Full Frame
34
Circles and Arrows and a Paragraph
“Avery” by sergios, ID72314341 licensed from Shutterstock.com
Bookshelf Backdrop by YUCALORA, ID1388485544 licensed from Shutterstock.com
I WAS GLAD I was warned the night before. I asked Mom if she knew about the Memorial Day parade and she said the ministers were supposed to gather at the cemetery in case anyone wanted to talk or pray. That was all she knew. We walked downtown and people were just silently gathering on the sidewalks. There was no band or announcement of the parade starting.
At about ten minutes till eleven, Billy limped around the corner at the head of the block where the highway joined Main Street. He was in his army uniform and carried a flag.
He just walked quietly down the street and as he passed them, people fell in behind him. His limp wasn’t exaggerated. He walked as straight as possible, just like he always did. When he got to the corner where I was taking pictures, he turned to the left and continued out River Road. About a block behind me, I saw flashing lights where the county sheriff had blocked traffic incoming from the southeast. Behind the parade, the village constable crept along with his lights flashing. Behind him was a string of traffic about half a mile long. I guess there really isn’t a holiday for truckers.
When the last of the people made the corner and the sheriff and constable converged to follow, I joined the group of probably 200 people headed out River Road to the cemetery. Everyone was walking quietly, and most were carrying flowers. As subtly as I could, I walked a little faster so I could be near the front when we got to the cemetery. I saw Mom walking with the other ministers. Dad and Kat were walking along as well.
Everyone turned into the cemetery and filtered out around the stones. Billy seemed to have a specific goal in mind, though, and I followed him. He stopped at a stone that had a bronze medallion attached to it. There was also a flag stand next to the stone. Billy planted his flag on the grave and knelt there.
I took pictures. Billy kneeling. The stone that declared, “Pvt. William Lamonte, May 1, 1925-January 18, 1945. His body lies in Margraten, Netherlands but his spirit watches over his home here in Tenbrook.” People were scattered throughout the cemetery, placing flowers on graves. Into the silence, a trumpeter from the high school band played Taps. Billy stood up and the woman I met at the Humane Society placed a flower on the private’s grave and took Billy’s arm to leave.
All around the cemetery, there were flowers left on the graves of veterans and war dead dating back to Indian conflicts in the mid-1800s. I joined Dad and Kat to walk back to town and Mom found her way to us by the time we reached the road.
By the time everyone made it back to town, the silence had broken and people were talking about mundane things. I noticed that there were several cars that had followed the parade to the cemetery and it looked like they were giving anyone who needed one a lift into town. There were a lot of old people out there.
When we got to town, I paused at the corner and looked up the street headed northwest. If they’d pulled out on time, the Mays would be to Dubuque by now. I whispered a little prayer for her safety and felt a hand slide into mine. I looked over and saw Christine.
“I whispered a prayer, too,” she said.
I hadn’t seen her in the crowd walking to the cemetery, but now that I did, I gave her a little kiss and squeezed her hand.
“Come by the studio tomorrow?” I asked. “I’ve got some pictures I’d like your opinion of.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you in the afternoon.”
I kissed her again and she continued across the street while I turned to head home.
“That was certainly one of the strangest parades I’ve ever seen,” Mom said.
Everyone was sitting in the kitchen and I was turning hamburgers in the frying pan for our Memorial Day ‘picnic.’ We were just eating at the kitchen table, but we had potato chips and Mom made deviled eggs the day before. Dad fixed up a pan of baked beans and Kat had baked a blueberry pie. I think she thought she’d get fresh blueberries, but had to make do with frozen.
“Did you get the story of it? Chris and Ronda didn’t really know it. I looked at the stone where Billy knelt and I’m guessing it was his father’s. Killed in World War II in January. Buried in the Netherlands, but memorialized here,” I said.
“Luke Reisner filled me in as we were standing by. There were a few people who came by to ask their minister to pray for them after the ceremony. What I gather is that Private Lamonte had joined up before he was twenty. He’d just gotten married and was deployed to Europe. His wife didn’t know yet that she was pregnant with Billy. Around two months after he joined reinforcements in Europe, he was killed in the Battle of the Bulge. You’ll have to look that up in the library. I only know about it because your uncle was stationed near there and was never quite the same after he came home.”
