Ghost Town (12 page)

Again and again, I returned to the picture of the lovers on the cover of the card. It took a while before my breathing returned to normal.

WHEN YOU GET MAIL
, mail call is truly an exciting part of the day.

Unexpected riches from Uncle Milton. A love note (of sorts) from Maureen Balderson. And still I hadn't opened the packet of prints from Sparkle Snapshot of St. Louis.

By now I'd totally lost track of what I had taken pictures of, but the giant clover flowers and yellow sprays of wildflowers that looked like baby's breath and one enormous mosquito on a screen door were quite good. The rapid-fire sequence of the wide-mouthed toad in the garden made me laugh out loud, but toads, of course, are naturally funny creatures.

As always, it was the bonus picture that gave me pause. Two children had fallen through the ice in a frozen pond.

One of them clearly was me. I recognized my stupid mole.

The other was Maureen.

Sigh.

"I notice you carry a camera," Merilee Rowling said.

"What?" I responded, annoyed by her interruption. "It's sort of a hobby."

"I was wondering if I could use it to get a picture of Chief Eagle Dog," she said.

"Chief Leopard Frog," I corrected her.

"That's the guy," she agreed. "Do you mind? I haven't been issued a camera yet, and I know it would help the story if I could get a picture of him in his, like, native habitat, so to speak. Does he live in a tepee?"

"No," I replied. "He most definitely does not live in a tepee."

"Well, maybe we could get him to stand in front of a tepee. How would he feel about that?" she asked.

"I'm pretty sure he wouldn't like it," I replied, "but I don't speak for Chief Leopard Frog. Maybe if you drove to Wal-Mart and bought him a tepee he'd stand in front of it. I don't know. I can't imagine why he would, but he's his own person."

"Is he, now?" Merilee Rowling pressed. "That's not the way your mother describes it."

She was standing so close that I could smell her breath. It smelled like peppermint and cinnamon and young woman.

"My mother and Chief Leopard Frog are not close," I declared. "I wouldn't expect her to know what he likes and doesn't like."

"But you do," Merilee Rowling continued. "You can interpret things for him, right? Like Don Diego can interpret things for Zorro. Or Clark Kent knows the whereabouts of Superman. Or Peter Parker can take us straight to Spider-Man. Or Bruce Wayne has deep insights into Batman. C'mon, Spencer, give me a break. I've got an Indian poet story to write and no Indian poet in sight."

"Let's take a walk," I said, grabbing my camera bag.

"By all means," Merilee Rowling agreed.

We set out across the pasture toward the Lambert place. There once were a dozen Lamberts living there, but today, of course, there are none.

The Lamberts kept ponies, rabbits, chickens, and ducks. For extra money they cut timber—hardwoods—which at one time they had a lot of, but the inevitable day came when they had none at all. All of it had been turned into corrugated boxes and sold to the Chinese so the Chinese could pack the stuff they sell to America.

Then, like everybody else in Paisley, Kansas, the Lamberts pulled up stakes, put their place up for sale, which nobody in their right mind would buy, and moved to Kansas City, where I heard from my mother that Mr. Lambert was working as an assistant manager in an envelope factory run by a former mayor.

"I could take your picture," I said.

"Sure," Merilee Rowling replied. "Maybe the magazine would publish it with my byline."

"Stand over there by that rusted tractor. That's kind of interesting," I said.

"Okay," Merilee Rowling agreed.

I sighted through the lens. Instead of going macro, up close, like I'd do for a grasshopper, or a stinkbug, I switched to telephoto, what's called a long lens, in order to blur out the background and focus exclusively on the face of the subject.

In many ways, this improved an already attractive young woman's appearance. It smoothed out imperfections in her skin while calling attention to her made-up eyes, her pert nose, and her lightly painted smile, all of which were quite appealing.

From where I stood, Merilee Rowling looked like the cover of a glossy European magazine, such as the Italian version of
Vogue
or possibly the French edition of
Vanity Fair.

Pretty but exotically standoffish.

I squeezed the trigger again and again, each time capturing a slightly different aspect of her visual personality. When the short roll of film was exhausted, I exchanged it for a fresh one, slipping the exposed cylinder into the pocket of my jeans.

