he owned every tool known to man. Mick figured he just collected tools and preferred to keep them clean and new by not using them.
“Yeah, well, I’m doing most of the framing and he’s rebuilding my truck engine for me.”
“So who’s paying whom?” For some reason this seemed to be an important point with Aubrey; his eyebrows were almost touching in the middle.
“Nobody, right now. We’ll just get it all done and then settle up. Like as not, in the end there won’t be a whole lot of money changing hands.”
“I see,” Aubrey said, and Mick could tell from the frown he didn’t see it at all. “So the two of you just barter work for work?”
“Not exactly, no. Me and Hap do things for each other without necessarily keeping score, that’s all. It’s just . . . we’re neighbors, Aubrey. Around here, that’s what neighbors do.”
While Mick was talking, Aubrey glanced over his shoulder at the computer screen. The monitor was looping a slideshow of the pictures of Layne and the kids Mick had shot that morning with the digital camera. It captured Aubrey’s attention.
“These are good,” he said.
“What, the pictures?”
Aubrey nodded.
“Well, you know. Christmas morning. How you gonna mess that up?”
“No, I mean they’re really good. You know how to frame a shot.” He turned and propped his elbows on the desk.
Mick shrugged. “Pure luck. I’m not even sure what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about composition,” Aubrey said, pushing his glasses up and leaning closer to the screen, pointing. “Look at this. Everything’s in thirds. There’s a kind of balance, and your eye is drawn to the right place. Where did you learn to take pictures like this?”
“I didn’t. I told you, it’s just luck.”
“Well, then you’re a natural. I’ve been into photography since my college days. Just a hobby, really, but I’ve been dabbling for a long time. I’ve taken classes, read books, bought all the right equipment, and I still can’t compose a shot as consistently as this,” Aubrey said, waving a hand at the screen. “What else do you have?”
Mick went to the cabinet under the bookshelf and dug out a couple old albums of stuff he’d shot with film before he got the digital.
Aubrey sat flipping pages for a while, stopping occasionally to lean over and look closely.
“You never went to school?”
“Not for photography, no.” For some reason Mick wanted to sound like he’d been to school for something else.
“Well, you have some rough edges, technically, but you can learn technique. The thing is, you have an eye for the story, you know what I mean?”
Mick shook his head and chuckled. “Not a clue.”
“All right. Let me see if I can explain it. I had an instructor once who said you can teach a child how to use a camera—it’s just X amount of light for Y amount of time—but you can’t teach anybody how to tell a story. How to see the story in front of them while it’s happening.”
Aubrey was really into this stuff. It was the first time Mick had ever seen him get remotely passionate about anything—except for his chainsaw. He looked down as he was flipping a page in the album and then, pausing, he looked back up at Mick.
“Did you take this?” he asked, pointing to a photo at the top of the page.
Mick leaned over his shoulder to look at it. “Oh, yeah. I shot that. Probably the best one I ever took. Dumb luck, I guess.”
It was a picture of Dylan shot within seconds after he was born. The midwife held him up the instant they cut him loose, all red and slimy with his arms flung out and his mouth open, screaming, and that’s when Mick shot the picture. Exposure, framing, focus—everything was dead center perfect, for once, and the way the light hit him everything else faded to black—even the midwife’s arms. There were just these two hands reaching out of darkness, holding a brand new life in the center of the light. Even now, he could look at that picture and hear the light, like angels singing.
“It’s a great shot,” Aubrey said, and there was a wistfulness in the way he was staring at it. “Brings back memories.”
“You mean about when your kids were born?”
“Oh, no. About when I was in college and I thought I wanted to be a photographer. There was a picture I took that just . . . inspired me. Made me think I was destined for artistic immortality—for about a week.”
Somehow, Mick couldn’t picture Aubrey as an artist. The image just didn’t fit. “So how come you didn’t pursue it?”
“Ah, well ... it just wasn’t in me.” He twisted around, squirming in the little desk chair as if he was suddenly embarrassed at revealing so much of himself, but he smiled a little, his eyes still remembering. “I majored in accounting. I don’t believe I could have done otherwise, but until the day I die I will wonder what might have been.”
It was right about then that Dylan came screaming through the room wearing nothing but his fuzzy pink earmuffs—buck naked and painted purple from head to toe. Running kind of flop-legged but still making pretty good speed, he banked off the desk and disappeared around the corner into the kitchen, from whence came screams and crashing sounds. Mick had seen he was clutching something in his hands, but he didn’t know what it was until Ben came skidding through the room after him. Ben was carrying the remote for his new RC car, the antenna whipping from side to side as he ran, yelling, after Dylan.
Aubrey blinked, and his head tilted. “Purple?”
“Yeah. Must be that foam stuff. He likes bright colors. We have to hide Kool-Aid packets because he’ll dump them in the sink, mix enough water in it to make a paste, and then rub it all over. You gotta admit the purple goes nice with the pink earmuffs, though.”
