“Faith”
by
Mick Brannigan
It looked classy. It made him feel like somebody, at least until he looked around at the rest of the crowd. He kept tugging at his collar, feeling a bit like an ironworker in an art gallery, but he did manage to spot one guy in the crowd who looked as badly out of place as himself. He was a big old boy, bald on top but with a stark white braided ponytail hanging down his back, wearing a western-style suit and a string tie. His coat was open because it wouldn’t wrap around his gut, which hung over a big round rodeo belt buckle. His boots came to a point, and he carried a Stetson hat at his side. A real character. He made Mick feel a lot better.
Layne and Aubrey were off with Lillian talking to some tall blond woman. Dylan, who was perhaps the only person in the room who hated crowds worse than his father, was snugged up to Layne, literally hiding behind her skirts. By the way Layne stroked his dark hair and looked down at him while she talked, Mick knew she was talking about her kids. Toad and Ben showed up out of nowhere to bring him a cup of punch and a cookie.
“They’re quite delicious,” Ben said, trying to live up to his fancy clothes.
“Excuse me,” a deep voice said. The big cowboy had come up behind Mick while he was distracted. He nodded at Mick’s pictures. “Are you by any chance the photographer?”
“Uh, yeah. Mick Brannigan.” He shifted the cookie and punch so he could shake the cowboy’s massive hand.
“Name’s A.J. I was admiring your pictures earlier. You’re good.”
Mick mumbled thanks. He wasn’t sure, but he might have even blushed.
A.J. smiled at Toad. “Is this your daughter?”
“Uh, yeah. Clarissa.”
“Very photogenic,” he laughed. “And now she’s a celebrity.”
He bent down and shook her hand. She grinned.
“I haven’t seen your name before,” he said to Mick. “Are you new?”
“Yeah, I’m new.” I guess that’s one way of putting it, Mick thought. “I just started doing this. A friend of mine suggested entering the show.” He nodded in Aubrey’s direction.
“Well, sometimes inexperience yields a fresh approach, and technique is secondary to vision, I always say. I like the personal touch. Your work speaks to me, and that’s not an easy thing to do.”
Mick mumbled thanks again. He had no idea how to talk the talk, so he didn’t try.
“Do you have a portfolio?” the cowboy asked.
He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he nodded anyway. “Sure, I’ve, uh . . . I’ve got some other stuff at home.”
“Do you have a card?”
He patted his pockets. “I, no, I’m afraid I must have left them at home,” he lied.
“Well, give me a call sometime. I’d like to see what else you’ve got.” A.J. pinched a card out of his coat pocket and handed it to Mick, who stuck the card in his shirt without looking at it.
Layne came up right then with Dylan in tow, and Mick introduced her to A.J. Mick was distracted, so he didn’t notice what Ben was doing until it was too late. Ben had gotten down on his hands and knees in the floor right in front of A.J., staring up under that belly. Mick opened his mouth to tell Ben to get up from there, but he was a split second too late.
“I love that belt buckle,” Ben said.
Layne’s mouth opened but she couldn’t speak. She looked like she might pass out.
Fortunately, the old guy had a sense of humor. He hitched up his pants, threw his head back and laughed a big booming laugh that sounded really out of place in a crowd of rich people politely chatting. He made Mick feel a lot better.
“A.J., meet Ben,” Mick said.
Lillian stepped up to a little podium they had set up at one end of the room and tapped on the microphone. “Can I have everyone’s attention, please?”
She made a short speech—something about the importance of art in the life of the community, to which Mick was not listening—and then said, “Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. First, I want to thank all the entrants, and I’d like to say that each and every one of them is a winner in my book. The judging this time was very, very difficult, because there were so many wonderful photos.”
Polite applause.
She held up a purple ribbon. “Honorable Mention goes to Rue Vaughn, for the evocative piece titled “Winter Night.” Polite applause while some little guy took the purple ribbon from Lillian, went over and pinned it up next to a very nice blue-tinted photo of some moonlit pine woods under a heavy blanket of snow.
