by J. Wachowski
Some people do yoga. I do photography.
Photographing a death scene is a special challenge. There are very few shots that will play as acceptable for prime time, although the boundaries of acceptable have expanded in the last few years. I got everything through two baths and hung to dry when I heard a knock. The shot with the firefighter was a beauty.
“Come on in.” I was hunched over the table, checking a wide shot with a jeweler’s loupe. There was a flare showing up in some of the shots that irritated me.
“I’m hungry, Aunt Maddy.”
“Oh, right.” I pulled myself away from the flare problem and cracked my neck. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. You missed Scooby-Doo and SpongeBob.”
“How many commercials?” I asked.
“Forty-two. Thirty-six promos.”
If the kid was going to watch television, she’d better know what she was watching. Whenever she watched regular TV, I made her count. “That’s a lot of commercial time.”
“Old Navy is having a sale.”
“Ah.”
Jenny slid in next to me as I hunched over proof sheets searching for flares. She looked up at the drying prints. “What is that?”
I jerked upright and had one of those whoops! Is this a fuck-up? moments. The smallest possible answer was, “These are the pictures I took today.”
“Is that guy dead?”
“Yeah.”
She stepped close enough to the photo I thought her nose would touch the paper. “Did he kill himself?”
“Yeah, he did.” The guy had a rope as thick as my wrist hanging from around his neck; what else could I say?
“Why?” she whispered.
I guess I’d been holding my breath because the first sound I made was a whoosh of air. “I don’t know. I guess he was sad.” I knew that wasn’t right, wasn’t enough, so I tried adding, “Very, very sad.”
She turned her nose toward me and stared long enough I counted three blinks.
“Hey Jen, I need to run these downtown to a guy.” I tried diversionary tactics. “Wanna get a hot dog for dinner?”
“Chili dog?”
“Sure.” I gave her my best happy chuck on the arm, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet. “Be right up-you go grab my bag.”
With a snap, I grabbed the picture Jenny had nearly pressed her nose against. It showed the flare as well, but not in the same spot. I set two prints beside each other and realized the flare wasn’t crap on my lens. It was something in the photo, something catching light in the open second-story window of the barn.
Making pictures is a fairly complex operation. A million tiny details, a million choices that contribute to the final product. Most of the choices are things I don’t even think about any more, things happening so fast I don’t remember half of what I see. I crouch to shift the horizon. I frame so the picture will fit into a TV screen’s rectangle. I put the light behind me.
With the sun slanting in above the van’s roof, the lens recorded something my eye had missed-the flare of light on glass in a tiny, double comma. Because I’d spent plenty of time over the last five years taking pictures of soldiers on the job, it happened to be just the sort of flare I’d recognize.
Binoculars.
Somebody had been watching from the barn.
11:17:09 p.m.
By the time her aunt was asleep, it was really dark everywhere. But Jenny didn’t mind.
Lots of other kids were afraid of the dark.
Jenny knew for a fact that Lindsay still slept with a light on, because she’d slept over once last year when they were still friends. That was a long time ago.
Jenny didn’t need a night light anymore. Night wasn’t bad. In fact, she liked it.
She stood in her doorway and listened. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt to swallow.
Before the summer, before everything was different, she’d loved her house: the chair she always sat in to watch TV, the wall where her mom hung her pictures from school, even the bathroom, where the heater vent was right beside the toilet and in the winter it blew warm air on her cold feet when she woke up. Whenever Jenny walked in the door of her house, she always felt right.
Everything was different now. Her chair was lumpy. Aunt Maddy had put her stuff in Jenny’s bathroom, like her toothbrush and this thing called a tongue scraper that was double weird and totally gross. Jenny never had time to warm her feet anymore. She had to hurry up, so her aunt could have her turn. The house didn’t even smell the same, because her aunt hated the smell of Pine-Sol and bought new cleaner that smelled like oranges and made Jenny sneeze.
