“They marched in orderly fashion into the gas chambers. No one ever seemed to say, ‘Screw you! I’m not going in there!’ and grasp for a moment at their own humanity. Did you know that on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British lost sixty thousand men? And, knowing this, on the next day, when the whistles blew, the men still went over the top into a wall of machine guns and fortified positions. This was 1916. The modern world! Impossible!
“On death row in just about every state, prisoners scheduled for execution are watched carefully throughout their last night. The fear is that they will somehow find a way to kill themselves. The state,” he said bitterly, “doesn’t like to be cheated, you see. But what would be the difference, really? Ultimately, I think, suicide is the greatest act of freedom. That’s what we can’t seem to learn from the goddamn whales. They’re sick, with what, we just don’t know. AIDS for whales, hell, or something. So they abbreviate the processing of their own deaths. They take charge of their lives, take control, and make their choice. And we wonder why. Inexplicable, the scientists say. They act baffled. What is inexplicable is that we can’t understand why they do it when it seems so damn obvious.”
Jeffers picked up the pace. He was shaking his head back and forth.
“Boswell,” he said in a tone that rang of solitude, “I’m confusing two different issues. It will be up to you to sort things out.”
After hesitating a moment he added:
“Today’s lesson is really on acquiescence. Lemmings. Watch carefully how people will embrace the means of their demise. Remarkable. I remember reading about this photographer from Florida. Do you remember? It was only a couple of years ago. His name was Wilder, which I suppose created a good bit of punning in news rooms around the nation. Anyway, the guy snatches a gal from a grand prix race in Miami. Then up in Daytona, I think. Off he goes on a cross-country tour, killing as he goes. Always uses the exact same technique: heads to a sporting event or a shopping mall, pulls out his camera, and starts taking pictures of girls. Before long he has one following after him and the next thing you know they’re in his car and . . .”
He looked down at Anne Hampton.
“Fill in the rest yourself.”
“I remember,” she said.
“But you know what was truly fascinating,” Jeffers continued, “was that everyone knew! The FBI, the local police, the newspapers, the television stations, everybody! Wilder’s picture was on every station, every front page, every station house. His modus operandi was described, discussed, dissected, you name it. It was everywhere! You could hardly be a part of popular culture and miss it. There wasn’t a dinner-table conversation or bull session in a high-school bathroom with the girls having a smoke between classes where it wasn’t said: If a guy with a beard wants to take your picture, don’t get in the car with him! But you know what happened?”
“He died.”
“But not before another half-dozen women got into his car and got themselves killed. Remarkable. You know something? He never even bothered to shave off his beard, which was the dominating aspect of every description in every paper. Now that’s a phenomenon that deserves study.”
“He died in the Northeast, I think.”
“Yeah. New Hampshire. We’re going there shortly.”
“He got shot by a trooper and the last girl lived,” she insisted.
“He was stupid and careless,” Jeffers said brusquely.
But the last girl lived, she thought.
They approached the raceway grandstand. “Stick close,” Jeffers said. “And watch the magic work.”
It did work.
Inside the grandstand area, a blurred melee of people, machines, bright colors, and constant sound, Jeffers worked the sidelines expertly. He maneuvered amidst the crowd of spectators and the car crews, picking out young women, singly or in pairs, starting by taking their picture from afar, then moving closer until he not only had their attention, but they were posing for him. Anne Hampton was almost overcome by the rush of raised shoulders, sucked-in cheeks, turned profiles, and perfect smiles that greeted Douglas Jeffers’ camera lens. She heard him give the same story over and over again, and she dished out business cards with a blind enthusiasm that mocked her sickened heart. He told the young women that he was on assignment for Playboy and they were going to do a feature called “Racetrack Girls.” He was doing some of the preliminary photography, he explained. He and a couple of other photographers were shooting young women at tracks in various locations. Then the editors back in Chicago would look at the pictures and decide where to head for their photo spread.
He had Anne Hampton take the names and numbers of some of the young women; she did this hesitantly, ill, knowing that it was merely a part of the general playacting. In the background the crowd cheered the cars and drivers, but often the noise from the track was so great that it drowned out the sounds from the stands. She looked up as one particularly immense black dragster filled the air with mechanical tumult, to see the crowd rising to its feet in appreciation. But she was unable to hear their response and she thought suddenly of the appearance of a row of fish in a market, lined up on the white shaved ice, eyes and mouths open, as if with animation, their deaths masked by the lights and sounds.
“Boswell,” she heard his voice fade in as the car noise flew away down the track, “another roll, please. Ladies, this is my assistant, Anne Boswell. Say hello, Annie . . .”
