by J. Wachowski
“Anybody pitched you a story idea for this week?” I asked.
“Nope. Network’s got some ideas. You’ll want to call them first. Reminds me-I logged a weird call this morning, right before you came in. Out west somewhere, Amish land. People love those Amish-in-trouble stories. Why don’t you go check it out?”
“Amish? There are Amish people out here?” I tried not to sound panicky. “I thought they only lived in remote rural areas.”
Gatt’s cock-eyed glare begged the question, what’s your point? “Get going, you two. I got work to do.”
11:41:12 a.m.
Hanging around the office waiting for network to call back and pitch me a “crime, sex or movie star” item did not sound like a good plan to me. Seeing Ainsley the Wonder Boy in action might be a good idea before a real shoot landed on us.
It didn’t take long to pin down the necessary details. Ainsley was happy to lead the way. “Our Amish community isn’t really that nearby,” he assured me. “It’s actually way out to the edge of the county, at least a half-hour drive west and south.”
“A half hour?” I repeated, trying to adjust to the thought that I now lived closer to an Amish settlement than the city. It took an hour to get into downtown from out here, when the traffic didn’t suck. “That far?”
“Few miles past the Walmart. But there’s a Mennonite church right over in Lombard if you’re looking for something closer. You want to see the remote truck first? It’s pretty sweet.” Ainsley pointed me up the hall. “I knew this one Amish guy who got special permission to go to my high school. He was there a year. Had to ride a bus for an hour and thought it was the greatest. Hard to believe, huh?”
We turned a corner and walked past the cubical shanty town that housed sales, accounting and the promotions departments. Ainsley offered a good morning! to every person we passed, along with a quick introduction.
Maneuvering our way through the building, the kid pointed out the station’s highlights. “Through here’s the kitchen…doughnuts…pop machines…oh, and the bulletin board where we keep the take-out menus.”
“College boys are walking stomachs.”
“No way,” he told me. “I’m no college boy. I’m done with school.”
“Really? Where’d you go?” There were a couple of good schools nearby. A credential I could trust would be nice.
“Pretty much everywhere.” His confession melted out, sticky and sweet. “I, um, had a little trouble in school.”
“You flunk?”
“Not exactly.” The words stretched twice their usual length, long enough to include a whole range of possible mischief. “Got kicked out. Twice.”
“Twice.” I nodded. “That takes some effort.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t seem too upset about it. “Nothing for you to worry about though. I finished all the core courses in broadcasting and camera. I’m fully trained.”
“Sure you are.”
Freelancing a new job, I usually feel excited, ready to dig in, ready to work. It was different to be filled with thoughts of doom.
Ainsley, on the other hand, could not believe his luck. Taking out the remote truck on our first day. He scored points for loading the cameras with the proper awe. The remote “truck” was technically a van, with a decent bank of machines inside-playback, switcher, monitors. Some of the places I’ve worked would have considered it a state-of-the-art editing bay. He was right, it was sweet.
“Looks good. Let’s get going, College.” I slammed the rear doors after a quick inspection and climbed in beside him on the passenger side. “Stop in the front lot on the way out, would you? I need to grab my cameras.”
I always carry both still and video camera equipment to a shoot. I started as a photographer which is unusual these days. I never set out to be on-screen talent. I prefer to let the pictures tell the story. Sometimes on location, I can get straight photos where I can’t get tape. With a splice of quick-cut, pan-tilt, I’ll incorporate the photos into the final story. It’s a distinctive look, one of my signatures.
“If the Amish thing doesn’t heat up, you can show me around town. But I do need to be back at the station by say, two-fifty this afternoon. You know where we’re going, right?”
“Sure. I’ve lived in Dupage County my whole life,” Ainsley admitted without a trace of embarrassment. “Wow. Is that your motorcycle?”
“Yeah.”
“How old is that thing?”
“Older than me,” I answered flatly. “Older than television.”
“No way,” he whispered reverently.
