Follow Focus
45
Accountability
“Jane” by Kiselev Andrey Valerevich, ID1104737237 licensed from Shutterstock.com.
JANE AND I didn’t waste any time getting to bed once the family left for the ranch. She was quite giggly.
“You know, you are the only man in my sex life,” she said as we lay in bed recuperating. “That means I get sex for a period of a week or two twice a year. I hate to tell you this, but I might have to take a lover.”
“Jane, you know you don’t need to wait for me. Do you have any prospects?”
“I won’t touch another man until I’m sure I’ve got our child in the chute, Nate. James is such a love, I don’t want to risk having anyone else father my second.”
“That’s kind of you. I’ll get to spend some time with him this summer, won’t I?”
“Of course. We just have to pry him out of Kendra’s arms. I think if she could have produced milk, that girl would have nursed him. She might have used a teat as a pacifier on occasion.” Jane began working on me with her pussy again and I eventually responded with growing tumescence. “As to prospects… I haven’t actually been shopping around. I had an interesting phone call last month, though. Do you remember Don McIntyre from our Location Portraiture workshop?”
“Let me think. He was from up north in Scotland, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Nice enough fellow. He wanted to know if I could make some recommendations for photo locations in the south. We chatted for quite a while and at one point he rather flirtatiously asked if I’d be interested in posing for him. Of course, I said no, but I don’t suppose it would be so bad. He wasn’t bad looking either. I might propose that we exchange modeling sessions. See how that goes.”
“Sounds to me like you already know how it will go,” I snorted.
“Oh, don’t be mad about it. You know, it’s your knob in my quim right now and I’d like to feel it moving about.”
I was getting to the point where I wanted to feel it moving about as well, and we focused on our pleasure.
Six shows opened the next week. We didn’t even attempt to make all the openings. There would be plenty of summer to see shows. I took Xian and Ronda to see Twelfth Night on Monday. It was the first time Xian had ever seen a live play. She was overjoyed with the experience.
After the show, Ronda and I took Xian to the spare room and the two girls got very into making out with each other, as I penetrated one and then the other. Ronda and I held Xian between us as we slept that night.
I felt detached. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was surrounded by love—four wives! I had my two children with Patricia and one with Jane. Jane was active in getting me to plant another in her. And Xian was definitely pregnant. But I was restless. I took long walks. I spent solitary time in the darkroom—sometimes just sitting there, not even printing an image.
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence
The song was over ten years old now, but it haunted me much more these days than when Vicki McMillan and I went to see them in concert. Gosh, that was a long time ago. I should look that date up in my calendar. The first time I went out with Vicki and she made it clear she wanted sex. I hadn’t put my cock in any girl yet back then.
Everything seemed so clear in high school. War was bad. Sex was good. I was going to become a great photographer. Ronda and Chris and I would be together forever.
Now everything seemed so muddy. Yes, war was bad, but those guys I knew who were Marines in the embassy or at the DAO in Saigon—they weren’t bad guys, any more than Tony had been. Even those who enlisted and volunteered to go to war. They weren’t bad guys. I ached thinking about the two Marines who were killed at the DAO just when we were waiting to board our plane. That attack pinned us down for another day until a helicopter lifted us out.
The career army guy who was the Defense Attaché in Saigon—he wasn’t a bad guy. He came up with the idea of the support affidavit and devoted himself to getting vulnerable people out of Vietnam—including Xian. He wasn’t a bad guy.
I’d known some really great people who were ambassadors and embassy personnel, and even the ones, like Robert, who believed in carrying a gun, weren’t bad guys. They genuinely wanted to negotiate and maintain peace.
It was all part of my muddy vision. Something to be said in my photographs that would contribute to making war obsolete. Something that was way beyond creating sexy glamour portraits of naked women. Or maybe that included making sexy glamour portraits of naked women—but went beyond that in some way.
It ate at me. Why couldn’t I pull this vision into focus and take a picture of it?
Jane came in on Thursday, after they’d been in town two weeks, to talk to me about what I wanted to see in this new vision of mine. And to have sex. She was getting as many injections as she could. I hoped I was planting enough sperm in her to achieve the objective. But we also compared notes and discussed camera techniques, and I convinced her to pose for me.
“You’re going for something extremely dark here,” she said as she helped me pull a black backdrop and set the lights.
“I have a picture of you all in white,” I said, petting her bottom. I’d managed to get her naked before we started setting the scene.
“Do you want me sullen?”