Jenny looked up and down. The hall returned nothing but a long, black silence. The pounding in her chest began to pass. Here in the dark, she felt safe. Invisible, she could breathe. She could finally do the thing she most wanted to do, the thing she craved through the whole long, bright day.
She tip-toed up the hall, sticking close to the wall where the floor didn’t creak. Outside the guest bedroom where her aunt slept, she stopped again to listen.
Quiet.
Jenny held her breath as she passed the door. Her aunt’s bare foot hung off the bed, her face turned away toward the wall. Your aunt had big shoes to fill, her mother always said and it was true. Aunt Maddy had big feet. That’s why she’s bigger than life. Jenny wasn’t really sure what that meant, until Aunt Maddy came to stay. Her feet weren’t the only big part. She was so tall she bumped the light over the couch almost every day. And she had a big voice, too. She yelled in the car at the other drivers, she yelled when she talked on the phone, sometimes she even yelled at the TV. Loud.
The last door in the hall was Mama’s. It was closed, as usual.
Jenny slipped in and shut the door behind her.
At last.
With a pillow and lap blanket off the bed, she crossed the last threshold into Mama’s big square closet. There was a place deep in the back where she’d cleared away all the shoes, and Mama’s long skirts and dresses nearly dragged the floor. Snuggling back against the wall Jenny let the clothes brush against her face, her mother’s scent, her mother’s softness surrounding her. She closed her eyes, breathing in, in, in.
Mommy, Mommy, Mom-me.
Sometimes everything didn’t feel as bad when you were awake in the dark.
For a while, Jenny worried that Aunt Maddy would take it all away, all her mama’s things in the bedroom. She never did. She just put her suitcases in the guest room and that was that. It was kind of weird, actually. Her aunt had like, no stuff. Except the weights and the camera junk in the basement.
Jenny sunk deeper into the pillow and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. It wasn’t usually so cold in the closet. Tonight, it felt cold.
She couldn’t stop thinking about that picture her aunt had taken. The one with the dead guy.
It was scary. One of those guys looked sort of like somebody she used to know, maybe. It was hard to remember his face though. That was scary, too. Jenny didn’t like the idea of forgetting faces.
She needed to get another look. Maybe she could find another picture. A long time ago there was one in her mom’s bedroom, but now it was gone. Where could it have gone? Jenny didn’t take it and Aunt Maddy never even opened the door to this room.
Jenny pushed her way out of the closet and thought for a minute. Maybe there was another picture somewhere. Her mom always had special ones tucked in her underwear drawer.
Slowly, quietly, Jenny searched.
When she found what she needed, she put everything else back exactly the way it was. For another time…like maybe tomorrow.
The trip up the hall was quick, but heading downstairs, Jenny had to be careful. The stairs were noisy and Aunt Maddy woke up at the least sound. She was a light sleeper. Jenny’s mom used to say that people who slept well had no imagination or a very clean conscience, which seemed to explain pretty good about Aunt Maddy.
Some nights, Jenny was glad her aunt woke up easy. Not
tonight though. She didn’t want to talk about this. Aunt Maddy didn’t like her very much as it was.
All the grown-ups Jenny knew had gotten weird since the accident. Teachers stared at her. The neighbors pretended like they didn’t see her. None of her mom’s friends called anymore. Maybe they’d all forgotten her mom, and her. Even the special friend.
Her mom kept a flashlight on top of the fridge in the basement for tornado drills and storms. Jenny had to stand on a plastic box to reach it. Her aunt’s photo work was on the table near the washing machine.
Jenny took the picture from her mother’s room and laid it next to the ones her aunt had made that day.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
It was him.
11:27:09 p.m.
Maybe his luck was changing.
The house was quiet and dark. He almost went inside. But this time he was watching very carefully. He saw the faint light click on and off in Gina’s bedroom-a nightlight, or the closet light maybe? A few minutes later, a light popped up in the basement window.
One of the girls must be awake.