“Watch it, kid.” Peg had been my grandfather’s, before she was my father’s, before she was mine. I pulled my camera gear out of the saddle bags and gave her a pat goodbye.
Peg’s always my first choice of transportation. In the city, she was fairly practical-what with my frequent travel schedule and her fabulous parking profile. But I haven’t had many chances to take her out on the road lately. Practical transport has been redefined for me.
“Where’d you get it?”
“My bike is not an it. My bike is a she.” I tossed my gear into the truck. “Her name is Peg.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Boy didn’t stay down long. “How’d you and Peg meet?”
“Grandpa O’Hara worked at the Chicago Schwinn factory back in the old days.”
“The bike company?”
“They made motorcycles back in the ’20s and ’30s. Fastest motorcycles in the world-including the Excelsior Henderson Super X.” I waved a hand of introduction. “Back in those days, boys named O’Hara needed to travel fast.”
“Why?”
I frowned. “Gangs. Chicago in the ’20s? The mob was Irish.”
“Oh, right.” That got a nod and a furtive glance, as he compared me to his mental picture of an Irish mobster’s granddaughter. “Mind if I drive?”
Was he razzing me? “Knock yourself out, College Boy.”
“Cool,” he replied.
No sooner were seatbelts fastened than he gunned the van across three lanes of divided traffic into the left lane.
My hand welded itself to the oh-shit-bar above my door. When the truck settled into a straight away, I used my free hand to secure the camera on my lap. “Network usually hires me a driver. Someone who can translate and handle a weapon.”
“A weapon?” he scoffed.
“Mostly small arms, though one guy preferred the Uzi. Whenever I traveled with him, I didn’t have to worry about a bodyguard.”
I made a show of giving him the once-over and nodded a tentative approval. Honestly? Most of my employers were too cheap to hire a driver. And if I needed a translator, I had to pay him out of my per diem. But the boy and I were bonding; he didn’t need to know that.
“You’re a light weight but I’ll bet you could keep somebody occupied long enough for me to get into the truck and call for back up, right?” I gave him a friendly shot to the arm. “You study martial arts or anything?”
His eyes jumped sideways. He rubbed his shoulder where I hit him. “Uh, no.”
“We’ll have to stay out of trouble then, won’t we?” I flashed my best buddy smile.
Given something else to think about, his driving mellowed considerably. I pried my hand from the grab bar and dug around behind the seat for my camera bag.
The light was beautiful. I wanted to shoot a few prints to play with later. I always carry a couple of bodies in my camera bag, both digital and print. Old school.
Approaching the entrance to the highway, we stopped at an intersection that presented exactly the same kind of reality shift you get on a Hollywood backlot. Behind us lay a long procession of strip malls-to the right sat a Walmart, to the left a Home Depot. Beyond the shadow of the highway overpass lay fields of feathery yellow grass on one side of the road and a farmhouse with an honest-to-god rusty red barn on the other. I felt as if I was looking through a time machine at the view of before and after.
“What are they growing over there?”
“Where?” Ainsley made a quick check out the window. “What?”
“The yellow stuff over there. In the field.”
“Are you kidding?” He checked my face. “That’s hay.”
“Oh.” I tried to explain. “I never saw it growing. All together like that. It’s pretty.”
I made myself busy testing my equipment in the silence that followed. There was half a roll left in the camera. It didn’t take long to check my lenses, so I dug out my notebook to brainstorm a few story ideas. No storms came to me; all was dry. Very dry.
“Done much location work?” I asked after a few more miles of silence.
“A little cable stuff. Uncle Rich, uh, you know-Gatt-he helped me get some freelance work last summer, so I could get my union card. The station hired me about three months ago.” He did some very elaborate mirror checking, his face turned away.
Not a shock to me. The entertainment industry is just as incestuous as it’s ever been-theater, vaudeville, movies, television-it ran in families like eye color and a tendency toward mental illness. Shakespeare had probably had two uncles and a chorus of cousins on the payroll. As long as the boy did his job, it didn’t matter to me.