11
* * *
Fribbles and penguins.
CHRISTMAS finally passed, and so did the rain. Mick was glad to see both of them gone. Georgia winters always cycled from warm and wet to cold and dry, so as soon as the rain passed and the blanket of clouds moved off, the night temperatures dropped into the twenties. But the days were beautiful. Mick went at it full bore and finished Hap’s framing in a week. After Ben and Toad went back to school Mick could work pretty much all day, except for Tuesdays, when he took Dylan to the therapist and bought groceries. Hap’s nephew, an out-of-work commercial form carpenter, came by most days to help, which freed up Hap to get Mick’s engine rebuilt. By mid-January they had the house dried in and Mick got his truck back. It smelled a little mildewy, but he was glad to have it just the same.
It turned off nice and warm one afternoon, up into the sixties. Mick was in his shirtsleeves up on the roof nailing down shingles when Aubrey came over. Mick was in a rhythm, so he didn’t even notice Aubrey till he hollered up at him.
Aubrey worked in the headquarters of his father-in-law’s building supply place over in McDonough, so he didn’t usually get home before five. When Aubrey called to Mick he straightened up and looked at his watch. Seemed like no more than fifteen minutes since the kids got off the bus, but it had actually been two hours. He had worked way past quitting time. He unplugged the air hose, carried the nail gun down the ladder, then took off his pouch and wrapped the belt around it while he walked over to see what Aubrey wanted.
“I can’t believe how fast that thing went up,” Aubrey said, looking up at the roof. For a guy who worked in the building supply business, he didn’t know a lot about building.
“Yeah, well it’s just the framing, really, and it ain’t the first time I’ve done it,” Mick said. “Wouldn’t have taken this long except that Hap wanted it a little bigger and we had to pour footings in the back. What’s up?” He was thinking about having to go cook supper before Layne got home, and the kids probably had homework. A housewife’s work is never done.
Aubrey avoided the mud, stepping on lumber scraps, trying to keep his good shoes dry while he made his way up onto Hap’s new front porch. He was wearing a camera around his neck, a plain old-fashioned black SLR.
“Oh, I uh, well—” Once he made it onto the porch he was looking all around, checking out their framing. Mick thought for a minute he’d gotten distracted and forgot what he was going to say, but it wasn’t that at all. He just didn’t know how to say it.
“Ah, you see, Celly gave me a new camera for Christmas—latest and greatest, with all the bells and whistles—and I was thinking, you know, after you showed me some of your photographs, I just thought maybe you’d be interested in my old one.”
“Your old what?”
He held up the camera that was hanging from his neck.
Mick winced. “Oh, I don’t know, Aubrey. I’m sure it’s a good camera but I’m a little short on cash right now.”
“No, no, no, you misunderstand me. I wasn’t trying to sell it to you, I just wanted you to have it.”
Mick eyed him suspiciously.
“It’s a good camera,” Aubrey said. “A Nikon F3. It’s not fancy, and it’s got a lot of miles on it, but it’s got a good solid metal body, virtually indestructible, a real workhorse. It just occurred to me I’ll probably never use this one again—”
“You want to give it to me? You don’t owe me anything, Aubrey.” Mick tried not to act too surprised, but Aubrey had never s
eemed like the type to give anything away.
Aubrey stood there for a minute, turning that camera over in his hands, looking at it. His voice dropped a little when he said, “Well, all right, maybe I felt bad about you buying me an expensive chainsaw when you’re unemployed. But I’m really not going to use this camera anymore and I just think you have the potential to be a good photographer with the right equipment. I want you to have it.” He slipped the cord off his neck and held out the camera.
Mick took it and stood there studying it for a minute, not sure what to say. It felt solid and heavy and balanced in his hands, a real serious piece of equipment.
“Thanks,” he finally said. “This is nice. This is more camera than I’ve ever owned.”
“Don’t mention it. Really. Go shoot a bunch of rolls, and bring the pictures over to me if you like. I’d be happy to give you a pointer or two. Better yet, if you shoot black-and-white I can develop them for you.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Aubrey. I appreciate the camera, really, but that sounds like a lot of trouble. I mean, like I said, you really don’t owe me anything, you know?” It seemed like a little too much, a little over the top.
But Aubrey didn’t appear to be listening anymore. He was watching Hap play with Mick’s kids in the roughed-in living room. Hap and Ben and Toad were taking turns piling roofing shingles on Dylan, who was lying spreadeagle on his back on the sawdust-covered plywood subfloor, giggling. All you could see was his head and feet because the pile was getting pretty big. Most kids would have gone nuts, but Dylan loved it. He knew exactly where his arms and legs were when they were pressed under a pile of shingles.
Summer of Light Page 10
