Summer of Light

by W. Dale Cramer

  Mick was still locked onto the man’s eyes when he felt the gentle tug of a steel hook on his shoulder and eased off. As soon as he let go the man bolted out the door. He kept running, all the way across the street and on out of sight.

  The Man With No Hands and the young preacher were both standing right behind him. Like a committee. Mick held his hands up, palm out.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll go now.”

  He pushed past everybody and went downstairs to get his camera bag. A bunch of kids were down there cleaning up the kitchen, wiping off counters, putting away pots and bagging up garbage. He picked up his camera bag and left. He had to shade his eyes when he went out from the dark church building into the bright sunshine of the parking lot. About the time he reached his truck he heard steps behind him and turned around.

  It was the Man With No Hands.

  “We need to talk,” he said. He didn’t even look mad.

  Mick threw his camera bag on the seat and leaned back against the side of the truck. “Go ahead,” he said. “Let me have it.”

  “Let you have what?”

  “The speech. Lower the boom. Tell me how I need to control my temper, and how when you asked me to help take care of homeless people you weren’t talking about assault and battery. Tell me how wrong that was, like I don’t already know.”

  He crossed his hooks on his chest and stared.

  “What you said to that guy—was it the truth?”

  “What?”

  “That he should take responsibility for his own choices instead of blaming his failure on somebody else. Was that the truth?”

  Mick shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And if he was clearly manipulating everybody around him for the purpose of feeding his self-destructive habits, and you knew it, would it have served him for you to ignore it and let him get away with it, thinking that nobody cared enough to challenge him?”

  Mick had to think about that one for a minute. “No,” he finally said. “I guess not.”

  “Then what did you do that was so wrong?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . . putting him up against a wall and threatening his life?”

  “You didn’t threaten his life.”

  “Yes I did—I just didn’t use words.”

  He smiled then, shaking his head. “Desperate times, desperate measures. My point is, that guy’s been working us for years, and this is the first time anybody’s ever gotten through to him. Your methods may be a little unorthodox, Mick, but your message was better than a lot of sermons. Sometimes it takes a jolt to clear a man’s head.”

  “You mean like a train?”

  The Man With No Hands chuckled softly. “Yes, exactly. Or a crane.”

  The midday sun beat down out of a blinding white sky. Even the black asphalt parking lot made Mick squint. He snagged a cap from the dash of the truck and clapped it on his head.

  “Tell me something, Preacher,” he said. “You think everybody gets hit by a train sooner or later?”

  “Maybe,” he nodded. “I don’t know. I do know this much—everything depends on what you choose to do after that. How you deal with it. What you choose, right then, after the train, decides who you are.”

  Mick shook his head, chuckling. “Well, then I must have made a wrong turn because things ain’t workin’ out so great.”

  The Man’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Really? What about the photography? Sounds to me like things are going fine.”

  “Yeah, the photography thing is nice, but everything else . . .” He turned a thumb down. “It’s mostly the staying-at-home thing. The house is always a wreck, my kids are turning into savages, Dylan’s not doing so great with his therapy, and my wife isn’t real happy with me. Truth is, I’m not much of a mother.”

  “No,” the Man said, laughing. “You’re not. That’s good. That’s progress.”

  “Progress? How you figure that?”

  “You may not be much of a mother, but from where I’m standing you’re a pretty decent father. The trouble is, you’re always trying to fit into somebody else’s mold. The only time you followed your heart was when you had a camera in your hands, and look how that turned out.” He waved a hook toward the church building. “There’s a place for you here, and you don’t have to be somebody else to fit into it. It’s perfectly all right to be Mick Brannigan. I told you before, God’s got his hand on you, Mick. God designed you, and he had something in mind when he did it.”

  “Yeah, well I wish he’d let me in on it.”

  “Oh, I suspect he has. You just don’t see it yet.” He said this with a wry smile that made Mick nervous, and made him want to steer the conversation someplace else.

  “Yeah, well, if God’s gonna give me a portfolio for the High Museum I wish he’d get on with it. Time’s a’wastin’.”

  The Man stared at the ground for a minute, reaching up and scratching his head with the tip of a hook. “You know, sometimes you seem to be making it hard on purpose. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” Mick said. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Pictures are just stories, Mick. What are the stories you know best?”

  He laughed. “The only thing I’ve ever known is construction work. I can guarantee you, nobody wants to see pictures of that.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because it’s . . . because nobody . . . Who wants to look at a bunch of construction workers?”

  “Right. And who wants to look at pictures of your kids? Or homeless people?”

  “Aw, come on, Preacher. It’s not the same thing. Turn on a television and you’ll see that a construction worker is an ignorant redneck with a beer gut sitting on a wall harassing women and showing four inches of crack.”

  The Man With No Hands stared evenly, letting the assertion hang between them for a minute. Without taking his eyes from Mick’s face, he asked quietly, “Is that the construction worker you know?”