“Not really, but I’m not going to force a smile on you. I have some new filters I’d like to try. High contrast and some with a motion blur around a radius. What I want is to be focused on your face and blurred everywhere else. I’m using 400 ASA film and I’m pushing it to 1600. It will be kind of grainy, but that’s okay for this. It might not be the picture I ultimately want, but I think it’s on the way.”
“Are you only shooting on the box camera?”
“Yes. That’s what I got the filter for and there’s no sense doing a test roll on the Hasselblad when the picture I want is on this. Besides, pushing the processing on this is better with less agitation.” I moved to Jane and kissed her, fondling her thoroughly. “Now, I want you to stretch up. Reach. We’ll try one with you looking up and another with you focused on me.”
“Get naked,” she laughed.
“Hmm?”
“If you want me to focus on you, get naked.”
“I… Yeah. I will when we get the shots.”
I took ten 4x5 frames and got them straight to the darkroom—with Jane.
I think I bought up all the roses in the flower shop. And enough other flowers that the florist asked me if there was a funeral or a wedding she didn’t know about.
“It’s my family anniversary,” I said. “We’re nine years old today. I haven’t been very collected lately. I keep getting distracted and my mind wanders. I don’t dare let the family miss our anniversary.”
“Well, unless it was yesterday, you seem to be well equipped,” she laughed.
“What day is today?” I shouted, ready to panic.
“It’s Friday June twentieth.”
“That’s right, then. I’m okay. I need to take these flowers home and present them to my family.”
“Do you have a large family?”
“Yes. I guess so. Four wives and two daughters. And you know what? One of my wives is pregnant. I’m going to be a father again. Could I get some more… um… Baby’s Breath to put in this? That would be appropriate, wouldn’t it?”
“If you have four wives, you might consider lilies for your funeral,” she chuckled. “Here you go. Have fun.”
She helped me load all the flowers in the VW and I carefully drove home. When I took the first batch of flowers up to the apartment, I was surprised to find flowers already there. Not as many as I was bringing, but a lot of flowers. By the time I got the third batch up to the apartment, I wasn’t sure where to put them. I decided to try the bedroom.
There were four beautiful flowers on the bed. My wives. All naked and waiting for me.
“We need to pick the girls up at four, but that gives us four hours to celebrate our anniversary before they get home,” Patricia said. I set the flowers down on the dresser after pushing a few things aside. Then my wives were all over me, getting me out of my clothes.
“I think we hit all the florists in town,” Ronda laughed. “People are going to start calling today the Attic Allure Family Holiday.”
“I think it is wonderful that our whole family has a single day that we can celebrate being together,” Xian said. “Anna explained the whole history and I’m so happy to be a part of it.”
“A growing part,” Anna said, putting a hand on Xian’s tummy. We figured the most she could be was seven weeks, but we’d been taking turns holding her in the morning when she ran to the bathroom to throw up.
“My lovely wives. Oh, my beautiful, incredible wives. No man deserves the love I have in this room. I wish I was a better husband for each of you,” I said. I just wanted to hold them. It was still more than I could bear to think I could have lost them.
“As Reverend Mother Superior says, ‘Love is the only thing everyone truly deserves.’ Don’t you have that one written down?” Patricia asked.
“I must have missed it,” I said. “I’m glad you were listening. I just know that I love you each and all. I would have nothing without you. I would be nothing.”
“Let’s see about making something, then,” Ronda said. “Like making love. I love each of you. Nate, I love you. Patricia, I love you. Anna, I love you. Xian, I love you. You are my husband and wives, and I will hold and cherish you until the day I die.”
There were a lot of other declarations, but we didn’t just stand around giving them. We tumbled into the big bed and punctuated our declarations of love with kisses, strokes, and loving. We barely made it to the day care center by four o’clock to pick up Toni and Alex. We all went and proceeded to parade our family up Erie Street and across Ontario. Then we all headed for the local pub where we had a huge family dinner celebration and all danced to the local group that played. When I looked at my family… when I held my daughters and wives… I felt whole for the first time in a long time.
Kat and Julie arrived on Sunday. They’d driven up from Camp Otterbein.
“There’s a district camp this week and they are overstaffed with volunteers. How could two girls with nothing to do occupy their time?” Kat asked when she’d hugged me.
“I’m glad that visiting your brother ranks right above ‘doing nothing.’ I’m just glad to see you. I want to introduce you to someone,” I said.
“That could be why we came driving all the way up here,” Julie whispered.
“Xian, this is my sister Kat and her girlfriend Julie,” I said. “Kat and Julie, my wife, Xian.”
“Wow! You are just as beautiful as Mom said,” Kat breathed. “Do you model?”
