Full Frame
2
Hell and Angels
“Judy” by Arthur-studio10, ID197422235 licensed from Shutterstock.com
IT TOOK LONGER to get the bike put back together than it did to take it apart. Dad told me it would. I just knew he wanted to get in there and ‘help,’ but he had to go to work first thing in the morning. I was determined to get it all put together before he got home.
You see, I’m not really a mechanical genius. I could probably find the plug on the oil pan and change the oil in the car if I had to. I’d had to check the oil and the filter in the Falcon. But Dad was content to know I could change the oil and a tire. He’d gotten all the stuff that fathers do with their sons out of the way when Deborah was born. She could disassemble and reassemble a car. Literally.
I guess she was about sixteen or seventeen when he called home from work and said he had a new water pump for our car. I think it was a 1950 Studebaker Champion or something. He told Deborah to remove the old pump and he’d install the new one when he got home, so we could leave on vacation in the morning. Deborah laid out a big tarp in front of the car and started at the grill, disassembling everything until she got back to the water pump. When Dad got home, all the parts were laid out on the tarp in the order she took them off. He installed the water pump and Deborah put all the parts back on the car. She still did all her own maintenance on her car and I was pretty sure Cameron would get more experience as a mechanic than as a photographer. I don’t know. Maybe as her Uncle Nate, I’d give my little niece a camera for her tenth birthday.
I took after the more domestic arts, if you count photography as a domestic art. Anyway, I was determined to get the bike put back together before Dad got off work. And I managed it. Barely. I was still struggling with the chain because I failed to load it on the rear sprocket before I put the wheel back on the frame.
“Does it work?” Dad asked.
“I think so. The wheels turn. I was just going to test it out.”
“Let me adjust the seat for you. You’ve grown since your last bike. Longer legs than you used to have,” he said.
I agreed. I recognized the tone of voice. He really wanted to be a part of getting my bike ready. We set the post and he held the back of the bike between his legs and adjusted the seat as I stood on the pedals. I rode out to the street and back.
“I think an inch lower would be more comfortable,” I said. “Maybe I haven’t grown quite as much as you thought.”
He reset the seat and tightened the bolt holding it in place.
“Let me see if I can ride it,” he said. I handed the bike to him and he mounted, wobbling all over everyplace until he got to the end of the drive and then he dismounted and walked it back. “They lied,” he said.
“Who?”
“All the people who said you never forget how to ride a bicycle. I forgot!”
“How about all the people who say something is as easy as falling off a bicycle?” I asked.
“I think they had it right,” he laughed. He went into the house to get cleaned up. I picked up the tools and put them all away, folding up the corrugated cardboard I’d used as a work space. When I finished, only my bicycle and the car were left in the driveway.
No time like the present. I ran in the house to get my camera and stuck my head in Mom’s office.
“I’m going to test drive my bicycle,” I said. “Won’t be gone long.”
“Okay, dear. Don’t get lost.”
I wondered where there was a place I could get lost around here.
I took a spin around the town, just to get more familiar with the half dozen streets. I took a few pictures of the churches and the school and Main Street. Then I headed out of town on the highway. There was a good wide paved shoulder on the highway out of town, so it was a smooth ride. The freshly greased sprocket and chain worked okay. Maybe a new chain would be a good idea, but it worked fine for now.
I pumped hard to see how fast I could get it going. It wasn’t that fast. It had no extra gears to shift into and this old bike just had coaster brakes. The bike I’d looked at in the Sears catalog was a Spyder with a banana seat, raised handle bars, three-speed, and hand caliper brakes. Just as well. The more I thought about it, the more childish that bike seemed.
I was lost in my thoughts when I heard the roar of a motorcycle coming up on me. I coasted and made sure I was well off the road.
“Hey, kid!” the rider of the lead bike said. I saw there were two others with him. He throttled down to match my speed. It was no good trying to ignore him. “Nice new bike. Be a shame if it were to get all scratched up.”
The girl riding behind him giggled. She started to reach out to give me a shove and I had to think fast.