“I wondered where he’d been, but never thought to ask him,” I said.
“Don’t. Whenever anyone mentions it, he goes a little crazy. Not violent. He just shrinks inside himself and won’t let anyone near. It still haunts him. Anyway, Private Lamonte was the only soldier from here who was killed in Europe. Two others were killed in the Pacific. The town erected markers for all three a couple of years after the war. I guess the whole parade started when Mary Lamonte carried her toddler out to the cemetery on Memorial Day to visit his father’s memorial stone. She gave him a little flag to put on the grave. As he got older, he continued to carry a flag to the grave every Memorial Day. People soon started following the boy out to the cemetery and left flowers for their own war dead from over the years. When Billy got back from Vietnam and was injured, his mother encouraged him to continue his respects by carrying the flag to his father’s grave. Everyone waits for him to come through town and follows him for their little Memorial Day ceremony.”
“It must be tough on him,” I said. “I don’t know what all was injured when he was wounded, but I know he limped all the way out there.”
“Was he a hero?” Kat asked. I was sure she’d heard him referred to as the town hero.
“Everyone forced into a war is a hero, Kat,” Dad said. “That includes Billy, his father, and your uncle Nate.”
“Why didn’t you join the army, Papa?”
“Honey, that’s a long story. Suffice it to say that your Papa won’t carry a gun. I won’t allow one in my house. I’ve never allowed you or your brother or your older sisters to have toy guns. In a matter of conscience, every person has to make his own decision. That was mine.”
“I still think you’re a hero,” Kat said with finality. I had to nod my head.
In the morning, I worked on pulling prints of some of Pam’s photos that I thought were the best so I could show them to Chris Wednesday afternoon. I’d settled on the prints to pull for Sarah and got started on those, as well. I was printing everything full frame and decided I’d physically crop the images, so they wouldn’t all be the same size. Some would still be square, but some would be vertical and some horizontal. Since either way the maximum dimension was ten inches, we should have no problem fitting them in Sarah’s portfolio. There were a couple of images, though, that I really needed to enlarge more than I could if I was only printing full frame. I’d still print a ten-by-ten image but it wouldn’t include the whole frame. I had a good twenty-two images from our first modeling session.
Chris arrived just after I got back from lunch at one-thirty. Before we started looking at any of the pictures, we stopped to just kiss and reaffirm our love for each other at the door. I wished I could just find someplace and hold my girl in my arms and look into her eyes. Kiss her lips. I was really whipped.
“I’d spend all day just kissing you,” she sighed. “But you said you needed help on photos.”
“I love you,” I sighed. I took her hand and led her to the table. “Here’s what I’ve got. First is Pam’s limited portfolio. She wants me to send the six best shots of her to her new address in Urbana. I think she left yesterday before the parade. I didn’t see her there.”
“She lives just south of town, so probably avoided the congestion altogether,” Chris said. “Are you supposed to have six of her overall best or just of those you took this week?”
“I think of her overall best, but she already has copies of some of those. I don’t want to double up.”
“Do you have a copy of the full glamour shot instead of the one she put on display? You know.”
“The one with her nude? Yes, I have that. It was the first nude like that I’d shot where the model just took her clothes off and posed,” I laughed.
“Yeah. Unlike me who just let my costume slip so you could see everything.”
“That was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen,” I breathed. “I think I held my breath through the entire last roll of film.”
“It was so embarrassing! But now… I’d take my clothes off just so you can see me anytime.”
“If you do that now, we won’t get any photos reviewed.”
We kissed again, but kept it short so we could get back to looking at the photos. She agreed with most of my choices for Pam’s portfolio, but paused over the close-up portrait.
“I don’t know if I should send her that one,” I said. “It’s one of the best portraits of her, but it shows something I don’t think she’ll want to see.”