“Um… Hi. It’s nice to meet you. Sometimes Nate has me in front of the camera, I guess,” Xian said.
“I’ll bet,” Julie said. “All Nate’s wives have modeled for Kat. Well, except you, so far. I hope you’ll pose for her. She really needs a more exotic model than all us blonde Scandinavians.”
“Oh. I… If it’s okay. I guess so,” Xian said.
Well, that was settled. The next item on the agenda was Sunday night dinner and TV. Kat was pleased that we remembered to put in Cocoa Puffs for her Sunday dinner. Most of us had ice cream, but Toni was experimenting with Xian’s sweet rice. It was a pretty simple dish that the cooks at the embassy would make on weekends for treats. It was just rice with butter and sugar and a little half and half. We’d all tried it and liked it, but preferred to stick with our own Sunday night meals.
After Swiss Family Robinson on TV, I danced with Alex and then Toni, getting them down for the night. It was so wonderful to hear them each whisper, “Love you, Daddy.”
“Are you okay, Nate?” Kat asked when I came out of the girls’ bedroom.
“Hmm? Yeah. Why?”
“I am not used to seeing my brother with tears in his eyes,” she said.
I quickly wiped my eyes and snorted a little laugh.
“They seem to leak a lot lately,” I said. “I think I’ve gotten even more sentimental than Dad.”
“With your gray hair you look almost as old as Dad,” she responded. “Was it really bad?”
“It? I suppose you mean Vietnam? It was nothing compared to what was going on two or three years ago. I mean, I wasn’t on a battlefront. But it was tense. As the days went on, the gunshots and explosions kept getting nearer and nearer. I was worried about Ronda and where the family was. And then I took responsibility for Xian and we moved over to the DAO to be evacuated. The plane we were going to board was hit on the runway while taxiing to the terminal about three a.m. Two Marines were killed on the access road. We had to just cower in the shadows until the helicopters started coming in about three in the afternoon. Then it was all running and trying to pack as many people onto the helicopters as we could. We lost our luggage because we needed to protect the passport camera and bindery. I just wanted to sleep, but I was afraid if I closed my eyes, I’d never open them again.”
“Nate,” Kat whispered.
“What?”
“Come back. Come back, big brother. It’s past and we need you.”
“Yeah. Uh… Sorry. When I get to thinking about it, it’s a little overwhelming. I mean, people face worse every day, you know? I don’t know why I should get so torn up over it.”
“Maybe because you came out of it with a Vietnamese wife, gray hair, and hands that wouldn’t work.”
“Oh, the hands are almost back to normal. I wear these braces to force me to rest my wrists, and I don’t squeeze much. I’ll go see Dr. May later in the summer and have him check them out again. Should be fine,” I said. “I never look in the mirror, so I don’t really feel like I’m gray. And how could I ever complain about my Vietnamese wife? She’s so sweet.”
“She is. I’m glad you brought her home. Just so you know, brother, you can talk to me anytime you want. I even have access to this new telephone gadget, you know? Dial my number and we can magically talk to each other.”
“I don’t know why it takes me so long to make a phone call. I was really frustrated in Vietnam and on the ship and in Muscat because we couldn’t make calls as easily as I wanted to,” I said. “Sometimes I think Mom and Dad have the ideal life. They have a place out in the country and just work around the camp. All summer they have people coming to visit and they have their work. But when it comes down to it, at night they cuddle up with each other and that’s all there is in the world.”
“It’s not as idyllic as all that,” Kat responded. “The summer work load is intense and exhausting. The winter is isolated. The difference between being assigned to the camp and being assigned to a church is that they don’t have friends. When we moved to Tenbrook, Mom and Dad made friends. Dad hung out with Henry long after he stopped working at the gas station. And got to be good friends with Jim Kowalski. Mom and Dad played cards with the Evanses and the Mays a couple of times a month. The Lutheran ministers and Catholic priest were people Mom saw regularly. The women in the church had weekly meetings. And in Sage, it was the same way. The people in the church were their community. They made friends. They don’t have a community at Camp Otterbein.”
“I didn’t realize things were hard on them. It seemed so perfect,” I sighed.
“Oh, they like it. Dad loves having the kids around all summer, but…” She broke off and it seemed she was just going to stop there.
“But what?” I asked.
“You know, little things,” she said. “Like Dad seeing an obituary for a minister and saying he’d like to be buried in Tenbrook when his time comes.”
“He’s not sick again, is he?”
“I don’t think so. I also don’t think he’d tell any of us if he was.”
“Has Uncle Nate been out to visit recently?” I asked.