“It’s not new. It’s really an old bike. I just sanded it down and spray-painted it.”
The rider slapped his girlfriend’s hand down.
“No kidding? You did that paint job yourself?”
“Yeah. It was really in crappy condition. I’d rather not have to do it over.”
The motorcycles sped up and pulled off on the shoulder ahead of me. Crap! There was no sense in turning around and running. They could easily catch me. I was at least a mile out of town. The guy put his stand down and waited for me to come up behind them. He just raised his hand and I stopped. I’d had experiences with gangs in Calumet City at school. It was usually better to just let them have what they wanted. I didn’t have any money on me and hated the idea of losing my camera, but what could I do. As Dad would say, “Better your camera than your eyes.” The guy walked around my bike looking closely at it.
“This is some nice work. Could you do a paint job like this on a motorcycle?” he asked. His girlfriend was walking around me, too, and reached out to stroke the cross bar between my legs. I kind of stiffened.
“Smooth,” she said. She shook her head and her blonde hair flipped around her shoulders. I didn’t think she could really be that blonde.
“I guess anybody could do this. It just takes some sandpaper and paint. Motorcycle, though, should probably have automotive paint. This is just a can of Rust-Oleum. I’ve never worked with automotive paint.”
“Yeah. Paint’s paint. Come up here and take a look at my bike.” I kicked the stand down and walked up to his bike. The whole left side of it was scratched up. I whistled.
“What do you think? Could you sand and repaint this?” I started to answer and noticed his girlfriend turn my bike around and ride back toward town.
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry. She won’t hurt it. If she does, I’ll spank her ass. What about this?”
I examined the scratches closely.
“A couple of these are pretty deep,” I said. “I could probably sand them down close, but to do a good job, I’d need some filler. Then it’s just a case of tearing the bike down and sanding everything smooth and coating it with new paint.”
“Tearing it down?” he asked.
“Well, you see how the frame gets hidden by the tank here and by the engine back here? You wouldn’t want a new paint job to be everywhere except where these parts come together. I’d need to remove the parts, sand them, paint them, and then reassemble it all.”
“You could do all that without making a mess of the engine and tranny?”
“I could probably get my dad to help. He’s pretty handy with this stuff. Can I take a couple of pictures to show him what we’re up against?”
“Yeah, sure.” It looked like he just noticed my camera, but now that I had pictures of his motorcycle so I could do an estimate, he was less likely to just grab it and go. “Where do you live?”
“Back in Tenbrook. Um… I just moved into the Methodist parsonage.”
“No kidding? Well, I’ll swing in that way on Sunday afternoon. You can tell me what you think it’ll take. It will probably keep your bicycle looking nice a lot longer.”
I looked up and his girlfriend was standing on the pedals headed toward us as fast as I’d been going. She slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop.
“This old bike could be some serious fun!” she said. She jumped off and put the stand down.
Another motorcycle roared up behind us.
“Warren’s headed out this way,” the rider said.
“Damn pig,” the guy I’d been talking to swore. “Why can’t he just stay in his nice little office and play with his gun? Let’s ride!”
The girl mounted the motorcycle behind her boyfriend and he kicked it to life, followed by the other three bikes. They hadn’t seemed to be interested in me or my bike at all.
“See you Sunday afternoon, kid!” he said as they rode off. I didn’t even get his name.
I rode like hell getting back home. About half a mile toward town, I saw the village police car pulled off to the side of the road.
“Um… Dad? Could I talk to you for a few minutes? Out in the garage?” I said after dinner. He raised an eyebrow and followed me to the garage.
“Should I cut a switch?” he asked. That was only partly a joke. I’d been on the receiving end of a willow switch a few times.
“Um… I don’t think so. But I might have a problem. When I was out riding this afternoon, I got stopped by a motorcycle gang.”
“What? Damn it! Moving all the way out here was supposed to get us away from gangs and violence! I’ll call the village constable.”
“No, Dad. Wait. It was a little tense for a minute or two, but we reached a point of um… respect.”
Dad put a hand on my chin and turned my face left and right.