"Well?" she said. "How'd I do?"

"You looked great," I told her. "I can't wait to get them processed."

"Okay, now let me take your picture," she insisted.

"Do you know anything about cameras?" I asked warily.

"Oh, Spencer," she sighed. "Why are you so distrustful of everyone? Is it because you live in the wilderness all by yourself? Give me the stupid camera!"

Memo to self: When a woman impatiently insists, beware!

MERILEE ROWLING
had put her foot down and I had accepted the gesture like an ant in a long, curving trail to honey.

I handed her my father's camera loaded with a fresh roll of film. The sun was only halfway up the sky so the light was still good.

"Let's go to that rundown barn," she directed.

She was referring to the lean-to that the Lamberts had built as a shelter for their ponies. Made from cedar, it was never painted, so it looked older than it actually was. There were three stalls and a tack room inside, and the lock on the tack room had left with the Lamberts. It was an appealing set for someone interested in making interesting photographs.

"Stand over there," she directed, in front of an open stall. "Now put your arm on the stall door and gaze out to your right."

"This feels weird," I said.

"This is art," Merilee Rowling insisted. "It's supposed to feel weird.

"Okay, ready?" she said. "One, two, three—oh, crap!"

Merilee Rowling had dropped the camera onto a concrete base poured for a hitching post that had never been installed. On impact, the film popped out of the back, exposed to the sunlight, and the lens cracked like a dried duck egg.

"Damn!" she said. "Why did you move?"

"I didn't move," I replied. "I'm still right here with my arm on the stall door."

"Well, somebody moved," she insisted. "Maybe it was your mysterious Indian."

"Is the camera okay?" I asked.

"Well," Merilee Rowling answered, "it might need a little adjustment."

I examined the case for damage.

I sighted through the viewfinder. On a single-lens reflex camera such as this one, the viewfinder reveals exactly what the lens sees, and what the lens now saw was a mixed-up, multifaceted universe.

It was exactly like looking through a kaleidoscope.

Merilee's image was broken into a star-shaped pattern of bits and pieces and the weedy fields around her appeared as a tan, circular sky.

If I changed the adjustment, say from macro to telephoto, the quiltlike pattern changed also, but the problem with the picture did not go away.

My ghost camera—my father's ghost camera—had been what an adjuster from State Farm Insurance (Auto-Home-Life) might classify as "totaled."

"Who sent you?" I asked angrily.

"Sorry," Merilee Rowling said.

"Here," I replied petulantly, handing her the pony talisman that Chief Leopard Frog had recently given to me. "This is for you. It was handmade by Chief Leopard Frog. Now, if you'll ask me the questions you need to ask about him, I'll do my best to answer."

"Can he fly?" she giggled, pocketing the amulet. "Does he have X-ray vision?"

She went running into the pony barn, and for some reason performed a cartwheel.

"How long are you planning to stay?" I asked her.

"How long would you like me to stay?" she replied coquettishly.

"Are you really seventeen?" I asked.

"I can prove it. It's on my driver's license," she answered. "Are you really nineteen?"

"No," I answered. "But I'm old enough to know what you're up to."

"And what is that, Mr. Wise Guy?" she flirted.

"You're trying to get me to make you as famous as Chief Leopard Frog and you don't mind wrecking my life in the process, starting with my camera," I observed.

Merilee Rowling put her hands on her hips and stared at me.

"You
are
a smart boy," she observed. "Will you guard my room again tonight?"

Man, was I ever in over my head.

Help, Chief Leopard Frog!
I cried inside.
Help!

"I guess so," I agreed, ever the weakling.

Walking home I spied a silver Yukon speeding down the dusty gravel road in the distance. In most parts of the world this would mean nothing. But if you were in Antarctica, let's say, it would be an event worth noting in your daily log. As I have previously suggested, Paisley has a lot in common with Antarctica, except instead of penguins we have locusts. But like other remote spots on the globe, we have very few people, and thus very few cars.

"Look at that hot rod go," Merilee Rowling observed. "How could anybody around here be in a hurry? I mean, what's the rush?"