“Not this summer. When did you last see him?”
“Short visit over Christmas. I think I need to make a trip back pretty soon.”
“Nate, we all miss each other when we’re gone. I admit I’m not getting back from Minneapolis as often as I thought I would. Certainly not for regular long weekends. Julie and I have to split vacation time so we see both families. Your new wife was the reason we took this week here instead of in Des Moines, where Julie’s parents moved to be near the grandchildren. They’ve dismissed the possibility that Julie or Brian will give them grandkids any time in the foreseeable future.”
“What’s Brian doing?”
“Went to college in Florida. The only comment he made was that it was Spring Break every weekend. Said he wasn’t coming to live in the cold North again.”
“Well, that kind of cuts the ties, doesn’t it?” I said.
Kat started giggling.
“Not really,” she said. “Vanessa went with him. Patricia might want to visit her sister-in-law in Florida sometime.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
It was nice to have my sister and Julie visiting. Xian discovered posing for my sister was not unlike posing for me. And since Kat was two months younger than Xian, they struck up a friendship that was unlike Kat’s friendships with any of my other wives.
And I took a new batch of photos of Julie.
“Should I be jealous?” Julie asked me when I started getting her posed in the studio.
“Of what?” I asked.
“Our wives being together so much this week,” Julie said. “Yeah, I know Kat’s not my wife, but that’s how I think of her. You know the Hannitys have even accepted that we’re a couple. We sleep in the same bed. Rachel was still in the house until May, but she’s moved in with her boyfriend. They’re both working at the Moppets Theatre.”
“None of that is about being jealous,” I said. I pulled Julie’s blouse down off her shoulders and below her boobs. I ran my hand over them.
“Yeah. It’s pretty stupid, isn’t it? Here I am hoping my lover’s brother will fully molest me, while complaining that his wife is having a nice time with my lover.”
“Let’s move to a profile,” I said, repositioning her.
There was something about that pose that I really liked, but it had to do with the shape, not the subject. I started moving things around and clearing the stage area. I pulled the black backdrop down and all the way out so she could stand on it, then cut all the lights in the studio except the one spotlight I had trained on her straight from the side. I started moving her around, just looking at the light on her body. It was close. I finished undressing Julie and she simply moved as I touched her.
I had to set up a second light to get what I wanted. I used one of my minis to light her from the left with the stronger light from the right. Then I put a high contrast filter on the Linhof and slid in the long exposure lower speed black and white film sheets I’d recently gotten from Dave.
“Yes,” I whispered. “This line is so perfect. I can only see the highlight across this cheek. The indent here.” I stroked Julie’s perfect skin and moved back to the camera as she stood, trembling.
“I want the light on only the underside of your breast and across your abdomen. Yes, turn slightly. It might look all lit up from your angle of vision, but from the camera, I can’t see your little pussy.” I petted her moist center and she whimpered. I moved back to the camera.
“Oh, my God!” Kat said as she came into the dark studio. Julie jumped, but I got the picture I wanted. “Don’t move! Nate, hold her in that position while I get my sketchpad ready. Julie, you’re magnificent! Just stay there and let Nate keep you in that position.”
Well, I had one hand cupping her boob and one cupping her butt. I didn’t think Julie actually wanted to leave this position. Kat had a piece of charcoal or graphite and was just completely covering her page. Then she waved me away from Julie and I stepped back so she could use an eraser and remove graphite from the page. It didn’t take long. This was a minimalist pose. When we finished, we both reached Julie and hugged her naked body between us.
“That may have been a breakthrough for me. Thank you, Julie.”
“That was amazing! You were just alive with a sliver of light,” Kat said. “I can’t wait to see the photos.”
“I think… I’m a little… um…”
“You’re a little beautiful and Nate got you turned on. Do you think you’re ready for that?”
“No. Not really. It was so tempting.”
“Good. When it’s time, it will be easy,” Kat said.
“What will be easy?” I asked.
“Making love with you to make our baby. We’re still not ready. Another year of college, you know,” Kat said. “But my wife and I are going to want to raise a family. I wouldn’t have anyone father a child on my girl but you.”
“Let’s make sure we think that through,” I said.
“Well, you’ve got proven sperm and Alex is going to be as super smart as her sister. Don’t worry, brother. You have time to get used to the idea. We aren’t in a hurry.”
Kat took Julie to their room without bothering to dress her.
A couple of weeks after Julie and Kat returned to their kitchen jobs at Camp Otterbein, we all went back to Tenbrook for a week. The rooms at the hotel were just too small for all of us to be in one. We ended up renting three.