“You weren’t in a fight.”
“No, sir. They were admiring the bicycle. The guy… I guess he’s the leader of the pack… had some damage to the side of his motorcycle. He wanted to know if I could sand and repaint it. But I think the tank, engine, and transmission need to be removed from the frame in order to do a good job painting it. I’m not sure I can do that.”
“You want me to help you?”
“I don’t know if they’ll pay much. They offered to protect my bike from scratches.”
“That’s not enough. You’re talking about a week’s worth of work, son. I wish I could see it.”
“I took pictures. I figure I’ll have to set up my developing stuff in my closet tonight.”
“We need to find a better place for that. What about that room in the basement?” he asked.
“It was really damp down there. I don’t know that I could work there. It would take me days to clean out all the cobwebs and crap in there, too. For now, the closet will work. I’ll have to figure out something better later.”
“Okay. Set up your equipment. If it doesn’t look like it’s too bad, I’ll help with the engine, but you’ll have to do the disassembly yourself. Examine it carefully before you start. In the case of a motorcycle, it would be best to remove things in large chunks, not every wire and sparkplug individually.” He laughed at that and I understood he was referring to Deborah’s removal of the water pump. The story was well-known in our family.
“I think I should get the garage in better shape before I start a project like that, too,” I said. “I’ll work on that after I get the photos developed. Um… Thanks, Dad.”
“Just do a job that will make us proud, son. And, uh…, it would probably be best not to mention this to your mom. It would break her heart to think we moved clear out here and didn’t escape the gangs.”
I took all my clothes out of my closet and dumped them on my bed. I could probably still sleep there if I shoved them over to one side. Then I set about getting my equipment unpacked. I might be able to develop the negatives in the bathroom if I waited until late at night when everyone was in bed. Then I’d only need to worry about the prints in the closet. Once I got the chemicals mixed and the film in the tank, it wasn’t as sensitive to light. I just needed to keep swishing the handle back and forth.
I didn’t have a table for the enlarger, so I needed to set it up on the floor. Then there was the problem of having a red light. Oh, I had bulbs, but there was no light in the closet. I had to run a trouble light into the closet and then I could plug the enlarger into it as well.
Everyone was long in bed and asleep by the time I started processing the film.
Dad looked at the prints Saturday morning. He said he didn’t have to work because Henry hired high school boys for the weekends. He figured he’d get more hours when school resumed in the fall and felt Henry was giving him a break but didn’t really need him in the summer.
“Well, those look like some pretty deep scratches on the frame and tank. You need to drain the tank and clean it thoroughly. You don’t want any gas fumes when you’re raising sparks sanding,” he said.
“I’m gonna raise sparks?” I asked.
“With scratches as deep as these appear, you’ll need to sand with the disk sander, and strip as much of the paint off as you can, too. The 220-grit paper you used on your bike, followed by steel wool, was adequate for your purpose. But this kind of job will put you into genuine auto body work. You’ll need 1000-grit paper to get this smooth enough to paint. Then you’ll need to prime it all before you begin painting. I’ve got a spray gun in there somewhere. Don’t know where it got packed. You should practice spraying some kind of surface before you start on the bike. It takes a little experience before you learn how to control a nice smooth flow.”
“Will you help me with this, Dad?”
“I’ll show you how. You do the work. Now on the engine, I’ll clean it up and tune it. You reassemble everything. I don’t expect you to be an engine mechanic when you’re learning to be a body mechanic.”
“I didn’t really want to be a mechanic,” I sighed. “Guess it’s not a bad skill to have, though.”
I spent the rest of the day cleaning the garage and putting away as many of Dad’s tools as would fit on the shelves and bench. I found the sprayer. It had never been out of the box.
Dad… Well, he was an orphan. He knew his brothers and sisters, but his father didn’t consider them suitable to raise his last child. So, he put him in an orphanage. How miserable do your siblings need to be for your father to consider an orphanage a better choice to raise you than your brothers or sisters? My grandmother died when Dad was only three or four years old. My grandfather was gone when Dad was in his early teens.