Third prize went to a color photo of sailboats at anchor in a quaint little harbor. Razor-sharp reflections. Looked like a postcard.
Up to that point Mick had been paying attention. In fact, he had even been a little nervous, because some small part of him believed what Aubrey said—that his pictures could rival anybody’s. But being a realist, his highest aspiration was the lowest prize, so when third place went to the sailboats he knew he was out of the running. He looked around to make sure all three kids were accounted for, then squatted down and licked his thumb to wipe a chocolatechip smear off Dylan’s chin. He wasn’t really listening anymore, so when he heard Lillian’s voice say, “. . . to Mick Brannigan, for his stunning black-and-white photograph, ‘Faith’,” he wasn’t sure he’d heard right until Toad did a backflip. In a dress.
Aubrey grabbed the shoulder of his coat and hauled him to his feet.
“I told you it was good!” Aubrey whispered, grinning. Caught up in the moment, he actually threw his arms around Mick’s shoulders and gave him a hug. Layne lifted Toad off her feet in a congratulatory hug—it was, after all, Toad’s picture—and then reached up to give Mick a kiss on the cheek.
“Now do you believe?” she asked.
He didn’t answer her right away because, frankly, he didn’t believe it until the little guy took the red ribbon from Lillian, made his way through the crowd and actually pinned it up beside Toad’s picture.
It really was more than Mick ever expected. Second place, in his first show. Not bad for an ironworker.
First prize went to a shot of an osprey caught in mid-flight, snatching a fish out of a lake. Another great picture.
“He must have had a thousand-dollar lens to get that shot as clear as he did,” Aubrey muttered. He was right. There were drops of water frozen in flight, and he could count the feathers on the osprey’s wings.
A color photograph titled “Cote d’Azur” took Best of Show. It was an angled shot of a door and window in the front of what looked like an old adobe house with the sun slanting across it. There were red flowers in a blue window box. The shadows, the light and the colors were really striking. It was a good picture but it wouldn’t have been Mick’s first choice. He started to ask Aubrey what it was that made it a great picture, then thought better of it. It could wait.
As Lillian closed the ceremonies and left the podium the Musak came back on and people started easing toward the door, still chatting politely. Several of them stopped to congratulate Mick and pat Toad on the head before they left.
Afterward, he and the other winners had to do a couple of interviews for arts&expressions magazine and the local paper, then pose for pictures. It was nice to be the center of attention for a change, but he had to scratch his head when the reporter asked him what he did for a living.
“I’m in construction,” he said, mostly because it sounded better than “I’m an unemployed ironworker.” It didn’t even occur to him to tell them he was a stay-at-home dad.
It was Aubrey who came and pulled him away. “Lillian wants to see you for a second,” he said. Something was up. Aubrey had a gleam in his eye. He led Mick to an office in the back, where Lillian stood waiting by her desk.
She shook his hand and congratulated him, then said, “Mr. Brannigan, the gallery would like to buy your photo,” she said. “We normally only purchase the Best of Show, but personally I find your picture very distinctive and . . . compelling. Mr. W
eems said he thought you might be amenable.”
“The picture of Toad?” he asked, confused.
Lillian frowned, turned to Aubrey. “Toad?”
“His daughter,” Aubrey explained. “The girl in the picture.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling a little too broadly now. “The picture of Toad. We’d like to place it on permanent display if it’s all right with you.”
It was all right with Mick.
* * *
Having been forced into their best behavior for a couple hours, the kids went nuts on the way home. Aubrey insisted they all go someplace and celebrate, and since the kids were with them it seemed perfectly natural that they ended up at the Dairy Barn. Layne didn’t even seem to mind when Dylan dripped chocolate syrup down the front of his dad’s new suit.
Riding home, Aubrey couldn’t stop talking about it. He was more excited than any of them, including Mick.
“It was just second place,” Mick said. “Beginners luck.”
Aubrey shook his head, laughing. “Beginners luck? Mick, I’ve been at this for years and only managed Honorable Mention a couple times. And I’m a major contributor to the gallery. I’m telling you, you’ve got talent.” He sounded almost insulted.