We traveled straight west on the interstate, and then a relatively short hop south through stubbled farmland. Once we hit the exit, Ainsley got behind a state police cruiser with its lights flashing and ended up following him the rest of the way. It surprised me PD was still en route.
A crowd of assorted rescue vehicles appeared beyond a rise. Everybody’s lights were flashing like a cheap Christmas display. Police and a few bureaucrats were milling around the edge of a grassy field. Fire department was there, as well. They’d driven a ladder truck as close as the pavement could get them to the base of a huge spreading oak. Farther away, the fenced field, the white barn and simple farmhouse made a perfect country backdrop.
“Pull over, College.” I rolled down my window, switched to my longest range telephoto lens and shot the rest of my print film as the van rolled to a stop. I prefer to shoot both print and digital when I have both cameras handy. I trained on print. Digital cameras try to do the thinking for me. It’s annoying. “You ever worked with police on a shoot before?”
“No.”
With my finger on the camera’s trigger, I rattled off some basics. “When we get out of the truck, go ahead and pull a camera box, but stay behind me. Wear your credentials on your shirt. Keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Don’t try to set up the camera until I say it’s a go-got it?”
“Got it.” He didn’t sound happy about it. “Can you see any better with that lens?”
The tree must have blocked his view from the driver’s seat. It’s hard to miss a body with a crowd of public servants standing around gaping. The FD couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty minutes ahead of us to the scene. I caught the shot of the dead man being lowered into the arms of a firefighter.
“Hanging.” My voice had gone flat. The working voice. The voice I use to face the world. My lousy luck was running true. I hate suicides.
“What?” Ainsley asked, that long, slow midwest version of huh?
“The dead guy was swinging from that big oak tree. Look at all these guys. Half the public servants of the county must be out here. Fire, EMT, sheriff-” I dropped the camera to peek over at my college boy. “Did you just say ‘Eeeuuu’?”
His pretty face was crunched up, one part uh oh, and two parts yuck.
There’s something else I forget. In these Great United States, plenty of people get all the way to full grown without ever seeing death any closer than roadkill from the car window.
“Maybe you better wait in the truck.”
“No way.” He worked to smooth out his expression. “I’m fine.”
I looked into those clear blue eyes and felt myself caught between two minds. Part of me wanted to toughen him up-get him out there and force him to meet reality. Part of me didn’t want to be the one that popped his corpse-cherry. I’d seen enough of the world to know innocence had a value that was always underrated.
“It’s your choice. No problem if you want to wait.” I made my voice as neutral as possible while rewinding and reloading. The film can got stuffed deep in my front pocket, out of sight. Old habit-I always hide exposed film. I switched to digital to give me electronic options-easy translation to the web and satellite feed.
“I want to go with you.” Ainsley nodded as he spoke, convincing himself.
He didn’t use the high-volt smile this time and I liked him better for it.
“Come on then. Follow me.”
We hopped a fence and strolled across the field. Broken rows of corn bristled all around us. The unfortunate oak was perched on the far side of a small rise. As my sight line improved, the corn stretched toward the horizon, creating the illusion of perspective. Except for the dead guy, it was a pretty view.
With the fire truck unable to get close enough to the tree, the guys had carried a regular extension ladder over to lean against the limb where the rope was tied. The fireman I’d photographed remained at ground zero hunched over the body. The fireman at the top of the ladder was busy slicing through the last of the rope with a small hacksaw. From his higher vantage point, he was the first to see Ainsley and me approach the edge of the action. The man on the ladder shouted to the men below. The guys beside the body stood up and stared.
I’m not sure why, but I suddenly felt protective of my camera and my college boy. I shifted the strap to hide the lens in the crook of my arm.
“Stick close, kid. These guys aren’t too happy to see us.”
12:53:22 p.m.