Anyway, Dad never really owned anything but a few clothes and some old poetry books until he left the orphanage at seventeen. He was kind of obsessed about having stuff. Especially tools. There were a lot of times when he left the refinery on payday that he stopped at Sears to see what was new and great. I think Mom wanted to move clear out here partly for Dad’s sake—to get him away from easy access to tools for sale.
The first person I met who was in my class was Andy. He was handing out bulletins on Sunday morning as people came into the church. I’d been meeting a bunch of people who all were welcoming the new preacher and her family.
“Here,” Andy said, after we’d been introduced. He handed me half the stack of bulletins. “Cover the other door, would you? Usually, one of the older guys handles that side, but he’s not here this morning. Can you handle passing the offering plates? When the preacher says it’s time, you take the plate from the left aisle and I’ll take the right. We have to pass it across the aisle so we catch the people on the other side. Then we walk up to the front when the congregation sings the Doxology. I don’t know if this preacher will pray over the plates while we’re holding them or when she takes them and places them on the altar. Do you know?”
“Most of the places I’ve been take them to the altar, but Reverend Mother Superior might change things up. Best to stay loose and go with the flow,” I said, laughing. I took the bulletins. “Talk to you later.”
I knew about this stuff. You don’t have perfect attendance in Sunday School for sixteen years without learning some of it. I walked up the aisle to see if there were any people who came in on that side who hadn’t gotten a bulletin. They thanked me for handing them one. When the service started, I spotted where Andy was sitting and sat on the opposite end of the last row of pews. In the city, the back row was the first to fill. Apparently, the people here wanted to get a closer look at the new preacher.
The service went smoothly. I was happy Mom kept the sermon short, including her own preacher joke at the beginning.
“There was a new preacher assigned to a church out in the country to take over in the middle of winter. He fought through the snow to get to the church, only to find that just one person had showed up for the service. He apologized to the old farmer and said he guessed they’d just cancel the service.
“‘Preacher,’ the farmer drawled, ‘if I go out to feed the cattle and only one shows up, I still feed him.’
“The young preacher was so inspired, he began the service immediately with a hymn, a prayer, a scripture reading, the offering and Doxology, and a sermon that could have been preached on the Mount of Olives. He was inspired. They sang another hymn and the new preacher ran to the door to greet the old farmer on the way out.
“‘Preacher,’ said the old man, ‘if I go out to feed the cattle and only one shows up, I don’t give him the whole load.’”
Mom was really a pretty good speaker and loved presenting to the congregation. Oh. She took the offering plates and placed them on the altar before she did the blessing.
She was also a really good storyteller. Before she preached the sermon, she called all the children—there were only four in church that Sunday—up to sit with her on the steps to the chancel. She told them a cute story with a moral lesson and dismissed them back to their parents. I think the adults enjoyed her children’s story as much as the children did.
“Hey, man, thanks for covering as an usher,” Andy said when he caught up with me after service. “I’ll bet Allen retires from the duty and just leaves it to you and me. I get here on most Sundays. There aren’t many teens who bother in the summer, as you can see. We have a pretty good youth group in the fall, though.”
“Sounds fun,” I said, noncommittally.
“We might be the only guys. There are five girls who come most weeks, though, and it’s worth it just to be around them. Do you date yet?”
“Um… Haven’t really had an opportunity.”
“Well, it’s pretty choice in the group. Plus, we do a lot of joint activities with the Catholic Youth. Those kids are wild!”
“Now that sounds like fun!” I said with more enthusiasm.
“Some of us guys gather over at the school on Sunday afternoon if it isn’t too hot. We play a little basketball. Not much else happening in the summer unless you’ve got a car. You drive?”
“I’ve got my permit, but not a license.”
“Yeah, that sounds familiar. Anyway, come over this afternoon about three if you’d like to meet some others and play a little ball.”
“I might not be able to make it. We’re expecting… um… company this afternoon and I don’t know when they’ll show up. If I can make it, I’ll be there.”
“Cool.”