Mick stared at him for a second, and saw no jealousy in him. He was as proud as if his own child had done well, and it finally began to seep into Mick’s brain that Aubrey’s interest in him was purely unselfish. Aubrey saw himself as a mentor, and Mick’s success, in a way, as his own.
Mick cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. “I, uh, I don’t know if I ever thanked you for this, Aubrey,” he said. “Of course it means a lot to me. I guess it just hasn’t sunk in yet. I couldn’t have done any of it—wouldn’t have known it could be done—if it weren’t for you. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Aubrey said quietly. “I haven’t had this much fun in years. By the way, did you make any contacts at the show?”
“Nah, I kind of kept to myself most of the time,” Mick said.
“Yes, I could see you were a little uncomfortable. That’s all right. It’ll happen. Sooner or later some high roller from a magazine is going to ask to see your portfolio.”
“Well, actually, one guy did,” Mick said. The mention of a portfolio reminded him of it. “But it was just that cowboy character. Nice guy, but a little eccentric.”
“Yes, I noticed him talking to you. I don’t recall ever seeing him there before. I assumed he was a friend of yours from . . . work. He asked to see your portfolio?”
“Yeah. Well, he asked if I had one. I lied and told him I did.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know. A.J., I think it was. Oh, wait—” Mick stuck two fingers into his shirt pocket, found A.J.’s card and handed it to Aubrey. Busy dodging traffic, Mick didn’t look at it.
Aubrey sat there holding that card in his two hands for a long time, just staring at it. Finally, very quietly, he said, “Mick, do you know who this is?”
“No, I never saw him before.”
“Albert Joss Ecklund,” he read slowly, and then lowered the card to his lap and sat staring out the front window for a minute as if he was in shock.
“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” Mick said. “Should I know him?”
Aubrey just laughed, shaking his head. “I suppose not, but everybody else does. Or at least they know about him. A.J. Ecklund started out as a photojournalist with the wire services in Vietnam, then went on to do freelance work for major magazines. He’s done covers for Time, Newsweek, Life, National Geographic—all the big ones. He’s something of a legend in photography circles. Now he’s semi-retired, and according to this card, consulting for the High Museum.”
“In Atlanta?”
“Yes. In Atlanta. So what you’re telling me is that A.J.—the Albert Joss Ecklund—asked to see your portfolio?”
Mick shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Do I have a portfolio?”
“Hardly.”
“Then what do I do?”
“You’re going to get busy, is what you’re going to do. People wait their whole lives for an opportunity like this.” He shook the card at Mick. “You can’t let it go to waste. You’ve got to put together a portfolio before Mr. Ecklund forgets who you are.”
Pure blind luck, every bit of it. More than ever, Mick had the feeling he was being driven down a course he didn’t set and could never in a million years have planned. He had no idea where to go or what to shoot next, but he was beginning to get comfortable with the notion that somebody—or some bizarre accident—would tell him.
30
* * *
The next level.
MICK went out a couple times that week and shot barn pictures with the kids in the early morning and late afternoon while the light was on a slant, but when he took them over to Aubrey’s to get them developed, Aubrey was not impressed. There were a couple decent shots, but nothing spectacular. High summer had turned the Georgia sky white and hazy, diffusing the light and making it nearly impossible to get a decent landscape shot. As soon as the prints were dry he and Aubrey took them upstairs and spread them out on a marble dining room table, under a chandelier that would have filled the back of Mick’s truck.
“Some of these are good, Mick, but not good enough. If you want to impress A.J. Ecklund, they have to be great. There’s no spark here, nothing new. You’ve already done a show using your kids. You’ve got to find something else.”
“Like what?”
Aubrey raised his eyebrows and blew a breath out through pursed lips, stumped.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the golden child. I’ve always been a little short on imagination, myself—come to think of it, maybe that’s my problem. I only know that good isn’t good enough. Not for the High. If you’re going there, you’ve got to bring your A game, and it better be something new.”
“Well, with the kids out of school for the summer there’s only so much I can do. There’s only so far I can travel. I’m afraid we’re stuck with the landscapes.”