Shit. Shit. Shit. What was Maddy O’Hara doing here?
There was a shit smell coming from everywhere: the farm downwind, the body on the ground and the men jockeying around it for a look.
“Watch it!”
“On three. Up!”
It took four men to lift the body and set it on top of the bag. The head lolled toward the shoulder at a nasty angle. The guy had known his knots; knew just where to place it so the fall would snap his neck.
“Camera Press over there,” somebody whispered.
“No shit,” he said. “Get me the cardiac monitor. We should record asystole before we bag him.”
“Not here.” The sheriff stepped in, all puckered up because the press was on site. “I want this body in the ambulance and en route-now.”
“Yes, sir. I’m on it.”
“Then quit staring at that woman. Move.”
1:06:49 p.m.
The sheriff’s men weren’t happy to see us either. A big bouncer type who stood guarding the perimeter backed us off before I even had a chance to make our case. We hung out for a few minutes trying to get someone to talk to us without any luck.
“What now?” Ainsley asked as we retreated to the roadside.
“We’re on a bear hunt, College.” I scanned the perimeter and started toward the shrub line. “Can’t go through ’em. Can’t go over ’em. Got to go around ’em.”
I walked along the road to where the fence line ended, then turned up a small side road that seemed to follow the boundary of the property.
Ainsley matched my pace, breathing heavily with the camera case in tow. “Where are we going?”
“Don’t know. I’m looking.”
Not far from the turn, I cut back following a line of scraggily shrubs and small trees up a slight incline toward the farmhouse we had seen from the road. Every so often I popped through the bushes and held up my camera to check for a decent line of sight.
The college boy threw questions at my back the entire way. “Do you think we’re trespassing? What if someone lives here? Is this legal?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Follow me.”
“Wish you’d stop saying that.”
Near the crest of a small rise, through the heavy barberry branches, I found a spot where the perspective on the action by the tree was perfect. Firefighter
s and police were milling around. The ladder was coming down. Some of the men were fascinated by a spill of cardboard boxes and paper where the body dropped.
“Okay, College Boy, this is it. Let’s get a hand-held shot. We’re too far away for anything but the in-camera mic, but record it anyway. We may want to use the ambient sound-wind, leaves rustling, birds. See if you can get tight enough for a couple steady, close-up head-shots of these guys. I want facial expression if you can get it.”
Ainsley set the camera case down with a thud. His face glowed with a faint sheen of sweat from the effort of getting it there. He took a few minutes to organize himself. We’d prepped in the van, so it didn’t take long. Once he had the camera rolling, I stepped back to give him some room. Behind me, I heard the rustle-crack of a scramble in the hedge, the sound of an animal trying to escape.
With two hands, I spread the leafy whippets of overgrown barberry. My camera bumped against my chest, swinging heavily from the neck strap. It took a second for my eyes to adjust.
At first, all I saw was her face and her fear. The white of the young woman’s skin reflected light where her dark clothes disappeared into the shadow. Bits of contrast jumped out at me. She was wearing a hat, a black Amish bonnet to be exact, but she had a cell phone pressed to her ear.
“What the hell is going on here?” a man’s voice rose behind me.
I admit, I jumped. The branches I’d been holding snapped back into place as I spun around. Ainsley jumped too, but he kept the camera up and running. The guy shouting was obviously The Man. From what I could see, he was the only one wearing a decent suit and all the men around the tree stopped everything to watch.
“I thought I said no cameras!”
“The officer told us to stay as far back as the road, but no one said anything about no cameras.” I smiled. Behind me, there was absolute silence in the bush. “I’m Maddy O’Hara, WWST. You’re the man in charge, I presume?”
He was a fairly large guy, enough so I’d notice. Not a whole lot older than me. Sandy-dark hair with a thread or two of silver, maybe. Good sharp bones beneath the cheek and brow. He’d be a dream to photograph monochrome, except you’d lose the eye color-the pale green of a cloudy agate.