Good thing he hadn’t gone there. He wouldn’t have been breaking the law or anything. He had a key. But there was no sense getting them all excited until he’d had a look.
The right thing to do was wait. Wait and watch.
Sooner or later the house would be empty. Then, he’d go in and see if maybe Maddy O’Hara had found something that belonged to him. Something that might make her hot to play reporter.
Watching was the smart move.
From now on, he’d watch her carefully. And he’d know when she’d gone too far.
VIDEO: reprint of news color photo tree/ladder/rope visible. Crowd of men watch as body lowered. (Slow zoom out)
Newsprint caption. Super over photo. Roll as crawl:
“Unidentified man in Amish clothing was found dead yesterday in a field south of Route 289. Police and fire department services were brought to the scene by an anonymous phone caller.”
FRIDAY
7:03:28 a.m.
College Boy arrived on time and raring to go for our first interview. Unfortunately, Jenny’s school wasn’t open at the crack of dawn. Failing to anticipate the intersection of work and family can be fatal in my business.
On the other hand, the survival instinct kicking in with a vengeance does add a certain edge to the morning.
“This is my niece, Jenny,” I said as we piled into the truck. “We’re taking her with us.”
“Hi,” Jenny said.
“Hey.” He nodded hello and offered his hand to guide her over a spaghetti pile of cables and stick bags, so she could strap herself into the spare jump seat. “Wow. You two are related?”
Jenny hit me with her big-eyed, blank look-the mask of trouble. She resembles the female side of my family: smooth brown hair, round dark eyes, and the translucent skin of an Irish elf. Even for a kid, she was small.
Looks-wise, I got my dad’s package: the Viking strain of Celtic blood, tall and broad, plenty of freckles, wild hair which is politely known as red, but actually closer to orange, when I don’t color it-which is never. I’d dyed it fatal-blond right before the job interview. I’m all for irony. Now Ainsley and I looked more like relations than Jenny and I.
“I’m the black sheep of the family,” I said. “Let’s roll.”
Ainsley took a convoluted back route of smaller roads to get us to the site of yesterday’s incident and avoid the morning rush hour. We passed fields, farms and for sale signs.
September was a good time to be in Chicago-another two months, we’d all be freezing our asses off. The rising sun cast a perfect yellow light on dead grass and reddened sumac leaves. I opened the window to snap a few pictures and the autumn air rushed me, crisp with the scent of endings and beginnings. The wind helped blow away the last of the dusty, creepy feeling that had followed me home last night. I was on my way to work. Life was good.
Since I was busy hanging my head out the window taking pictures, Ainsley focused on getting Jenny to chat. It didn’t take long for the two of them to bond; they were practically peers. As soon as we parked, Ainsley set her up with something to watch in the back of the truck. What he was doing with cartoons in stock, I don’t want to know.
It took twenty long minutes to prep for our quickie on-camera interview with Al Lowe, the man whose land had been the site of yesterday’s tragedy. The fact that College Boy had managed to find the man and schedule an interview on such short notice was such a pleasant surprise, I didn’t bug him about his pace. There were always other things to cover.
“Fill the frame with the subject. Don’t try to shoot me. I hate reporters in the story. You’ve seen the kind of stuff I do, right? We’ll cut around my questions and tie everything together with a narrating voice-over. Got that?”
I wanted the black skeleton of the oak tree behind the man being interviewed. It looked different today. More mysterious.
We heard Lowe’s truck before we saw him. He went off-road and parked ten feet from where we stood.
“Thanks for coming out to meet us, sir.”
I offered my hand as he slammed the door. Lowe was a perfect interview to get us started. He wore jeans, a Cubs jacket that had seen better days and a squared-off bill cap. His face and hands bore the weathered tan of an outdoor work life. Everything about him said farmer-pure, old-fashioned, regular guy. Whatever he had to say, people would believe.
“Beautiful view,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lowe replied. Midwesterners could pack more meanings into “yeah” than Eskimos had words for snow. This one meant, sad. What a shame.