Well, that was easy. I couldn’t imagine walking into a new church in the city and getting invited anywhere. Or even beginning to make a new friend.
Before I headed across the street for lunch, I stopped to take some pictures in the sanctuary. I knew what the inside of a church looked like, but I was experimenting with different angles and focus settings to see what effects I could get. Shooting black and white film, I wasn’t going to get all the colors of the stained glass, but I could capture a pretty good pattern of different shades as the light through the window fell on the floor.
It was three o’clock when we heard the motorcycles on the street. One pulled into our driveway while the others kept going through town. Dad was in the garage with me and nodded for me to go take care of business. We’d talked about how hard the job would be and I tried to figure out how much film I should be able to buy for that kind of money. I’d typed up an estimate.
“Hey, kid,” the biker said as he and his girlfriend walked up the drive toward me.
“It’s Nate,” I said taking a deep breath to calm myself.
“Sure. Nate. I’m Tony. This is Patricia. Hey, is that Rich from Henry’s service station?” He waved. Dad smiled and returned the gesture. “You guys related?” he asked.
“My Dad,” I said.
“He treated us like customers when we stopped there Friday. So many of the jerks try to ignore us until we start pumping our own gas. Anyway, how soon can you get my bike done? I could leave it for you for a couple of days,” he said.
“In a couple of days, I could sand down the rough spots and spray it with Rust-Oleum. That what you want?”
“I thought you said auto body paint.”
“Doing a thorough job of refinishing the bike will take me a couple of weeks. It’s not like I can wave a magic wand over it and make it all new.”
“Two weeks? Shit!”
“Here’s the deal. Give me the bike for two weeks and I’ll pull it apart, clean it, and refinish it. I’ll have to drain and clean the tank before I can work on it with the sander. I’ll strip most of the finish from the frame and tank and fenders. Then I’ll sand it to a polish, prime coat it, and finish coat it. While I’ve got it down, Dad will tune the engine. Nothing fancy, just make sure everything is performing right. You pick it up in two weeks and pay me $25 for the paint job, $10 for the tune-up, and the cost of supplies, paint, and parts.”
“Whoa! That will be, like, fifty bucks! How about we just make sure your bike stays nice and clean and scratch-free?” he laughed. I went over to get my bike and rolled it over to him.
“Here. Scratch it up. Go crash it into a wall. Take it to the dump. I spent two days cleaning it up. It isn’t worth two weeks of labor on your bike.”
Patricia caught her breath. I stood and stared Tony in the eye.
“Uh… Yeah. Put it like that and fifty bucks sounds like a fair deal. You’re something else, Nate.”
“Moved here from Chicago. Guess I haven’t smoothed out my rough edges yet.”
“Hey, peace, Boss,” he said holding up two fingers. “Let me make some arrangements. If I get the bike here by next weekend, can you turn it in two?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Groovy. It’s nice to do business with you, Nate. And I wouldn’t worry about your bike. It’s safe.”
He and Patricia got on his bike. Just before she mounted, she looked at me and grabbed her crotch. She mouthed what I think was ‘cajones.’
I raised my camera and snapped a photo.
As soon as they left, I ran into the house before Dad could stop me. I barely made it to the bathroom in time to get my pants down and sit. My bladder and my bowels cut loose at the same time and I sat there panting. I’d stood up to a gang leader and made him accept my price.
Now that it was over, I was shaking like a leaf. I guess it was better than throwing up. I just wasn’t going to spend my life in a new town running away from gangs and toughs. I’d had to deal with gang members in the city and did pretty well with them. Mom and Dad didn’t know that. I knew that if you didn’t establish yourself right away, they’d just keep taking from you. I had no idea how to fight. I just wasn’t going to back down from him. Or anyone else.
My heart finally quit racing and I stepped into the shower to feel the hot water on my head. Eventually, I felt reasonable enough that I got out and went to my bedroom. I closed the door, and flopped on the bed naked, and went to sleep.
It was too late for me to get over to the school to shoot some hoops when I woke up. I’d have to pick up the game some other time. I decided to finish up the roll of film I’d started and get it processed. First, of course, there was dinner. Sunday night was the least formal dinner we ever had. If you could even call it a meal.