“I agree. But she needs to see it. I don’t know,” Chris said. “You have Avery coming in for some more photos this week, don’t you? Ask her what she thinks. I bet she’d know better than anyone.”
“That’s a good idea. I don’t need to send these out today. Avery will come tomorrow.”
“I bet she will,” Chris snickered.
We turned to the photos of Sarah Fox, the Chicago actress. Chris loved the photos I’d selected, but suggested a different crop for one of them. I’d been focused on trying to compose the entire photo since my meeting with Mr. Grossman, but Chris pointed out that didn’t mean I should sacrifice a better composition just to avoid cropping.
We spent the next hour organizing the photos in a presentation form. What photo would we want to see first and when would we want to get into the edgier photos? At what point should we reveal a nude and should all the photos after that be nude? We agreed that even among the nudes, there should be a mix of clothed photos.
As we worked, we made notes on what was still needed to fill out the portfolio. I said I would call Sarah and ask her to bring appropriate clothing. I wanted a different formal gown, a bikini shot as well as a one-piece swimsuit, and a business suit. I also wanted to know if she had any martial arts or action outfits. It would be cool if she rode horses or ice skated or was a gymnast. I suppose I couldn’t ask for everything just because she was rich.
“Gosh, I love working with you on this stuff,” I said. “You’ve got a good eye and can think about the whole project at once. I tend to get stalled on individual pictures and um…”
“Tits,” Chris sighed. “As soon as a model shows you hers, you tune out everything else.”
“Am I that bad?”
“It isn’t all bad. You have some really beautiful photos of tits. Including mine,” she laughed.
“I love those photos and I look at them almost every day.”
“You can look at the real thing right now,” she whispered.
I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. We ended up on the fainting couch with both of us topless and our chests pressed together while we kissed. My hands were inside her shorts, cupping her cheeks.
We restrained ourselves from going further. I didn’t want the studio to smell of sex and we’d agreed we weren’t going to do that here. We considered doing it upstairs, but it was dinner time and we both needed to go home.
Avery got to the studio at noon Thursday. We talked about Pam’s photo and she agreed that Pam needed to see it, but didn’t think it should be part of the photos I sent her for her presentation portfolio. I should just keep it separate enough that she could see it and put it away someplace.
“It’s like the Picture of Dorian Gray,” Avery said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A novel by Oscar Wilde. You won’t find it in school, though I believe Miss Ludwig has a copy in her reserve section. I’ve had to take a lot of correspondence courses in order to fill in what I was missing at Tenbrook so I could attend Berkeley. One course was an expanded English literature course.”
“What brings an old English novel to mind?”
“In the novel, Dorian is a beautiful man with whom an artist is enamored and paints a portrait. While sitting for the painting, Dorian listens to a friend expound on the joys and meaning of becoming a complete hedonist, but that beauty wanes and eventually one is unable to participate in those carnal pleasures. Dorian makes a deal to sell his soul to remain young and beautiful all his life. Instead, the portrait ages and shows the signs of every depravity Dorian engages in.”
“Wow.”
“You captured a portrait of Pam that shows the signs she keeps well-hidden from herself and the world.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t send it at all.”
“We could make an argument for that, but this might be the only way Pam ever sees what her lifestyle is leading her to,” Avery said. “Now what are you going to reveal about me in our photo session this afternoon?”
“I don’t think it will be anything as dramatic as that description. By the way, since I’m not likely to read the book any time soon, how does it end?”
“After many years of Dorian’s indulgence, he becomes so disgusted with his life as revealed in the portrait that he stabs the picture. When he is found, the servants are only able to identify the disgusting old man with a knife in his heart as Dorian by the rings on his fingers. The portrait is of the young and beautiful man he had been.”
“Well, shit.”
“Further psychological analysis of your photographs will be done at my usual fee after I’ve gotten my degrees,” she laughed.
“Okay. Well, let’s find out who the real Avery is. I’d like to start out with a new portrait. Let’s use the red background. You know the routine with the stool. Have a seat.”