Of course, Alex and Toni were often at their grandparents’ homes. Jim and El Kowalski accepted Alex as much as their own grandchild as my folks accepted Toni. It was good to see them all. And on Tuesday the fifteenth of July, we celebrated Toni’s seventh birthday. One of the things we’d have to do on our way back to Stratford was stop by Antioch and get Toni registered in second grade. Even with her unusual schooling the past year, we had no doubts about her readiness to enter the next grade in school. If anything, school might not be ready for her. We’d start Alex in nursery school as well.
The other thing we needed to do in Tenbrook was check in with Dr. May. Mostly, it was Xian and I who needed a checkup. He talked to each of us, but Ronda, Xian, and I went into the exam room together.
“Well, my newest daughter-in-law, how are you feeling?” he asked Xian.
“I’m not throwing up so much anymore. Is that okay?”
“Yes. If anything, it’s a pretty sure sign you are pregnant. Morning sickness is most prevalent during the first trimester, while your body is adjusting to the idea of supporting another life.” He held the stethoscope to Xian’s abdomen. “Yes. What was a tentative diagnosis before, I can safely say is definite. You are close to three months along.”
Xian gripped my hand on one side and Ronda’s on the other side as we leaned in to kiss her on the cheeks.
“Now, there are a few things to watch,” he continued. “I have a dietary plan for you. I don’t want you to starve, but for a girl as small as you, I don’t want to see a fifty-pound weight gain. Patricia’s baby was over ten pounds. Nate was the father. I don’t want to see you trying to deliver a ten-pound baby. I’m going to estimate your due date as January fifteenth. That means that as soon as you all get settled for the winter in Antioch, you need to see an obstetrician and make sure you are planning for the next member of the family to show up. That goes for all of you.”
Three kids and four wives. It was going to be an interesting winter.
I called ahead to the rental office to confirm that our home in Antioch would be ready by September. The agent said the current tenants intended to move out at the end of July, so if there was any work to be done on the house, we would have plenty of time before September.
That was a little scary. On the way home, we decided to drive by the house. It didn’t look to be in too bad condition, but the grass needed mowing. I thought I might have to touch up the trim paint on the house and hoped I didn’t need to paint the whole thing.
We got Toni and Alex enrolled at the school without any difficulty and received a ‘Welcome back,’ from the principal. He was a little reluctant to believe that Toni was pretty fluent in Arabic and was steadily learning both French and Vietnamese. I was thinking I needed to take Toni to visit Aunt Addi for a week. I’d have to see how that went.
Dr. May had relieved me of my wrist braces on our visit, but wanted me to build up strength gradually and not to immediately overwork my hands. It was good to feel my strength returning slowly, but I didn’t want to think about the repetitive movements of painting the house. Ronda drove from Antioch as far as Detroit and Anna took it from there. I sat in the back, first with the kids, and then between Xian and Patricia. Both women cuddled up under my arms and went to sleep with their foreheads almost touching.
The trip gave me a lot of time to think. It seemed that was abundant lately. I hadn’t had many clients come into the studio in Stratford this summer. Of course, we hadn’t gone out with any of the casts, so even those who knew us hadn’t had contact with us. That meant we pretty much had no income over the summer. We’d be fine for a while. For the past two years we’d had a housing allowance that paid our expenses in London and in Muscat. Ronda and I had hefty salaries that would put the family in the upper middle class, and Anna had managed our finances in such a way as to put aside a sizable nest egg.
But winter was coming. Yes, it was only July, but I needed to think about actually making my business pay or getting a job. I could go back to the State Department, but I really didn’t want to. I wanted a job that would let me come home each night to see my babies and love my wives. Was that too much to ask?
I thought I was going to need to come back to Chicago in August once or twice just to get things set up for my business. I wondered if I could still rent the studio above Camera Warehouse. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to do the same type of intimate posing of clients I used to do.
Yes, I’d done it with Julie and with Jane. But as I thought about them, I’d been far more focused on the art than on the models. That was a marked change from my previous methods. Why would I want to feel up a bunch of anonymous models in the studio, when I had four wonderful wives at home who gave me all the attention I could possibly want?
Regardless, I needed to get focused.
Two letters at the apartment in Stratford set the course of what would happen next. The first was from Mr. Martin.
Nate,
There are a lot of questions regarding the final days in Vietnam. People involved are being interviewed and asked to document their experience. This is expected to only take a day or two of your time, for which you will be paid. I’d like to set up a time for you to go to Washington to participate in this historical review. Can we set something up during August?