We were all allowed to eat whatever we wanted that was in the house on Sunday night—within reason. Fortunately, ice cream with chocolate syrup was within reason. Mom and Dad often had popcorn as we waited for Disney to come on the TV. Kat had recently gotten into Cocoa Puffs and milk for Sunday dinner. Mom indulged her.
And we ended up being pretty sensible about it. Since almost nothing was off limits, we tried a bunch of different things and we seldom overdid it. I think when I first heard we were moving, I might have eaten an entire half gallon of ice cream, but that wasn’t a usual thing. A bowl full of ice cream and enough Hershey syrup to make a chocolatey mess was usually adequate.
When Disney was over, Ed Sullivan came on. Then the TV went off. Mom and Dad had always been strict about how much TV we could watch. Two hours of family time on Sunday night. Not more than an hour on any other day. Since I turned fourteen, I’d been privileged to catch two of my favorite shows most of the time. Saturday afternoon, if nothing else was happening, I spent an hour watching American Bandstand, just so I could learn the dances. I loved the way those kids could dance and often wished I lived in Philadelphia. Of course, I often joined the family Saturday evening for Lawrence Welk. That improved my dancing, too.
I also got to watch Where the Action Is on Thursday and Saturday evenings. Pretty much the same with popular music, but less dancing. I liked music and I liked dancing. I had a transistor radio that was permanently tuned to 890AM, WLS in Chicago. The signal was just barely strong enough to reach us in Tenbrook at night.
I went to my room after our TV and ice cream binge. I grabbed my developer kit and retreated to the bathroom for half an hour, much to Kat’s displeasure. I managed to get the film rinsed and headed to my room to do some printing.
I had some good shots, not the least of which was the shot of Tony and Patricia on his motorcycle. I just caught them right as they looked up at me to wave goodbye. I had a wide open aperture and 1/500th shutter speed. What I got was a really sharp picture of the two of them on the motorcycle with everything behind them going soft to fully blurred. When I finally hung the last print to dry and went to bed, it was almost two in the morning. I just flopped on one side of my bed with all my clothes still lying on the other side.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed Monday morning and looked at the prints, I was really happy with what I saw. I needed to work some more on action shots—maybe with faster film.
I did some more work organizing the garage Monday and after lunch, decided to pedal around town and see if I could find some interesting pictures. Of course, I had to get some more pictures of Main Street. It was just too perfectly ‘small town Americana’ not to be photographed. It was so different than the city. The tallest building in town was Center Marketplace at four stories. It was a funny building, too. Well, not the building itself, but the sign on it said “Shoe Dept, Men’s Clothes, Meat Dept, Groceries—Fruits, Hardware, Notions.” What a combination! Of course, it didn’t have anywhere near all that stuff in the store anymore. It was pretty much like Kat had described with just a few shelves of miscellaneous stuff and then groceries.
There was an old train station that was getting to be pretty weathered and dirty. A couple of luggage carts and a bench sat on what had been the platform. The tracks didn’t look like they’d been used in a while. I took a couple of pictures and thought it would be cool to take a portrait of someone sitting there, waiting for a train that never came. That was because there was no passenger service here these days. Maybe there would be freight trains in the fall, though, when the grain elevators were full. There was a siding that went right through the elevator complex. I took some pictures of that, too.
I wasn’t really on a mission of any sort. I was just exploring and taking pictures of my new home town.
“Hey, Sailor. Nice wheels!” I heard from my right.
Two girls were sitting on the porch railing of a house I was going by. I guess railing isn’t the right word. It was a cool house, all made of stone. So, the front porch had stone pillars and they were sitting on a low stone wall with a cement cap on it. I squealed the brakes a little as I came to a stop.
The girls were a little overly made up with blue eye-shadow and pale pink lipstick. Their eyebrows were neatly painted on and looked flat. Both of them had hair cut in bangs and poofed up in the back. They held cigarettes in their fingers. Unlit.
“You just passing through?” one asked.
