Copy Boy

by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

  There you go. I told you.

  She grunted, then jogged back to the cottonwood, curling her hands around a low limb, testing her grip, and walked herself up the tree, wrapping one leg over the branch and then kicking her other foot hard on the trunk, bringing the second leg up next to the first, breathing hard.

  At second-story level, pressing her cheek into the bark, she looked down at grass and fluffy white debris, squeezing her thighs tighter around the branch.

  She thought, What would happen if I just let go? Would I break? Land?

  Go on, chicken. Get in there.

  “I’m not chicken. Let me think.”

  She held her breath for a second and then whispered, “That’s you, Ben, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  It didn’t matter. It was him. She was used to him now, after so much time alone before.

  She whispered, “I was gonna do it anyway. Not because you said.”

  And she scooted along, closer to the window. She stood, holding onto an overhead branch. Then she let go, taking the long step from tree to roof. She walked forward and up, one, two, three, four, five steps, on clay tiles. The last one cracked under her heel, dropping in chunks down the roof, onto the lawn. She lost her balance, began to slip, and grabbed the window’s edge to catch herself. Something fluttered in her throat.

  She heard none of his criticism in her head, no reaction at all inside the window.

  She spread the curtain, looked and saw no one. She climbed her way into a private library. Books not just on the shelves but on every surface, an explosion of books. A room she should live in. She should sit at such a desk, with this view—all the bay laid before her. Everything laid out.

  Not now. Probably never. Never mind.

  She scanned the shelves for ledgers, not finding them.

  Get a move on. They’re in the darkroom. They were never going to be up here.

  She left the library where she longed to stay, went to the top of the landing, and listened, but heard nothing, nobody.

  She crept downstairs to the entry, her fingertips light on the wide oak banister. Then to the kitchen, where the smell of last night’s dinner—something strange, spicy—made her queasy. She slipped her hand into the leather bag on a hook—a tissue, pencils, scraps of paper. No keys. She checked all its pockets. Nothing. She tried other bags on other hooks lined up on the wainscoting. Still no keys.

  Find a crowbar in the basement. Jimmy the darkroom locks.

  She frowned. She didn’t want to break in that way, like a criminal.

  But she opened the kitchen door to the basement and enough light came through the casement windows below that she went down without pulling the string.

  At the bottom of the stairs, from across the basement, she saw the keychain hanging in the lock of the darkroom door. She waited, no sound. Waited longer. Still nothing, no one.

  They’ll be on the counter, she told herself.

  Hands on the plow, girl.

  She crossed the basement, passing the boxed rooms of photographs, the chalked words—“sidewalks,” “fields,” “machines,” “architecture,” “portraits,” the word “bodies.”

  The door swung silently open to her touch. Inside, no heat of another person.

  She pulled the string that hung before her and her eyes ran around the gold-lit room. The books weren’t on the counter where they’d been. She opened file drawers. Not there. Then she saw the black curtain with the quote—“The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture. . . .”

  She pulled the curtain to the side, revealing the ledgers lined up on the hidden windowsill. She brought them down, five of them, one at a time, flipping through them.

  The first was Grete’s journal. She read a couple pages of the tight, careful penmanship—

  “We see through the scrim of culture.”

  “Pictures ask questions. It’s the viewer who must answer.”

  “The camera steals nothing. It only bestows.”

  She put it down, picking up the next, the record of quotes she’d seen before, the familiar wrong-dictioned poetry of field people—

  “You die, you dead, that’s it.”

  “Ditched and done, that’s us.”

  “I’d rather be a son of a bitch than a punching bag.”

  She put that book down, picking up another. More quotes.

  The last two books had what she was looking for, dates, locations, names, payments.

  The earliest entries, years ago, included mostly receipts. Grete had made good money then—Jane knew she’d started as a society photographer. Then the numbers changed. Receipts were smaller, from the government, not newspapers. The newspaper money must have gone to the FSA. No big checks like she expected, not what Daddy said. Maybe to him these were big amounts, or maybe he’d just assumed.