Yours,
Don Martin
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Passport Services
Go through the process of reliving it again. Maybe that was what it was all about. The more times I told the story, the less horrifying it would be. The fewer tears I would shed in reliving it.
I’d give him a call on Monday and set up a time for the interview.
The other letter was one I wished I’d had before I made the trip back to Illinois this past week. It was from Professor Hyatt, my former adviser at Columbia.
Nate,
I hope all is well with you and your time at the State Department has been profitable. We miss you here at Columbia College Chicago, and that prompts me to write.
I’ve been told that we have an expansion slot on the faculty opening this fall for an instructor in portrait photography. I personally think you’d be ideal for the job. It’s a part time instructor position, so perhaps you could fit it in with your State Department work.
Please consider this, and if you think you’d be interested, draw up a resume and portfolio of portraits to send to me. I’ll sponsor your application.
Best always,
Ralph Hyatt
Even a part time position at the college would help to defray expenses as I worked on rebuilding Attic Allure.
“We did it!” Jane said when she joined me on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t only meet on Sunday afternoons, but that was a convenient time since the rest of our families went to the ranch. “We’ve been in Stratford for six weeks. My last period was two weeks before we got here. I’m sure I’m pregnant.”
“That’s wonderful, my lady,” I said, pulling her to me for a kiss. It was long and delicious.
“Maybe we should slip upstairs and just make sure we’ve planted enough seeds,” I whispered.
“My thoughts exactly,” she said.
Before long, we were in the guest room naked and I went about worshiping Jane’s body in ways I knew she liked. Before terribly long, I’d filled her with another village waiting to be born.
“I’m guessing your next child will be due mid-March,” she said. “I hope you can be with us at Plympford for the birth.”
“I hope so, too,” I chuckled. “But my next child is due mid-January.”
“What?”
“We haven’t told anyone yet, but the doctor has confirmed Xian is pregnant. I’m guessing she may have taken the first time we made love out in the middle of the South China Sea.”
“She’s so young!”
“Yes. I guess that’s kind of relative to the environment you live in. For you, there was no consideration of pregnancy before you were twenty-three. Then there was a bit of a rush. For Patricia, she was pregnant before her eighteenth birthday. For Xian, it was pretty common to see pregnant Vietnamese women who were fifteen or sixteen years old. She’s twenty.”
“That does put it in perspective, doesn’t it? But it makes no difference. Our next will be due in March. We can also celebrate any others who will be born. I’ll only have two at home. You’ll have three. I think this gray hair has just begun,” she laughed, stroking my head.
I set about proving I was still young and virile.
Monday morning, I had to start getting my life in order, and that meant making the dreaded phone calls. Not that any of the calls were a problem in itself, it was just the whole idea of sitting down with the phone and making the calls.
I started with Mr. Martin, knowing the best time to reach him was always first thing on Monday morning.
“Thank you for calling in, Nate,” he said. “Can I count on you for the interview in August?”
“I don’t see a problem with it, sir. Do I need to call someone else for the schedule?” I asked.
“I can take care of that right now. They’ve given me some dates. How about August 11-13. We can kill two birds with one stone.”
“Two, sir?”
“Yes. If you can bring Ronda with you, we’ll do a full debrief on Operation PassID. We’ll meet in Washington and get full pay for a week, even though I don’t think it will take more than three days.”
“Let me check with Ronda,” I said.
She was beside me in an instant and I explained what was desired. She agreed.
My next call was to Professor Hyatt. I had no idea if he’d be in, but I was lucky. He was just as enthused to hear from me.
“I was thinking I would try to revive my Attic Allure business,” I said. “I’ll call over to Levi and see what it will cost to rent the studio again. My patrons always took care of it when I was in school.”
“That’s a great idea, Nate. You know we have conducted a few classes there over the past two years. It’s possible that the basic rent might be factored in as a college expense. Of course, you could always contact those patrons about supporting a whole new generation of photographers. This time they could actually take a tax deduction for it.”
“That’s an interesting idea, Professor. I’ll run it by Levi and see what he says.”
“Nate, there is a possible issue that could come up.”
“What is that, Professor?”
“Your Attic Allure style has always had a reputation of being quite seductive and intimate. Frankly, some of your models bragged about how they were treated in the studio. That was all fine while you were a student. As a faculty member, you would need to be very careful not to let any inappropriate relationships develop with students.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that anymore,” I said. “I have four wives and two children with another on the way. I have no desire to seduce any models.”