We went to work and Avery was a pleasure to work with. And yes, she got naked, too. I think she was afraid I wouldn’t suggest it because eventually, she just started taking clothes off.
“Avery, can you brush out your hair?” I asked.
“Brush it out?”
“Yes, like no teasing or ratting. Just brushed out smooth.”
“I sit here with my breasts exposed and you’re interested in my hair? I guess since I’m going naked, my hair might as well be, too.”
She walked over to her bag and bent to get her brush. That was a view I’d file away in my mind for personal enjoyment, but I didn’t take a picture. She went into the dressing room and I ran upstairs to look for something I’d seen when the girls organized the props. When I came back down, I called to her.
“Do you have your hose with you? Those nice black ones you sometimes wear?” I asked.
“Yes. I thought we might want a sexy shot with them.”
“I do. But no garter belt. I don’t want anything interrupting the line from your legs to your waist.”
“You’re getting me intrigued,” she said.
I moved a large black cube to the red background and started fussing with the lights. I definitely wanted some backlight for this and a bright spot on the drop. When I turned around, Avery was standing beside me with just her hose on. She looked spectacularly yummy. I quickly grabbed a cleaning cloth and wiped down the cube.
“Have a seat,” I said. “Can I work on your hair a little?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Here, put these on.” I handed her a pair of black lace gloves.
I took the brush and parted her hair with a sweep over her left eyebrow and pulled back behind her right ear.
“You’ve got beautiful hair. I don’t know why girls do all that ratting and teasing and piling their hair up. Yours is just beautiful and silky when it’s brushed out.”
“Maybe when I get to California, I’ll let it grow out like a flower child.”
“It would be a good look for you. I think most of the pictures I’ve seen of them, though, are kind of flat chested. You sort of fail there.”
“The Twiggy look. Are you saying I’ve got big boobs?”
“I wasn’t going to put it in exactly those words, but they are pretty spectacular.”
“Hmm. I’ll have to analyze the meaning of that word in this context,” she laughed.
I stepped back from her and looked at the image. It was almost perfect.
“Glasses. You need a pair of glasses.”
“In my purse.”
I started to bring it to her and she waved me back.
“Just get them out. There’s nothing in there you can’t see. I’m sure you know what a tampon looks like.”
“Yes. And a condom,” I said.
I got out her glasses case and took out the black rimmed glasses. It would be an odd juxtaposition, but I was sure this would work. I placed them on her face and she just looked at me with a kind of quizzical smile on her face.
“That’s good. Just hold like that for a second.”
I quickly took the first picture, then changed the lights a little and took a meter reading. I touched her chin lightly and turned her head a bit.
“Where’s that little smile that thinks I might be crazy but you’ll play along for now?” I asked.
She forced back a giggle and found the right smile. We took several pictures. I had her sitting profile but turning toward me. She really looked adorable, but her hands weren’t behaving. She didn’t seem to know what to do with them. I went back to her and placed one hand on her leg and pulled the other up to her face.
“Turn toward me a little and put your finger to your lips as if shushing me,” I said.
Enlightenment hit her and she hit a combination of expression, puckered lips, and the finger raised that made her look like the sexiest librarian who ever walked the earth.
“That was great.”
“I finally figured out where you were going with it.”
“Too bad we aren’t taking the picture in the library.”
“Miss Ludwig would love it,” she laughed.
“Wait a minute! I have a library!”
I moved over to the backdrops and sorted through until I found the one I wanted.
“I hate to make you work like this, but would you give me a hand? These aren’t that heavy, but it’s hard to handle them with just one person.”
She daintily walked over so not to snag her stockings and I showed her how to lift one end up on the stand. I moved cubes over to the stands and held her hand as she stepped up onto the cube. It was too bad I needed to keep working because her pussy slit was just below my chin. I could have stared a while. I handed her one end of the drop and lifted the other to the far stand. As soon as it was secure, I gave her my hand to help her down from the cube and unrolled the backdrop.
This one had been elaborately painted by Jerry Carson in Chicago with rows and rows of shelves of books. I brought over a small table and straight chair this time and put a book on it. I wiped down the chair before I offered it to her.