She nodded her head at a pair of young women, probably close to her own age. One was blonde, the other brunette, and both wore tightly fitting tank tops and cut-off blue jeans. She did not think them particularly pretty, the blonde’s teeth seemed to bump about in her mouth haphazardly so that her smile came forth slightly skewed, while the brunette’s nose was too pert for real beauty, rising ski-jump from her face. Anne Hampton thought that the young woman probably had a mother who always told her that she was cute, and thus she aspired only toward cuteness, not realizing that it would translate from high-school cheerleader into a simple marriage and family and small home in rural Pennsylvania or Ohio, with the television on every night and a weekly trip to the beauty parlor to keep her looks in check after suffering the ravages of childbearing. She tried to remember her own mother talking to her about beauty. She could hear in her head her mother, speaking calmly but enthusiastically, brushing her hair with long strokes, telling her how pretty she would be when she grew up, which, at age twelve, had seemed such an impossibility. She recalled her mother’s look of dismay when she returned home from her first college semester with her hair cropped to her shoulders. I always did so much to distance myself, Anne Hampton thought. Even when it grew out long again, something was different. A loss of trust. A voice intruded on her memory.
“. . . Must be exciting, huh?”
It was one of the young women. The blonde.
“I’m sorry,” Anne Hampton said. “I didn’t catch what you said.”
“Oh,” said the young woman, waving her hands about, “I just said that I thought being a photographer’s assistant must be exciting. A really special job. I mean, I just work in a bank and that’s nothing special at all. How did you get the job?”
Douglas Jeffers interjected: “Oh, I picked her from hundreds of possibilities. And she’s worked out pretty good so far, right, Annie?”
She nodded.
“Well,” said the young woman, “I bet it’s real exciting.”
“It’s different,” Anne Hampton replied.
The brunette was examining one of Jeffers’ cameras. Anne Hampton saw that she’d stuck the business card in her front pocket.
“Well,” she said, “I think being in Playboy would be just too wild. I mean, I’d just love to have my picture in that magazine. And so would Vicki.” She gestured at the blonde. “And my boyfriend would think it was neat! But I bet my folks would just die!”
&nbs
p; Anne Hampton saw Jeffers smile.
“Well,” he said, “like I explained, these are just preliminary shots. But sometimes the really pretty girls like you two get called back for the spread . . .”
“Isn’t there any way we could, I don’t know, help make sure they choose us?” asked Vicki, the blonde. “I mean, take some extra pictures of me and Sandi, maybe.”
Jeffers looked at the pair of young women intently.
“Well,” he said, “I can’t guarantee anything. Here, stand together for an instant . . .”
He held his arms wide, then narrowed them, directing the two young women. He raised the camera and Anne Hampton heard the motordrive speed forward as he clicked off a series of pictures, moving about the two young women, dipping up and down, framing them rapidly.
“. . . You certainly have the look,” he said. “But, you know, they’re searching for more than just a look, if you know what I mean . . .”
Anne Hampton saw the two young women put their heads together and giggle. She thought suddenly: I’m not here. This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening.
Then she heard Jeffers’ voice again.
“Look, the best I could do, and I don’t want you to count on anything, would be to take a few, uh, slightly more revealing shots. That might impress the editors. It’s worked before, but, of course, no guarantees.”
She heard the two women laugh together again, nodding their heads.
“Well,” Jeffers was continuing in his most upbeat and harmless voice, “if you’re really interested, why don’t you meet me at my car, section 13A, in half an hour. Please don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, because I’ve told all these other women that I wouldn’t do anything special for them and I’d hate to have it get around that I was doing you two a favor . . .”
Both women shook their heads rapidly.
“So if you can keep a secret, sneak out and meet me and we’ll see what we can do. Boswell, give me the long lens, please.”
Jeffers looked at the women. “Just got to take a couple of action shots to give the editors the right flavor, if you know what I mean. After all, I want them to come back here for the spread.”
Again the girls nodded. Jeffers gave them a little wave and started to wade away through the crowd. Anne Hampton turned and looked back once, seeing the two girls talking animatedly together. For an instant she was confused: she’d heard Jeffers give them the wrong location number for the car.
“How will they find the car?” she asked.
“They won’t. They will go to a spot fifty yards away.”
“But . . .”
“Come on, Boswell, use your head. If they mention it to someone else, or if someone tags along with them, then I, from the position I have the car in, have the capability of exiting without fuss. And without being seen. But,” he added, “it won’t make any difference. This is really an unnecessary precaution if ever I’ve seen one. Those two are in for the ride. They won’t tell anyone, and they’ll sneak out just like I asked them. They’ll be there, ready, willing and able, don’t you think?”
Anne Hampton nodded her head.
“Lemmings,” said Jeffers.
He thought a moment as he plowed through the mass of people.
“Boswell,” he said, “does it ever seem to strike you as contradictory the way we in America can tolerate the most fundamental, righteous, religious prudery on the one hand, and yet the easiest thing in the world is to talk someone out of their clothes? Watch.”
She followed after Jeffers as he made a simple loop of the field, actually pausing occasionally to take a few shots, then heading back out to the parking lot. She thought of a night in her junior year of high school. She and her date had parked on an empty street. She could still feel the sensation of his fumbling hands exploring her body; his lack of guile and barely contained excitement were what forced her to give in—at least in part. He was not someone that she particularly liked. But he was there, and he was a nice fellow, and she had so wanted to experience some of the things that were forever being talked about at school, and so she let his hands wander, discovering that the benefits were pleasing.