“I’m not sure that will be a necessary stance for your business, but when dealing with students, it’s a matter of liability of the school. When you are dealing with non-student models, whatever your method of operating is would be your business.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll send you my current resume and portfolio. I have a pretty good selection of standard portraits now, in addition to my glamour style.”
“Good to hear, Nate. Good to hear. Why don’t I set up an interview with you on Tuesday, August fifth?”
“That works. Thanks.”
“Your service with the State Department is through? Of course we’d like to have you back in the studio here!” Levi said when I called him next. “I’ve rented it out to the college rather piecemeal. It will be good to have it in full-time operation again.”
“I’m not sure how quickly I can actually grow the business, but we’ve learned some valuable things up here at the studio in Canada. For example, we’ve got a good mutual relationship with the frame shop here. We provide matted or even matted and framed prints for clients,” I said.
“Good idea! I’ll check around to see who might be interested in a relationship like that. And here you have a gallery outlet, too, don’t forget.”
“Anna wouldn’t let me forget that. I’ve been printing orders for Zefford ever since we got back to town.”
“Now, about your patrons. I’ve no doubt they will be interested in some degree or another, but you should talk to Nate Mayer about contacting them, not me. And we’ll need to discuss your staffing needs. I still have Cassie working full time. Not sure if I’ll be able to spare her. Now that she’s pregnant, I might not even have her full time much longer.”
“Cassie’s pregnant? What happened?”
Well, that was a stupid question. It would be pretty obvious what happened. She’d fucked some dude and he’d gotten her pregnant. I wondered if I’d survive Hammer’s retribution.
“She and Loren decided it was a match. Got married in October last year. I was a pretty proud papa walking her down the aisle.”
“That’s great! I’m so glad to hear she’s happy.”
“Yep. Well, maybe we’ll need to hire your Anna on in her place.”
“I’m sure she’d be interested.”
“Uncle Nate, how are you doing?” I asked. This was one of the harder calls I needed to make, but I was on a roll and determined to call everyone I needed to.
“Well, my long-lost nephew. I wondered if I’d ever hear from you again. You know me, I’m still too ornery to die, so I keep working.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I had a pretty hairy time of it the past few months. Probably better for us to talk about that face-to-face.”
“The whole Vietnam thing? Yeah. We need to have a couple of beers or a whole bottle of scotch before we launch into that. Rich told me you brought back a new bride.”
“Yes. Her name’s Xian and we’re expecting a child in January.”
Nate chuckled a little. “War bride. You know I did the same thing. Brought Grace back from Belgium.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“By the time you came along, that was old news,” he said. “So, are you moving back here to Chicago?”
“Yes. We plan to start fixing up the place in Antioch in August and moving back in September. I’m applying for a part time position at Columbia College Chicago. That would allow me to resume my Attic Allure business. I’ve talked to Levi about reopening the studio.”
“You need backing,” he said flatly.
“Well, both Levi and Professor Hyatt suggested there might be opportunities. For example, this time the patron could make a legitimate donation to the college designating what it was to be used for, and then he’d get a full tax write-off. That’s a lot better than making up reasons to invest in Levi’s business.”
“That has some appeal. Get things rolling with the college and I’ll run the idea by some interested people.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Uh… Have you talked to Dad regularly? Kat’s afraid he might be sick again.”
“Kat’s a perceptive girl,” he said. “Yeah. He’s been undergoing treatment up here for some new signs that the cancer might have returned. That quack down in Sage even admitted there was still a spot on his liver. He said it would never amount to anything. Well, I got him up here over a year ago and got him checked out by a specialist who knows what he’s doing. I know this sounds like voodoo, but the doctor has planted radioactive isotopes directly in the cancer in an attempt to shrink it. It seems to be working.”
“Thank you for taking care of him, Uncle Nate. If I can contribute to the cost, please let me.”
“I will. The greatest contribution will be to continually remind him that he’s got two grandchildren—a third on the way, who will want him to tell them tales of their father years from now.”
“I’ll make sure he knows that on a regular basis.”
There was one more call I needed to make. It was one of the hardest. I hadn’t talked to Jordan since Christmas. He’d nearly attacked the State Department office after our original hijacking a couple of years ago. I hadn’t told him about the kidnapping in January or my stint in Vietnam. I thought maybe I needed to go visit him.
I called. He already knew about both events and wondered when I was going to call him. Apparently, he had a contact that had kept him informed. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that it was Adrienne. I smiled that my mistress would pick up a loose end that I’d let slide.
Now that I knew, of course, I’d have to punish her.
We did decide to have lunch together at the club the week I was back in town for my interview and house repair.