“New in town. Just out getting familiar and taking pictures of things that interest me.”
“Not much to get familiar with. See anything that interests you?”
I put the kickstand down and positioned myself so I could get a good look at them.
“Yeah. Do you mind if I take a couple of pictures of you?”
“Us?” They started giggling, totally disrupting their attempt at glamour and sophistication.
“Oh, sure. Like anyone wants a picture of us.”
“I think you look kind of cool sitting there on the porch. Ultra-sophisticated.”
“Yeah. We’re just trying on a look for school next fall. Not like they’d let us wear this to school. But it was in the magazine and fun putting together.”
So far, I had no way of really identifying which girl was which other than one was on my right and one on the left. I snapped a couple of pictures while they preened and posed.
“I’m Nate, by the way. Just moved into town, next to the Methodist Church.”
“I’m Judy and this is Janice. We’re Catholic.” Judy was on the left. She looked just a little taller and thinner than Janice. Both had black or really dark brown hair. They were wearing some kind of dress that didn’t have a skirt exactly, but shorts. I kind of wished I could see their legs. Pervert.
“Father Emory said there was a new preacher in town and to pray for his ministry,” Janice said. “You the PK?”
“Oh, that’s kind of an old school term. These days we prefer to go by TO.”
“I know PK is preacher’s kid. What’s TO?” Judy asked.
“Theological Offspring,” I laughed.
“Oh, geez. So, your dad’s the preacher?”
“No. My mom is.”
“No way. A woman preacher?” Janice said. “That’s got to be some kind of new record. Never heard of a woman preacher. Cool!”
“I guess it’s new for the Methodists. Mom’s the first one in this state,” I said. “Hey, could you both look over there toward the corner? Janice, how about raising your hand to point like there’s something really interesting over there.”
“Sure.” They perched on the wall and Judy turned almost all the way around to look the direction Janice was pointing. I loved the look of the cigarette in Janice’s hand.
“Um… Would you mind lighting the cigarettes?” I asked. “It kind of looks fake to have them unlit.”
“We’re not supposed to have them,” Judy said. “I kind of took them out of Mom’s purse. I could…”
“She’ll never miss them,” Janice supplied. “Get a lighter.” Judy slipped into the house to grab a lighter and Janice turned to me. “I’ve been dying to have a puff. Do you smoke?”
“No. Never got into it. It’s kind of hard to do anything bad when you’re the preacher’s kid.”
“TO,” she giggled. Judy came back with the lighter and resumed her perch.
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked Janice.
“Shut up and just give me the flame. You don’t need to light up if you don’t want to.” Judy held the lighter and Janice inhaled through the cigarette. And then started coughing. “Oh, geez! It’s a lot stronger this way than when you breathe it in from your mother’s smoke.”
“You okay?” I asked. Her eyes were watering a little and I could see her mascara beginning to dissolve.
“Yeah, fine. Just took me by surprise,” Janice said. Not to be outdone, Judy lit her cigarette, but she didn’t take a deep drag. She took it out of her mouth and looked at it. From where I was standing, I could see the pink lipstick on the filter.
“Now take that same pose, looking over at the corner,” I said. “That was really neat.”
This time the pose really came to life as smoke curled up from the lit cigarettes in front of the girls. After I’d taken a few pictures, they snubbed out their cigarettes and we just talked for a few minutes without the camera in front of my face. I found out I’d be in their class when school started.
“I’ll let you know when I get these developed,” I said. “Can I just stop by?”
“During the day,” Judy said. “Not at night when my parents are home.”
“And please don’t take those to Mr. Barkley at Center Marketplace to get them developed. He looks at all the photos when they come in and he’d tell our parents,” Janice said.
“I do my own developing,” I said. “I have a darkroom set up in my closet. Nobody will see them until I’ve shown you.”
“Cool,” Janice said. “Maybe you could show me your dark room sometime and we can see what develops.”
“Janice! You tramp!” Judy giggled. I kind of liked the idea. But I just got on my bike and rode back home. This would be some fun film to process and print.
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