When he tried to pull off her underwear was when she realized the necessity of stopping, a moral necessity, to be certain, one that upon later reflection seemed silly. She remembered a frightening moment when she resisted, and he resisted her and she recognized then how much stronger he was. She could still feel in her memory the sudden sensation of force that gripped her and the awful helplessness that penetrated her at that moment. She shivered at the thought. This had made a great impression, the instantaneous fear and terror that she was weak and that she could be forced. But when she gasped out a panicked “No!” he’d honored that request, his muscles slackening suddenly. Her gratitude had been boundless. Six weeks later, prepared in her mind, she’d let him continue. It had been alternately painful and exhilarating, and she found that memory oddly comforting. She wondered where he was now. She hoped he was happy.
Jeffers reached the car and opened her door. “We’ll put them in the back,” he said.
Her memory fled and she handed him the equipment bag and her vest, which he stowed in the trunk.
“Get in and wait,” he said. She noted that the iron edge had returned to his voice.
She did as he said. Her mind raced about her, envisioning the two young women and what was about to happen. She shut it down, forcing thoughts from her head. I can think of nothing, she said to herself. Nothing surrounds me. She sat in the car and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate completely on the distant noises from the racetrack, letting the sounds fill her and exclude all else.
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
She looked up, opening her eyes quickly, and the sunlight blinded her.
“Shall we jump in the back?”
“If you don’t mind,” she heard Jeffers’ voice. “It’s a bit cramped. Sorry.”
“Oh, no problem. My boyfriend has a Firebird, which is pretty much the same, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the back seat . . .” Both Vicki and Sandi laughed. “I didn’t mean it quite that way,” said Vicki. “Anyway, boy, is he gonna be surprised!”
The two women squeezed in the back. They were flushed and excited, giggling and laughing, at the limit of control.
Jeffers swung into his seat. “I know a little park, almost a forest really, not too far from here. We’ll drive over, take a few shots in a nice, idyllic location, then Boswell and I will drop you back here, okay?”
“Sounds great,” said Vicki.
“Okay by me, just as long as we’re back by six.”
“No problem,” said Jeffers.
The women laughed again.
Jeffers steered the car out of the raceway area.
Anne Hampton’s mind screamed at the two women: Why don’t you ask! Ask how he just happens to know of a deserted park! How does he just happen to know exactly where he’s going? He’s mapped it out before!
She said nothing.
Jeffers broke her silence. “Keep your notepad handy,” he said softly to her. Her hand shot out instantly for a pad and pen. Then he raised his voice into a gregarious singsong. “Now I don’t want you gals to be nervous, this will be pretty tame stuff, really. But I got to ask—you’re both over eighteen, right?”
“I’m nineteen,” said Sandi, “and Vicki’s twenty.”
“Not till next week!”
“Hey,” said Jeffers. “Well, happy birthday a week early, then. Let’s see if we can’t make the birthday something special to celebrate, okay?”
“You bet!”
“Mr. Corona,” Sandi asked tentatively, “I don’t want to intrude or, I don’t know . . .”
“Go ahead,” said Jeffers in as good-natured a voice as possible. “What’s on y
our mind?”
“Does Playboy pay for the pictures they use?”
Jeffers laughed.
“Of course! You don’t think we’d put you through the drudgery of a photo session without paying, do you? A photo session is hard work. There’s makeup and posing, and high-intensity lights, and, you know, something always goes wrong. To get one picture suitable for the magazine can sometimes take hours. The usual rate, I think, at least the last time I did this, was a thousand dollars a session . . .”
“Wow! What I could do with that!”
“But this is kinda informal,” Jeffers continued. “I don’t think the magazine will pay more than a couple of hundred bucks for your work this afternoon.”
“We’re gonna get paid! Fantastic!”
The two women started talking excitedly between themselves. Anne Hampton sat blindly in front. Jeffers spoke to her quietly: “Boswell, please make an effort to get this down.” His voice was like blackness crawling over her.
Then, with fake cheer, he said briskly, “Almost there!”
He was driving into a park.
“I know just the right spot,” he said.
“Boy!” gushed Vicki or Sandi from the back seat, Anne Hampton wasn’t certain which, but she got the words down anyway. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”
Think of nothing, she told herself. Do exactly what you’re told. Just stay alive.
“Here we are,” said Jeffers. “Now, I know this little spot . . .”
Anne Hampton saw they were entering a wooded area, staying on a small roadway that cut between the shadows thrown by the leafy overhanging branches. There was a brown National Parks Service sign which said the park was open only from dawn to dusk. She saw that they passed up a large gravel parking area, continuing on into the center of the forest. They drove what she guessed was another half mile, then turned onto a dirt secondary road which they followed for several bumpy minutes until they reached a bend where the trees dropped back sharply so that a brief space was plunged into bright sunlight. There was a single chain stretched loosely from one side of the dusty brown trail to the other and another small sign that read, authorized persons only beyond this point.
The Traveler Page 38