“It’s so nice of you to make sure the places where I put my bare bottom are wiped clean first,” she giggled. “Actually, I mean that seriously. Girls are taught to not even sit on toilet seats in public restrooms. I appreciate the care you take.”
“I would not want your bare bottom to come in contact with anything that would harm it,” I said. “Now let’s return to that pose we had going in front of the other drop. Let me adjust your hair again. There. Now you are every inch the beautiful psychology student studying for a final exam in the library. Don’t hunch over. Sit up straight. You’re a beautiful psychology student with beautiful boobs and I want to see them when I come into the library. Yes!”
I snapped the first picture and she automatically raised a finger to her lips to shush me. It was perfect. We worked through several more photos, including having her hold a book as if she’d just pulled it off a high shelf. Her back was to me with her head tilted up and a hand outstretched. She stood on tiptoe and the shape of that bottom I was taking care of was perfect. I had her shift her weight a little, which closed the gap between her thighs through which I had a clear view of her pussy. I wanted it just barely out of sight.
“Avery, I think we’ve got all the pictures we need for today. Thank you for being such a stellar model. I’m really going to miss working with you.”
“You should check out the art and photography programs at USC Berkeley and at Stanford. I’ll hold open the offer to model if you come out there.”
“Thank you. I’ll check them out, but I think I’ve decided where I’m headed.”
“Well, I’m holding my arms open, too,” she said. I looked up and she was standing with her arms open and a hopeful expression. “Just a goodbye kiss and hug, okay? And maybe you could check to see that no harm came to my bottom.”
I took Avery in my arms and held her to me as we explored each other’s mouths with our tongues and my hand eventually found its way to her round bottom. The other hand checked thoroughly to see if her bare breast felt any different than it had a month ago. I thought the nipple might be just a little stiffer and knew it had nothing to do with being cold. As we began to separate, I bent and took a little suck and lick of her nipple. She held my head to her breast for a moment.
“Psychologically, that is an inherent drive in men to nurse and a woman’s mothering instinct. Physically, it’s an incredible turn-on,” she said. “I think I’ll use this for my fantasy material until I meet a really great guy at Berkeley.” I kissed her again.
“I’m glad you’re going to use it as your fantasy material, too,” I said. She turned to pick up her things. While she was bent over, she pulled my hands to her butt.
“No harm done to my delicate little bottom?” she whispered.
“No. But I shouldn’t keep my hands there for long. I don’t want to risk anything.”
She stood up and took her things to the dressing room.
Damn!
I selected the best photos of Avery to give her, including an archival copy of her new portrait. For my own display, I printed archival copies of the library scene seated and standing. Yeah, that bottom was especially fine.
I also finally got the Memorial Day film processed and printed proof sheets. There was a really great shot of Billy kneeling at the grave. I was sure I could read the print on the stone. I got that printed and set it to dry.
Sunday, Lori came to the studio so we could start working on her portfolio. I was a little distracted still from my date with Chris the night before. We’d gone to Huntertown to watch Goldfinger. That’s what we thought we were watching. I think that’s what the theater thought it was showing. What we really saw Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. It actually wasn’t half bad. Vincent Price played the evil genius and Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman were the hapless heroes trying to stop the nefarious plan to have bikini clad robots seduce rich men and steal all their money.
We had a good laugh and a lot of kisses in the back row of the theater. Then we went out to the creek where Ronda and I had gone and made love for a couple of hours. It still amazed me that this incredible girl wanted to be naked with me, not so I could take her picture, but so I could suckle her breasts, lick her clit, and slide my dick into her innermost depths as we came together. I’d been afraid that having Ronda gone for the summer would put a damper on what Chris and I did, but she showed me there were no stops.
Oh, Lori. Yeah. It was a little hard to concentrate on her until we actually started working. Like always, it was hard to keep this girl in her clothes long enough for me to do some shots of her looking like an advertising model. She put lotion on her legs while wrapped in a towel and looking like she just stepped out of the shower. That was especially nice when she whipped the towel off and began putting the lotion on the rest of her body. I got pictures of all of it.