Aubrey bit his lip. “How are you on nature photography?”
“Never tried it, but from what I’ve read it’s a whole different set of problems. I don’t think this is the time to learn.”
“Good point. What about your homeless friends? Maybe you can do more of that kind of thing.”
Mick snorted. “Right. Imagine yourself trying to shoot pictures in hell’s kitchen while trying to keep an eye on my three kids. It can’t be done, Aubrey. There’s no way.”
He heard a noise and looked around to see Celly standing in the doorway in her robe, brushing her hair. Without her makeup he could see the dark circles under her eyes. When he said hello she just kind of nodded and turned away without saying anything. He could hear her puttering around in the kitchen.
“Is she okay?” he muttered to Aubrey after she left the room.
Aubrey nodded, but he made a rocking motion with his hand. “She has good days and bad days,” he said quietly.
31
* * *
Beal Street Mission.
THAT Sunday, as usual, Layne asked him to go to church with her and the kids. She always asked, and most of the time he declined. It had become sort of a Sunday morning ritual. The simple truth was that Layne’s church reminded him too much of the one he grew up in—a squat little red-brick place where the song leader did the tomahawk chop to the same old hymns out of the same old blue hymnbook while the preacher’s wife pounded an upright piano, and then the preacher dragged out the same tired jokes and worn-out sermons week after week while old people nodded off and fluttered their funeral-home fans. Mick’s mother made the family go to church all the time—everybody but his old man. She let him sleep. She said it was because he worked night shift, but even when Mick was little he knew better. If she ever even mentioned church to Mick’s father he’d start bad-mouthing her friends. He loved to hit her with the old line about how you could spot the churchpeople—they wer
e the ones who didn’t wave to each other in the liquor store.
Mick didn’t agree with his old man about anything, but he did like his freedom on Sunday mornings. After he started staying home with the kids, Sunday morning was the only time he had to himself. Layne said he should be setting a better example, but what kind of example would he be if he went to church just because his wife made him? It never seemed that important as long as he was working, but now that Layne was the breadwinner, little issues like that took on a whole new significance. Little issues like that were starting to add up, like bricks.
When Mick told her he was going downtown to shoot some pictures she didn’t say anything. Lately, she’d been not saying anything with increasing frequency. He left the house before Layne and the kids, but he knew it was already too late to find the light.
Driving up the expressway he turned the radio off. He’d gotten to where he did that a lot lately, because the quiet felt so good. He could think when it was quiet, and there was something else, too. He didn’t understand it at the time, but after the trip to the monastery, whenever something ate at him, he looked for quiet. With three kids it wasn’t that easy. He never considered himself much of a thinker, but he had begun to look for the odd ten minutes here and there where he could just be alone and sort things out in complete silence.
The difference was subtle, yet pivotal—since his little field trip to the monastery, for the first time in Mick’s life he had the feeling he wasn’t alone in the silence. God had always been a mystery to him, and way beyond anybody’s reckoning—especially the people who claimed they knew all about him. But for the first time in his life Mick felt, with a quiet certainty, that God was there. If he was being honest, the most he would have ever claimed before was that he didn’t not believe, but the morning he sat in the blue and purple light next to the Man With No Hands in the balcony of the abbey church, things changed. It seemed small at the time—the perception of an Other, a Presence in the silence. Sometimes, now, when he was quiet, Mick found himself talking to God, or not; the awareness was there, even if he had no words. Sometimes he asked questions and sometimes he just thought whatever he was thinking, but he was aware. He wouldn’t have called it prayer—not like the gravy-cooling blessing Deacon Hanratty put on the food at the picnic or the rumbling, musical, thee-and-thou prayers the pastor preached at the end of his sermons when Mick was a kid—but what difference did it make what he called it? Anyway, there weren’t any answers, or if there were Mick couldn’t hear them. That didn’t matter, either. His experience with Dylan’s sensory integration dysfunction had taught him that just because he couldn’t see or hear a thing didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Summer of Light Page 22