  Mick wasn’t sure why, but the question conjured pictures in his mind. He could see Mike Dover standing on a crane hook thirty stories in the air, sucking on a lollipop and holding onto the cable with his other hand, grinning. He could see big old Butch Hinton, the toughest man he ever met, squatting in the gravel by the trailer feeding half a tuna sandwich to a stray kitten. A dozen images ran through his head just that quick—pictures of men he’d known and things he’d seen them do. None of them were ignorant, at least not on certain subjects, and none of them went around wearing their pants too low in the back.

  “No,” he said quietly. “That’s not the construction worker I know.”

  “Then show people things they’ve never seen before. There’s your portfolio. Tell the stories you know.”

  32

  * * *

  Marco Polo.

  IT RAINED the first couple days that week and the things the Man With No Hands said on Sunday afternoon got drowned out by a houseful of wild children. Two days of movies, fighting over toys, spilling juice . . . and boredom.

  “I’m bored.”

  “What do you feel like doing? Want to play a game?”

  “Let’s shoot some aliens,” Ben said.

  “Frog less a pin core!” Mick shouted.

  “KILL ME!” Dylan answered, from the living room.

  “I’m out of ammo!” Toad hollered from her bedroom.

  “They’re everywhere!” Ben giggled.

  They took turns sitting on his lap blasting aliens all afternoon. Mick had a feeling Layne wouldn’t approve, but the kids were having a ball and getting along with each other for a change. After a couple days of rain, he’d use whatever he could.

  By Wednesday the sun had come out. He had to vacuum the pool and cut the grass, but it felt great to get the kids out of the house again. By the time he finished mowing the lawn he was hot and ready to hit the pool.

  Ben and Toad started begging him to come play Marco Polo with them in the deep end.

  “C
an’t,” Mick said. “Gotta work with Dylan.” He was trying really hard to be conscientious about Dylan and his therapy, and he knew in his gut that swimming would be the best thing in the world for him if he could just get him to do it.

  But all he ever did was hold Dylan up in the shallow end, on his side of the rope, and let him club away at the water. His hands and feet splashed a lot but he wasn’t really trying to swim. Whenever Mick stopped supporting him he’d keep clubbing the water and pretending, but he’d instantly put a leg down and hold himself up with a toe. He never actually swam an inch. Mick wasn’t sure if he was afraid of it for some reason or if he just liked the attention, but after a month of it he was pretty sure it was the latter.

  When Mick ducked under the rope and did a turn through the deep end to cool off, Dylan started squawking. He stood on his side of the rope and fussed and whined the whole time, wringing his hands and begging his dad to come back and work with him.

  “Come on, Dad. Me and Toad want to play Marco Polo,” Ben said.

  “I neeeeed to swim,” Dylan whined. Whenever he got desperate for something he didn’t just want it anymore, he neeeeeded it.

  Mick swam up toward the shallow end but stopped at the rope. Dylan lit up, and actually started clapping his hands. But when Mick unhooked the rope from the little chrome eye on the side of the pool Dylan stopped clapping. When he waded across to the other side, coiling the rope around his forearm, Dylan frowned and started wringing his hands again. When he unhooked the other end and climbed up out of the water Dylan latched on to the side and stood there looking over his shoulder at where the rope had been, as if it confused him. Mick thought for a minute he was going to cloud up and cry. He hung the coiled rope on the fence and knelt down in front of his youngest son.

  Dylan looked up at him and said, very deliberately, “Mom said we dotta keep the rope on.”

  Mick wasn’t expecting the twinge of pain he got from it, but he knew it had to be done. He leaned down close to Dylan’s face and said, “I’m not your mom.”

  And then Mick dove into the deep end and ignored him. They played Marco Polo, he and Ben and Toad, and ignored Dylan’s yelling. He yelled and pleaded and threatened for five or ten minutes, insisting that he neeeeeded to swim and he neeeeeeeded his dad to help him. When that didn’t work he threatened to tell his mom. When that didn’t work, he cried. Mick ignored him while he cried softly, huddling in the corner of the shallow end, and he ignored him when he screamed and beat the water, bellowing loud enough for Layne to hear him at work. Dylan eventually gave up on that, too, and squatted down with his back against the wall, just his eyes and nose showing above the waterline.

  Mick watched him from the corner of his eye. He didn’t want Dylan to know he was being watched, but he kept pretty close tabs on him. He’d spent so much time with that boy Mick knew how his mind worked. Dylan was thinking. He knew for a solid-gold fact Dylan wouldn’t have stayed in the water this long unless he was thinking about it. If he ever gave up, he’d get out of the pool.

  But he didn’t get out. He sat there by himself, up against the wall, watching.

  They kept playing Marco Polo. It must have been half an hour later when Mick popped up in the middle of the deep end with his eyes closed. He was “it.”

  “Marco,” he sang out.

  “Polo,” came Toad’s voice from over by the ladder. She liked it there because she could push off in any direction if he came after her.

  “Polo.” Ben, hanging under the diving board. He liked to drop deep and shove off. Both of them were quick as frogs. Mick was about to make his move when he heard hands splashing, behind him, and getting closer.

  He wanted to turn around. He wanted to very badly, but he didn’t. He kept his eyes closed and stayed where he was, treading water for a few more seconds, until a little hand grabbed his shoulder. Then another. Two skinny arms wrapped around his neck from behind.