And I had to help a little. Since she’d put lotion every place she could reach and didn’t want to leave part of her uncovered, I applied lotion to her back and butt. She probably could have reached that, but what do I know? I just did as I was asked. I might have slid into her crack a little and gotten some lotion where the sun doesn’t usually shine.
She brought the fur collar from her winter coat and used the stuffed cat from the props room and the martini glass. She leaned forward on the table looking up at me and then sat upright to take the glass in her hand. I was confident the model in the ad we were copying hadn’t exposed that much in her photo session.
She pulled her hair into short pony tails and put on a cowboy hat. We tied a kerchief around her neck and I gave her a toy six gun we found in the attic. She did several poses with that on and nothing else. I’d crop one of them to make a portfolio shot that could feasibly appear in a magazine.
Lori had an ultra-miniskirt that barely covered the essentials. She combined that with a tied blouse of the kind my girlfriends liked to wear with nothing under it. Then she grabbed a tennis racket and posed a few action shots. I had her bend over slightly like she was going for the ball. When she was in the right position, I flipped the back of her skirt up as if it had just been blown by the wind. Lori gave me a surprised expression that could have come from a Vargas cartoon. “Oh, it’s windy!”
Finally, I managed to get her to sit at a table with a tube of lipstick. She had the bright pink shade that was becoming more and more popular. I propped a mirror up in front of her so she could see what she was doing and took a closeup of her applying the lipstick.
“That was really fun,” Lori said. “And thank you for keeping me focused on portfolio work and not just on running around naked to get my picture taken.”
“You’re welcome. I think we got some good shots. Next time we’ll focus on artistic things instead of advertising things. And be thinking about what we can do for a few fashion shots. You’ll definitely need clothes for those!”
“When I came up here the first time, I got high first. I thought, there is no way this boy is going to get me naked and take pictures of me. And then, it seemed like my clothes just started falling off. Once you’d seen my tit, there was no sense trying to cover it up. And what’s the difference between a tit and my pussy. You were on the other side of the camera after all. But it got me so excited that I went in the bathroom and masturbated until I had an orgasm before I got dressed. I was sure you’d smell the sex. But then I saw the pictures you made of me and I seriously just wanted you to fuck me. Masturbating wasn’t good enough.”
“I won’t cross that line,” I said. “I’m glad taking the pictures makes you feel good and that you feel so sexy afterward. You should always feel that good about yourself.”
“I finally figured out there was a line you wouldn’t cross, but where it’s drawn seems to be a little flexible and I can entice you to rub my butt. You even surprised me with how thorough you were. You know, I think my breasts feel better in the photos than in real life. What do you think?”
She pulled my hand to her breasts and pushed them against me to squeeze and lift. I stroked across her nipples and she moaned a little. Well, I’d licked Avery’s nipples, I suppose the line had moved that far. I lifted a breast as I bent to it and kissed and sucked on her nipple. Lori was panting a bit as I fondled her breasts.
“Yeah. I thought it might have moved that far,” she whispered. “Now you stay out here while I go to the dressing room and rub myself to another climax before I get dressed.” She gave me a quick kiss and bounced off to the dressing room.
I cleaned up the studio while she was gone, trying not to listen, since she wasn’t trying to be quiet.
I processed her film and got it ready to print proofs, but also checked out the Memorial Day photos that were drying. The composition wasn’t bad, but I felt it would be improved if I cropped out a little and got tighter on the subject than I’d been able to get. As I looked at that, though, I saw something else that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t notice it until I decided to crop it off.
I was certain in the back of my mind that it was what I thought it was, but my morbid curiosity drove me to the file cabinet. I sorted through film to a roll I’d shot at New Year’s but hadn’t even printed a proof sheet of. I took the negatives to the darkroom and printed a proof. When it was dry enough to handle, I took it to my desk and examined it with a loupe. I needed to get a Tensor lamp for my desk so I’d have adequate light to really examine photos. I took the negatives back to my darkroom and enlarged one of them to 10x16. It was the largest size paper I had. I could see what I wanted, even though I had to expose the image a lot longer than usual because of the distance from the paper.