  Then there were small expenses, paid to unfamiliar names. Bribes? Payments? Gifts?

  In the last book she saw Uno’s name—$23, $31, $15, $12. Entries for him were all over. She went backward, through November, October, September. He’d been earning at pimping pictures for Grete all of 1936, was earning it still, through 1937. She pictured Momma’s drawer, the new slips and underwear, the rubber-banded wad of money, which was in her pocket.

  Go on.

  She pulled her negative of Jesson out of the pocket, checking the writing on the margin—“Hunger, Marysville, 3/15/36”— and flipped through the ledger’s pages, back to March fifteenth. There it was. Uno Jeffers, over and over, from February 7 through June 20. No other entries. No Tom Jesson, no Mrs. Jesson. Nothing made to the starving man’s family.

  Is Daddy in here?

  Flipping through, she found him. Abraham Lincoln Hopper, five dollars. An X.

  Something in her throat again.

  What’s it mean to help somebody? Money, food, shelter? Dignity, respect, equality? Did Grete help any of them get any of this? Did it matter how she helped?

  Don’t matter. Take ’em and get out of here.

  Okay. No matter, the accounts were proof of motive, at least. Grete let Jesson die for her picture, paid Uno for that, never gave a thing to Jesson’s family. Vee was gonna tell Jane. Grete had reason to kill Vee, or have her killed.

  “Well, well.”

  It sounded so soft she thought at first it was her brother in her head, but then the hair rose on her arms. She wheeled around, knocking ledgers from the counter to the floor.

  Grete reached out and gently, easily, took the book from her hand. She read the open page and looked back at Jane, tilting her head. “You are a surprising person.” She set the book on the counter.

  She stepped closer.

  “You find it hard to stay away from this darkroom.”

  Warm breath filled the space between them.

  Grete reached up to Jane’s throat.

  Jane squawked, “Don’t!”

  Two fingers traced the spot where an Adam’s apple should be. Jane stepped backward, onto the edge of a ledger on the floor, losing her balance, then catching herself. Grete stepped forward, maintaining the space between them. Her hand moved into the shirt’s collar, to Jane’s clavicle, tracing its sharp edge. Then her other hand reached up to squeeze the muscle of Jane’s upper arm.

  Watch out!

  She felt too late what Grete aimed to do. She moved her hand to Jane’s right breast, squeezed its new roundness, pinched.

  “No!”

  Grete dropped her hands. “As I thought.”

  “Get away!” Jane said, too late, much too late.

  Grete stood perfectly still, as if not to spook a skittish animal. “Please don’t worry, not with me. I know how hard it is to be who one is.”

  Don’t let her work you.

  “Especially for a woman. It’s one of the things that draws me to you, that you’re not just one thing, that you don’t pretend to be. You’re a smart girl—you see the use of risk.”

  “Stop talking to me. Don’t talk!” />
  Grete laughed, even her eyes—compassionate—like this was some nice conversation they were having, like they were friends or something, still standing too close.

  “I’ll tell you a secret. When I first began to take pictures for a living, I used the male pronoun for myself, in the third person—I said, ‘He uses this sort of film,’ or, ‘He prefers the Graflex,’ to talk about myself. Some people thought it strange. But it helped me believe I could do the things I intended to do.”

  She’s trying to sucker you.

  “My husband suggested I stop that. My previous husband. So I did. What do you think, Benny, was I right to stop calling myself he?”

  Okay, buy yourself time.

  Jane said, “You are what you decide to be.”

  “That’s all? Just a decision?”

  “It’s the doing it after the decision.”

  Grete nodded. “Then you and I are quite compatible. I agree—one should become whom she aims to be, whom she’s meant to be, regardless of anything else.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You would modify it?”

  Take charge.

  “I wouldn’t say regardless.”