  “Polo,” Dylan said.

  * * *

  That same evening, while they were cleaning up the kitchen after supper, Layne asked him what was happening with the portfolio.

  “Nothing much,” Mick said, scraping a plate into the garbage. “I got a few shots Sunday morning but they didn’t turn out all that good. Interesting faces, but the light’s all wrong inside that old church building. I’ve got to come up with something better. Something new.”

  “So do it,” she said, opening the dishwasher. “Aubrey said you needed to take lots of pictures, and soon. The man from the High Museum won’t wait forever.”

  “When?” Mick asked, handing her a salad bowl for the dishwasher. “I’m busy yelling at kids, trying to keep the goat out of the flower beds and trying to figure out where the chickens are laying their eggs this week. Did you know I found a nest under the four-wheeler in the shed the other day?”

  “That’s your excuse? That you’re too busy with the kids to take pictures?”

  “It’s not an excuse, Layne. It’s just the truth. I guess I could run downtown and shoot homeless people in the evening, but by the time we’re done with supper and the dishes are washed it’s always too late to go.”

  “So shoot in the morning.”

  “I can’t take three kids to Overpass Plantation. Do you know what it’s like around there?”

  “So take pictures of something else. It doesn’t have to be homeless people, does it?”

  He was wiping off the last of the counters. “You know, now that you mention it, the Man With No Hands thinks I should be doing a whole spread on construction workers.”

  Dylan had come in with The Cat in the Hat under his arm and was dragging Layne toward her reading chair. She stopped, turned around, jammed a hand in her hair.

  “That’s brilliant!” she said. “The places you’ve been, the people you know. Mick, that could be really good.”

  “Maybe, but it’s still outside. I need to shoot in the morning when the light’s good. Downtown. Construction site. What do I do with the kids?”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “Work with me here, Mick. Sometimes I get the feeling you really don’t want to do this. What are you afraid of?”

  Again with that question. As far as he knew he wasn’t afraid of anything, and he was getting tired of people asking him that. He was about to tell her so when the phone rang and she escaped into the den to answer it.

  Ben was painting a model airplane on the dining room table, an exact scale replica of a World War II vintage P–51 Mustang. He’d made a mess of the paint job but he wanted his dad to show him how to do the decals. Mick put some water in a jar lid and was showing him how to slide a wet decal off the card when Layne called him back to the bedroom and closed the door behind them.

  “That was the strangest thing,” she said. “You know the discussion we were just having about how you needed to go shoot pictures in the morning, but you couldn’t go because of the kids?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, that was Celly Weems on the phone. She said she heard you and Aubrey talking about that very thing, and she wants to keep the kids for you a couple mornings a week so you can go take pictures. What do you think?”

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to say what he really thought. Layne hadn’t seen the private Celly.

  “I don’t know, Layne. What do you think?”

  “Oh, I think it would be fine if she really wants to do it. Don’t you?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Mick said, “they’d kill her. Our kids can get a little wound up. And for another thing, I’m not too sure about Celly. I mean, she’s not the same when there’s nobody around. She’s kind of . . . depressed. And depressing.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” Layne said. “She has good reason, you know. She doesn’t go around telling people, but she had a mastectomy eight years ago. On top of that, now she’s going through menopause.”

  “They got drugs for that,” he said. He’d heard about it from older guys he worked with.

  “Yes, but she can’t
take any of them because of her history of cancer. She was handling all of it okay until her youngest son left for college, but now she’s alone in the house all the time. Put yourself in her shoes, Mick. She doesn’t feel like much of a woman anymore. I think it might actually be good for her to come over here a couple mornings a week and stay with our kids.”

  He nodded grudgingly. “I still think they’ll kill her,” he mumbled.

  “She’s stronger than you think. We all are.” She put her arms around his neck and smiled that little smile that made his knees buckle.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes I get little glimpses.”

  “It’ll be fine, you’ll see. I think it’ll be good for both of you. Now you can go downtown a couple mornings a week and shoot pictures of your buddies hanging by their knees from a skyscraper if you want.”

  There went his last excuse. The rope was off. There was nothing left for him but to just go and do it. Win or lose. Glorious victory or humiliating defeat.

  She looked into his eyes and saw the hesitation there.

  “What is it, Mick? Talk to me, honey. We’re all trying to help you, trying to give you a chance to do something special, and you’re moping around. Why are you so . . . reluctant?”

  Marco.

  He shook his head. It was hard to look at her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I really am scared. I mean, come on—the High Museum? I’m an ironworker, Layne.”

  “What difference does that make? It’s a gift, Mick. It’s all in how you see the world, sweetheart. If you think everything is just pure dumb luck, of course you’re afraid. Luck is capricious. But if you believe there’s a greater hand, a greater mind guiding things, opening and closing doors, then you don’t have to be afraid of what’s happening. You can live in fear, or you can live in faith. It’s up to you.”

  She held him there, and looking into his eyes she said, “I believe in you, Mick. You’re good, and you’re strong. There’s nothing you can’t do.”