I rinsed the photo and went home for ice cream and television.
I don’t know what was wrong with me, but having seen what I thought I saw, I started thinking back to other photos I’d taken over the past year. I couldn’t focus on whatever the show was and I ate three big bowls of ice cream without really thinking.
“Is something troubling you, son?” Dad asked.
“Um… I don’t know. It’s something in a photograph I saw. Maybe it’s nothing. But… Do you mind if I go back to the darkroom? I really need to find out if this is true.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other. Mom sighed.
“If you think it is important, then yes. You’ve been good about not working all night now that you have a studio. Not like you used to do in your closet in Chicago. If it’s important, then go ahead,” she said.
“Thanks, Mom. Dad. I just have to find out.”
I took off running for the studio.
I worked all night. I dug out negatives that I’d never printed because I thought they were too poor to make a decent print. I’d learned a lot in the past six months, though, thanks to Mr. Grossman. On one image, I used a number five filter to heighten the contrast and then had to overexpose it to get the image to come close to clear. I enlarged it until I could really see what was there.
I’d printed full frame enlargements of several images that I’d initially cropped. After looking at them I made huge enlargements of the part I’d originally cropped out of the pictures. My enlarger was set to its maximum distance and I wished I had a better lens I could use to focus on a smaller area of the picture.
A footprint. A window. A figure picked out by a truck’s headlight. A running man. The sole of a boot. Army fatigues. I sat on the floor of the darkroom crying. I didn’t want to see any of what I saw in these pictures.
I was in the kitchen making coffee when Mom and Dad came downstairs in the morning. I didn’t turn around. Dad put a hand on my shoulder.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
I nodded. I was still sniffing a little. The photos were on the table and I just waved at them. I poured Mom and Dad’s coffee and poured myself a mug of the bitter brew. They huddled together over the pictures, careful to set their coffees far away. Six huge enlargements of just a portion of an image on a 10x16 paper. And seven 6x9 or 10x10 enlargements of the full frame. They silently compared the full frame prints to the enlargements, then shuffled them together and put them aside.
I turned to join them at the table.
“I don’t know what to do,” I cried. “Everyone will hate me. And he doesn’t deserve to be punished for this. Can I just… burn it all?”
“I don’t know, son,” Dad said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Neither do I,” Mom said. That was a surprise. I thought Mom always knew the answer to a moral dilemma.
“I took pictures that incriminate the town’s hero. I followed him to the graveyard Tuesday with the whole crowd. I took his picture at the kennel, so happy with all those dogs. I don’t know what to do!”
“Let’s do the only thing we can do right now,” Mom said. “Let’s pray that God will lead you to the right answer and that he’ll protect each of his children affected by this.”
We did pray. It was hard. I wanted to just beg God to make it all go away. But if he was actually there, he wasn’t going to wave a magic wand and make everything all better. I just begged him to help me do the right thing.
Dad went to work and I went to bed. I was too tired and drained to do anything right now. My dreams were filled with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back.
I woke up a bit after noon. Kat had already left for the library where she was spending the summer volunteering for story time with the little kids. She was taking after Mom in her ability to tell or read a story and make it come alive. Mom had gone to Huntertown for her regular Monday shampoo and set at the salon. I went into her office and looked at the phone book. I found the number I wanted and dialed.
“This is Constable Stoneburner,” the voice answered.
“Constable, this is Nate Hart. I was wondering if I could stop in and see you this afternoon. I’ll try not to take much of your time,” I said.
“It’s a peaceful afternoon in Tenbrook. The new signs we put up at the village limits even seem to have slowed through-traffic down a bit. Come on over,” he said. “I’ll even comb my hair.”
“I’ll see you in fifteen or twenty minutes,” I said.