  “You’re young. You don’t know. Prune your aims, stunt your tree.”

  What was clear outside was murky down here.

  “What did they send you for, Benny?”

  She knows why you’re here.

  Grete knew she was fired, knew about the fact-checkers and lawyers. All of it. Why would she be talking like this, after the article?

  “Doesn’t matter,” Grete continued. “I see something in you. You have an outsider’s eye, not like the others. everything’s too familiar to them. They don’t have your gift.”

  Outsider, always.

  “Of course that gift’s not enough. Perception is mostly about memory, and you do have more unique memories than so many in our field—that’s what gives you the outsider view. But a meaningful part of perception, maybe the most important part, is acute sensory sensitivity, detail awareness, and that takes training. I could teach you. A mentor is useful. It was for me.”

  Jane thought, I’ve worked so hard. My whole life, by myself . . . a mentor . . .

  Then—She doesn’t know I wrote the article.

  She wants to use you.

  “You could work for me. I do need help here, in the darkroom, it’s true, but also with the people I photograph. You understand them. That’s your strength.”

  It’s a strength, not a weakness, to be from that dirt.

  “But it’s mainly the narratives. I need your help with those. The pictures need the words to put them in context. The words move the viewers’ eyes where you want them.”

  Jane thought, Me, writing notebooks in the field—I have my whole life! But now with a real purpose. I could prove myself. I could do good, like Grete has. God, she has done good. The press. The government food. The political changes. I could use her to do good things.

  “You would have to change your name, I mean, after what you’ve been through.”

  Jane thought, A real bound book with a new name—what I’ve always counted on, making myself, becoming someone, doing something.

  You’re already your new self—Benny! This ain’t why you’re here.

  You can’t say who I am. How do you know why I’m here?

  Don’t let her change us.

  Jane was confused. Vee, more needy than her—with a baby—didn’t buckle to Greta. But she was probably dead now, in the morgue! What did that get her? And Jesson—that wasn’t right, but what did that have to do with her? And Momma! Why couldn’t Jane put this down? Why did she have to hump it all through every row, every field? Vee was not her sister! Jesson was not her daddy! And Momma . . .

  Keep your hand on the plow.

  What about me?

  Hold on, Benjamin urged.

  Shut up!

  You owe me.

  She saw he wanted her to be Benny forever. He wanted his chance too. Jane was his chance. She thought, all right, then. All right.

  She looked at Grete, her eyes squinting. “I know what you’ve done. I can ruin you.”

  The golden air sparked between them.

  Grete nodded. “And I know who you are. I could ruin you. That’s the symmetry of it. We need each other. You don’t imagine that significant people make no mistakes, do you? We make them, get over them, go on. That’s why we’re significant. May as well put this bad business behind us, do great things?”

  Jane knew people did this every day—in offices, fields, classrooms, jail—every day.

  Grab the books. Run.

  You want me to ruin this? Jane asked him.

  Ruin this. Save us.

  This was how it would be.

  Her muscles clenched to grab the ledgers and Grete had to have seen that tensing, must have known what it meant, because she swung her arm around, with a jug in her hand, throwing its liquid into Jane’s face and eyes.

  Her eyes burning, Jane tripped on the ledgers, falling hard to the ground.

  She saw the blurry shape of Grete’s boots by her head and grabbed one with both hands. But Grete stayed upright, holding onto the desk. Her other boot rose, its silver brace glinting. Jane rolled, but the boot hit her shoulder, pinning her to the floor, next to the jug.

  Jane grabbed the jug and swung it at Grete’s hip, knocking her to the ground, where she cradled her knee, hollering.

  Jane got up, breathing hard, and looked at Grete on the floor, in pain. She’d done that to this tiny, injured woman. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t wanted to.

  “Stupid! Stupid, stupid girl!”

  Get ’em and get out.