"I think it all depends on whether they're coming or going," I suggested.

But of course I knew.

I recognized the car.

It was the Baldersons. And, no doubt, Maureen Balderson was inside.

I had a lot of explaining to do.

MERILEE ROWLING
and I walked into my mother's kitchen.

"What happened to your camera?" she asked.

"Gravity," I replied gravely.

"Let me take a look," Dwight Earl offered, wiping his hands on an apron with a big smiley sun face that said
BLESS THIS GLORIOUS GOD-GIVEN MORNING
!

"Broken lens," he observed. "Anything else?"

"Not that I know of," I replied.

"With a camera like this," he explained, "lenses are interchangeable. They're not cheap, but lots of places sell used lenses. You might be able to replace it."

"And you were all ready to be mad at me," Merilee Rowling cooed. "See how easily problems can be solved if you keep a cool head about you?"

"I don't think that's the lesson to be learned here, Merilee," I replied. "I think the lesson may have something to do with carelessness with other people's property."

"Mmm," she responded, abruptly changing the subject. "Those waffles smell simply delightful!"

"Help yourself," Dwight Earl offered. "I'm making enough for the people next door, too."

"They're coming here?" I said, startled.

I did not want Maureen Balderson to meet Merilee Rowling. Their getting together seemed like putting two of Chief Leopard Frog's bad luck omens together in a bag and then hoping for the best.

"Your mother thought it would be a nice gesture," Dwight Earl explained. "They're in town for just a little while."

"I'd better pack up this roll of film for processing," I said. "I'll see you guys later."

Oh, man,
I thought.
What if Merilee Rowling tells Maureen that we sleep in the same room? Or what if Maureen lets on that there's more to this deal than just neighbors? Dang, dang, and double dang! Why must things be so complicated?

Coward that I am when it comes to confronting women whose ages are out of range of my own, I stayed in my room to work on my camera.

Carefully, I took it apart and cleaned it, using both special silicone-impregnated tissues and canned compressed air.

Tiny bits of film from countless trips through the sprockets flew out, along with an alarming amount of dust and grit. The lens itself, of course, was a total loss, although it still fit securely onto the lens mount. I made a note of the brand, model number, and type of lens in case I could find a store that could replace it.

But whatever paranormal capabilities my father's camera might have had surely were lost when it landed on the concrete.

Or,
I suddenly thought with alarm,
if not then, then when I cleaned it so thoroughly.

Now what I had was a camera that was as good as new—but with a shattered, useless lens.

To prove my point, I loaded it with a fresh roll of film and went downstairs, where a party of sorts was in progress.

All four of the Baldersons had arrived. I wondered if Tim had killed any wildlife on his way over—stomped on a lizard, thrown a rock at a hummingbird, set fire to a spider.

His father was chatting with the FedEx man about what a rush he must always be in, while his mother was telling my mother about how many shoe stores, tanning salons, dry cleaners, and drive-through banks there were in Kansas City.

"There's even a store that's as big as a high school gymnasium that sells nothing but containers!" Mrs. Balderson gushed. "Can you imagine?"

"I don't know how you'd ever decide," my mother replied.

"I can't figure out where to put all the stuff she brings home," her husband interrupted, laughing warmly. "We may have to get a bigger house."

"My company delivers a lot of packages from those stores," Dwight Earl chimed in, as if anybody cared.

Speaking of nobody caring, it did not escape my notice that no one said, "Oh, there he is," upon my arrival.

They all just kept on doing what they were doing.

In the case of Merilee Rowling and Maureen Balderson, it was just as I had feared. They were gossiping a mile a minute, apparently about boys, while Tim was spraying Windex on a trail of ants near the flip-top kitchen garbage can.

Just for fun, I popped up the built-in flash, focused as best I could on the scene in front of me, attempting to place Maureen and Merilee in the center so the others would fan out around them like a rose window in an ancient cathedral, and snapped the shutter.

Click-thunk!

For a brief millisecond in time, caught by the flash, everyone stopped talking and looked in my direction. Then, seeing that it was (only) me with my camera, they immediately picked up where they'd left off, like a skip in a record, or a hiccup in an otherwise boring speech.