By his response, I was pretty sure he thought I wanted to take his picture. I just didn’t want to get into explaining what I wanted over the phone. I brushed my teeth and got dressed, then picked up the folder with all the photos I brought home last night—this morning. I headed out for the three-block walk to the downtown block where the Village Offices were. It seemed a lot farther than when I was walking to the studio, which was just next door.
“Hello, Nate. Come on in,” Stoneburner said when I approached his office. “You don’t have your camera with you.”
“No, sir. I didn’t come to take pictures. I came to show you some. I know who’s responsible for the break-ins and vandalism,” I said. He sat up straight and held out his hand. “Before I give this to you, I just want to say I hope you won’t act rashly. I hate what I see in these pictures. I don’t want them to be.”
“Is it your friend, Tony?” Stoneburner sighed. “I was sure we’d eliminated him from suspicion.”
“No. Tony would forgive me. No one will forgive me for this.”
I laid the photos on his desk and he looked at them, squinting a little. I handed him my loupe and showed him how to use it and he examined the photos in minute detail. He turned them over and read the description of each I’d written on the back.
December 27, my first remote encounter with Billy. A picture I’d shot of him and Lori from the fourth floor stairway when I thought she was being harassed. She tells me he often asks her for a kiss because he remembered her as a girl he had sex with before he joined the army.
January 1, photograph of a footprint in the snow outside our garage after purple paint was stolen from us and used to mark the bank.
January 28, figure running down the street clutching a radio. Accompanying photo, still life in my studio featuring radio from Wilson Antiques photographed on December 26. Face of the running figure is not identifiable, but he wears pants tucked into the tops of his boots.
March 27, Photo of Billy in fatigues and boots with dogs. At left is a corner of the window into his room at the Humane society. Enlargement through the window shows 1955 garage calendar on wall. Calendar stolen from Henry’s Garage in December.
April 26, discovery of break-in at Attic Allure studio, copy of missing photo of Lori. Photo taken at the Hanratty farm where Lori suggested she and Billy had sex her first time.
April 27, photo of Avery in the fog with truck headlights illuminating her. Enlargement shows figure in the background pushing into the bar and café. Figure wears army style pants tucked into boots.
May 30, Photo of Billy kneeling at his father’s grave. Enlargement shows sole of his army boots, which he always wears. Print of sole matches the footprint in the snow from January 1 break-in and vandalism.
Constable Stoneburner examined each print carefully, noting that each image of the thief or vandal showed him wearing army fatigue pants and boots.
He sighed and pushed back in his chair looking up at the ceiling. I just sat there watching him, not knowing how to read him.
“You don’t make this job easy,” he sighed.
“Please don’t be too hard on him. Billy’s a good guy and hasn’t been the same since he got home from Vietnam. I know he wouldn’t harm anyone or even vandalize things under normal circumstances,” I pled.
“The evidence you’ve brought corroborates my own investigation. I wasn’t sure how to proceed because it isn’t really evidence to convict in a court of law. What you’ve brought me shows that the problem was caused by a person in army fatigues and boots. It never shows the face of that person. It’s circumstantial that Billy also wears fatigues and army boots. You’ll find a lot of veterans do that. Until I got this job, that was my normal attire. You just get used to wearing them.”
“So, he can’t be arrested for these pictures,” I breathed a sigh of relief.
“No. Nor could he be arrested based on my investigation that also reveals he only ever steals a single bottle of Jim Beam when he breaks into a bar. The center car in the vandalism after prom belonged to the two boys who dated Lori Reynolds that night. And all the graffiti that has been plastered on bridge abutments, barns, and the bank window, feature a limp dick. Something I’m told Billy suffers from since returning from the war. All circumstantial, but meriting a search warrant, I suppose.”
“It really looks bad for him, doesn’t it,” I said. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help him?”
“Possibly. I need to talk to the mayor and make some phone calls. I’ll need to keep these photos. Meet me back here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. And bring your camera. I told you that you could take pictures of me performing my duty as long as you didn’t interfere. This could easily be the record of the end of my law enforcement career.”
I nodded and stood.
“Nate,” he called before I’d left the office. I turned. “Thank you. You did the right thing by bringing these to me.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