Ainsley fumbled with the tripod behind us, trying to lock down an even footing for the shot I wanted. Not easy. The ground was all torn up by the cars, trucks and men that had been trooping around the day before.
Lowe kept his back to the camera and stared out across fields that came together like a quilt beneath the eternal-blue morning. It wasn’t the kind of sky that recorded well on video. The technology could never get the color right.
I stood beside him and gazed unblinking into all that color until vertigo brought me back to the earth. The view to the horizon held nothing but dirt and straw and the scalloped border of a tree line. I dug my hands into my pockets and tried for a happy quote. “Reminds me of ‘the pleasant land of counterpane.’”
Lowe looked at me, surprised. In a grave, rusty, morning voice he spoke the words,
“‘I was the giant great and still,
that sits upon the pillow hill,
and sees before him, dale and plain,
the pleasant land of counterpane.’
“My dad used to recite that one,” he admitted with a bashful crook of his head.
“Mine too,” I said. We were having a moment, so I didn’t mention that I was full grown before I’d understood the word was pane, not pain.
“Almost ready,” Ainsley said.
Farmer Lowe and I chatted about hay harvest and dairy feed, while the Boy Wonder locked and loaded. By the time we got to bovine hormones, Lowe was at ease; I was on suppressed impatience.
“Ready,” Ainsley finally called.
Interviewing is part skill, part talent, part luck of the draw. When it works, you become the glass through which someone else is seen. Sometimes, you blend transparently. Sometimes, you reflect. Sometimes, there’s an invisible wall. I ran down the establishing facts with Lowe quickly.
I could feel his resistance before I asked, “Were you the one to find the body?”
“No.” Lowe studied his boots. Kicked over a clod of dirt. “The authorities knew before I did. I got a call from a neighbor who’d driven by, saw all the commotion.”
“About what time was that?”
“Neighbor called as I was finishing my pancakes.”
“Could it have been that neighbor-over there?” I looked across the field, beyond the fence and the line of shrubs even farther back.
The buildings appeared exactly
as they were yesterday, the perfect icon of farm, like an illustration from a kid’s picture book. The second-story barn window stood open. No sign of binoculars watching.
“Old Mr. Jost? I couldn’t say,” Lowe mumbled.
Ainsley popped his head around the camera. “Has he even got a phone?”
“There’s a booth out back,” Lowe answered. To me he said, “The Amish don’t allow phones in their homes. It’s one of their rules. No wires to the outside world on their homes. They get around it by putting the phone in a separate little building, like a phone booth, that’s outside apart from the house.”
“An Amish family lives there?” I couldn’t help pointing. “In that house?”
“Yeah.” Lowe turned away from me and the relentless stare of the camera.
“What about cell phones?” I asked, thinking of the girl in the bush. “No wires on a cell phone. Do they allow those?”
“No. Don’t think so,” he snorted. “They’d have to charge it somewhere.”
“Oh yeah.” I laughed. Joke on me.
“Is that it?” Lowe’s reluctance suddenly took a shape I recognized.
Gently I asked, “Did you know the man who died?”
His chin dropped to his chest. There was silence for a good twenty seconds.
“Suppose it’ll come out sooner or later… Yeah, I knew him. Damn shame. Seemed to be getting along alright these past few years. Boy’s name was Tom. Tom Jost. He was adopted by my neighbor over there-” Lowe jerked his head in the direction of the farmhouse, “-years ago. Kid had a hard life and old Jost tried to do right by him. I respected him for that.” He half-turned his back to the camera, mumbling. “Some hard years for a while there. Teenage stuff mostly, not too bad. But Old Mr. Jost is religious, you know, so he didn’t see it that way. Boy left the farm, never came back.”
Except to die.
“Why’d he choose this tree?”
No answer.
“Do you know why Tom chose this tree?”
Lowe’s whole face tightened and I wished he’d have been facing the camera, instead of looking over at Mr. Jost’s farm. “Guess I do.”