The interviews in Washington went okay. Apparently, a bunch of people were being interviewed, mostly at the same time, by some really experienced people who wanted to get right into the guts of what happened. They had been well-briefed on the official record and were almost more like investigators than interviewers.
When I got a break from the interview, I joined Ronda and we continued our debrief of Operation PassID. I gave my opinion that there were definite positives in places where there was a crisis and no time to waste turning around a passport or visa, but that most consulates really didn’t need that kind of turnaround. Having the application process and the manufacturing and validating process in different locations made sense in terms of security.
By the end of the third day, I was pretty well shot and ready to go home. We were told I had one more appointment on Thursday morning. I didn’t know what it was about because I thought the interview had been pretty thorough.
I was stunned when I was led into the Secretary of State’s office and Mr. Kissinger faced me across his desk.
“Mr. Secretary,” said the officious guy who brought me into the office, “we have discovered through our interview process that Mr. Hart circumvented Department protocols, legislative directives, and even the authority of the ambassador during the final days of the Vietnam crisis. It is apparent that he not only manufactured passports and visas, but that he used a State Department seal to validate them. Possibly hundreds of them. He further participated in a process that got around the directives regarding family members accompanying citizens and visa holders. There are probably thousands of Vietnamese refugees already in this country who were not vetted by immigration and customs.”
“I see,” said the secretary as he shuffled through some papers on his desk. He looked up at me and winked. “Nate Hart, how many people do you think used passports, visas, or support affidavits that you validated during those last thirty days in Vietnam?”
I decided that I might as well go to jail for the truth as for a supposition. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my stomach, which was suddenly tied in a complete knot.
“Mr. Secretary, things were pretty chaotic during that time. The ambassador was pushed to the limit to get things coordinated. And then he got pneumonia. At that time, I started validating passports and visas that had been thoroughly vetted by consulate passport and visa agents. The gentleman’s estimate of hundreds is probably accurate. It was the only way to clear the backlog of completed documents. It also came to our attention that visa and passport holders could bring with them their immediate families if they promised to support them. In Vietnam, that includes spouse, children, in-laws, and even cousins. While a form could have simply been stamped by immigration upon arrival in the US, we determined that a form sealed by the State Department would be expedited more efficiently. So, I sealed the affidavits of support.”
“How many?”
“Roughly 100,000. Maybe 120,000. I am still recovering from the strain on my wrists and hands from operating the seal.”
“So, let’s say 101,000?”
“There were more, sir. I lost track of how many I validated once we were on the ship and disembarking in Manila. As a rough estimate, I validated a passport or visa every five minutes in Manila for nearly three days. Let’s say another 300. Each of those had a sheaf of already validated affidavits of support.”
“Over a hundred thousand souls that you helped escape from death, torture, retribution, and imprisonment. Nate, you did a very admirable thing. I am very proud of you.”
The guy who brought me into the office started to object and the secretary turned on him.
“If I get another memorandum chastising the only people who had the guts to do the right and honorable thing in saving the lives of thousands of people, it will be you who will be dismissed. Get out of my office.”
The officious guy backed out of the office, but the secretary motioned for me to stay seated.
“I wish that I could award you a medal or even publicly recognize what you’ve done, Nate,” he said. “Unfortunately, Washington is crawling with bureaucrats like that one. It will be better that we let this incident sink into obscurity. I was once a refugee from Germany. I know what it meant to get hope in coming to America. I know that the majority of those we… you rescued will also be positively contributing members of our society. I sent that seal to you after talking to Don Martin. I am glad you used it well and hope we will be able to work together again in the future.”
“Thank you, sir. It’s been a strenuous few days here. I’m ready to go back home.”
“Please take this with you. Mr. Martin asked that it be pulled together. If your wife has recalled things correctly, this is the name and address of the man she claims is her father. I won’t advise you as to what to do with this information. It could lead to a great deal of upset. Or to the revelation that he is not her father. Either way, it is a risk. Use the information wisely.”
That ended my interviews. Ronda and I left for the airport and flew back to Chicago. The family met us at the airport and we drove back to Stratford for the last two weeks of the summer. After Labor Day, a new life would begin for all of us.
The End
Is this really the end of Nate Hart’s story?
A person’s story only really ends when the sod grows over his grave. We know from what is written here that there are births and deaths, triumphs and defeats, love and hate, joy and sorrow, and many more adventures in his life.
But these are the adventures of maturity and establishment. “Photo Finish” has been a six-book series of growth and development. If another story appears in the life of Nate Hart and his family, it will not simply be a continuation of this one. It will stand on its own, no matter who writes it.
Until then…
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