  She grabbed the ledgers and ran them out of the darkroom, locking the door, trapping Grete inside, leaving the keys hanging in the lock, ran upstairs to the kitchen, wrote a note on a pad on the table and then used the telephone to call the operator—“Wrights’ house, top of the hill, Virginia Street, Berkeley”—ran outside and vomited on the lawn.

  A wrinkled, whiskey-colored man puffed a great volume of smoke, his foot on the fender of a mattress-loaded clunker. One cabin down, two guys played banjo and mouth harp on the stoop, near babies squirming on the knees of unsmiling wives. Right in Jane’s path, mud-caked kids played catch with a rag, balled up by twine—“You’re out!” An old woman moved back and forth past a bare window, wiping, sweeping, putting things away.

  They all stopped to stare as Jane passed on her way to the manager’s cabin.

  There was no car out front. Uno was gone. She’d get in and out, no messing around.

  Her temple throbbed.

  Come on, leave ’er, let’s go. There’s no reason, he whined.

  But she disobeyed, knocking on the door, and it opened.

  Momma stood there in a crisp, bright housedress belted over her slim-again waist, her hair combed, tucked behind her ears, neat, respectable.

  Jane heard that popping static in her head.

  She managed to say, “It’s me . . .”

  Momma looked confused. “Who . . . what are you?”

  She looked left and right at the people on their porches before pulling Jane out of their sight, into the kitchen, which smelled of ham, onions, biscuits.

  “I’ve come to get you out of here, right now, Momma.”

  Leave her.

  The popping grew louder.

  “Quiet.”

  “What?” Momma looked her up and down. “Whose blood is that?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You gone weird?”

  “I’ll explain later, not now. We gotta go.”

  “You get beat up for going around this way?”

  “I’ll tell you everything later, but now we gotta go,” Jane said.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Momma leaned over behind a chair and picked up a baby with rose-red hair sticking up in straight tufts. Her face was complicated, not simple like some babies’. She had deep dimples in
her cheeks and light blue eyes. “Elsie.”

  She looked more like her other sister, Sweetie, than she did like Jane, which made sense. Jane looked like her own daddy. Elsie and Sweetie looked like theirs.

  “I got work to do.”

  “Listen, you have to go with me now, before it all comes apart.”

  It’s coming apart now, stupid. Get out.

  “Shut up.”

  “What?”

  “There’s, there’s a newspaper story—gonna be more of ’em—about Uno.”

  “What paper?”

  “My . . . my paper.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The San Francisco Prospect.”

  “Your . . . Who’s writing the story?”

  “Me. I’m writing the next one.”

  Momma’s brows raised nearly into her hairline, her eyes shining like she thought this was funny. “Then don’t put him in the story.”

  “He’s in. There’s no taking him out! He’s part of the story.”

  “Then don’t write it.”

  “I have to! It’s the right thing!”

  “That’s a hoot. You wanna do right? Do right by me.”

  Do right by me!

  “That’s what I’m trying . . .”

  “I did not get all this by acting stupid.” That word. “You can’t walk in here and . . .”

  “Can’t you see what I’m struggling to do?”

  “What do you know about struggle?” Momma asked.

  “I’m making something of myself. I’m a reporter. I’m good. I’m trying to . . .”

  “That why you dress like a boy? You think that’s gonna last?”

  It’ll last.

  “You think they ain’t gonna fire you, they find out what you’re up to, faking, lying? City people ain’t gonna let you get away with this—tricking ’em. They can’t let you get away with that. You can’t trust ’em!”

  Tell her who we are.

  “It got me work, everything I’ve done. It’s just a costume.” Jane hated the clothes, the short hair, now. She was humiliated in front of Momma.

  It ain’t a costume.

  “Everything you done? I fought us out of Texas—evil people, uncles, bosses, bank people! You have no idea what I done. I fought since I was a child, just to survive, when other people shoulda done that for me. Then I fought for you—keeping you fed, all those library books. I left you Sweetie’s address! Gave you somewhere to go! I’ve always fought for you!”