by Julie Weston
“First things first, hmmm? I will mix the chemicals. I have several sets of portrait proofs to do. If you will help me with those, you can use the same chemicals to develop the contact prints and do test prints on these landscapes.”
“I’ll need an apron,” Nellie said. She had hung her coat in a closet at Mr. Levine’s direction. Already anticipating her request, he held out an apron, clean but with stains from chemicals, and too large. He even helped her with the ties so it would cover her dress without dipping into the trays when she began the print process. She felt awkward as he asked her to lift her arms so he could circle her waist and tie the ends in back.
They worked side by side, Mr. Levine mixing the developer, Nellie mixing the hypo with water to make the fixer. She was so happy to be in a darkroom again, she hummed a quiet ditty, “Over There,” not realizing it until he commented, “Not something you had to do, was it?”
She looked up, not understanding.
“Go to the war,” he added. “You were humming ‘Over There.’ I did go. And ever since, I have been limited in the amount of time I can stay in my darkroom.” Regret etched his voice, although he continued to measure and pour. “I did not think I was gassed. I never had trouble until I returned to the darkroom.” He wound the metronome and set it near the enlarger.
“Then you are generous to help me with my photographs.”
“Not at all. I like the darkroom work best of all. You give me an opportunity to do something other than portraits.”
Nell was careful not to hum anymore.
“The print paper is in the box.” He had pulled from a lower shelf a flat board with a glass top, which he cleaned. Then he brushed the first negative to remove any pieces of lint or dust. “Ready?” he asked. Nell nodded. With a light touch, he set the metronome tocking so they could time the processes, then pulled the string on the white light and they in were absolute dark. He turned another switch and red light filled the room.
From the paper box, Nell removed a piece, slightly larger than the 4×5 negative itself, and handed it to Mr. Levine. He placed the paper, emulsion side up, on the board after lifting up the glass, then positioned the negative, emulsion side down, on the paper and closed the glass. He placed the whole thing on the counter, under where the light in the enlarger would aim, and turned on the enlarger light. It lit the contact board and glass. With a separate piece of paper, he covered three-quarters of the negative; after ten tocks, he moved the paper back to cover only half; after another ten tocks, he moved the paper so three-quarters of the negative was lit, and then after a final ten tocks removed the paper all together and turned off the enlarger light. The result was a test print, so they could gauge how long to leave the light on the combined negative and paper to get the best straight print. He opened the glass and handed Nellie the paper. She turned and placed it in the developer tray and used her hands to agitate the liquid.
“Those of us at home during the war didn’t know how much you suffered in Europe. We could do so little.” Nell’s only war effort had been knitting socks and scarves once a week at Mrs. Scotto’s house.
“I am much better,” he said. “Look! The magic is working once again.”
The first time she had seen an image appear on paper, the process did seem magical to her. The first time and every time. She watched as she soaked the blank paper in developer, pressing the sheet back and forth. Soon, the image began to appear and grew recognizable even though the print had stripes of different shades of development: the full moon, the dark line of trees, the flat log structure of the Last Chance Ranch, the lighter river rock on the chimney, and the streaks. They were stars moving, not bad film. Nellie held her breath.
Over her shoulder, Mr. Levine, too, watched as if mesmerized by the phenomenon of silver particles absorbing chemicals to reflect a picture. They both seemed touched by how a world emerged from blank paper. “Most unusual, Miss Burns.”
From the developing tray, Nellie picked up the print with tongs and dipped it in the stop bath. Then she moved it to the fixer and again agitated the liquid, this time lifting the tray up and down by a corner so the liquid sloshed back and forth. When she moved the photo to the water bath, she turned to the photographer. “Let’s do the other test print. This is better than I expected.” As he turned on the white light, she took a deep breath and said, “And I have a third negative, taken the same night. It’s a portrait . . . of sorts.” She didn’t look at Mr. Levine, but turned to her pack near the door, slipping the third negative from a side pocket. “I took it from the envelope yesterday when you answered the telephone. This one, I think, is the reason the negatives were stolen.”
“Well,” he said. She handed the negative to him and he held it up to the light. His eyes widened, but he said, “Let us do the other landscape first.” With Nellie’s assistance, he began the process all over again.
When all three test prints were hanging from clothespins on a string, Nellie helped develop one set of proofs of a man standing with his foot on the running board of a shiny new Stutz Bearcat roadster. With the white light on, they studied the test prints of Nell’s negatives and decided the time for the final contact on each would be thirty seconds.
Mr. Levine sighed and began removing his own apron. “I must return to fresher air. Mr. Campbell is due any moment, too. When you finish the contact prints on your three negatives, do you want to assist me with his portrait? He is a crusty old son-of-a-gun.”
Nellie was honored he would ask, particularly after her subterfuge, but she truly wanted to stay in the darkroom, making larger prints of the moonshadows and the dead man for her own use, along with developing the negatives of her daylight efforts. Even working on a proof set for Mr. Levine sounded more exciting than taking another portrait. She had grown weary of shuttling fifteen or more people a day through the studios in Chicago like cattle through chutes into the meat plants. Working with Mr. Levine had also been a nice change from the factory mentality in the Scotto Studios. Although this photographer in Twin Falls had been impressed with the name, Nellie no longer was. Proximity had bred contempt after a while, along with low pay and long hours. Still, her boss had given her a profession. She sighed too.
“Come out and rest a bit,” Mr. Levine said. “We can do more work after he leaves.” A bell rang in the front reception area. “That’ll be him.”
But it wasn’t. It was Sammy, demanding his photos. Nell could hear the Chinese singsong all the way into the darkroom. The test prints were dry enough to handle, so she took them down. She did not want to turn over the print of the dead man, or any of them, and the prints themselves weren’t ready anyway. Under no circumstances would she release the negatives again. Loud voices came from beyond the door. Footsteps trod on the wood floor, nearing the room.
“You cannot go in there or you will ruin the negatives. Then you will have nothing.” Mr. Levine’s voice rang loudly. “And the door is locked.” Nellie turned the lock immediately.
For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then the handle jiggled and a shoe kicked at the lower panel so hard, she was afraid it would splinter. More loud voices and then silence. She decided to stay where she was. While she worked on the second contact print, she was startled by bumps and a loud thud that shook the floor, followed by a crash and glass shattering. Then the handle of the darkroom twisted, followed by a slow hammer on the door, almost like the metronome tocks. Nellie had an urge to pound back, but did not. She could feel her heart beat like a tom-tom and hoped the man on the other side couldn’t hear it. Her presence in the darkroom was not known by Sammy. But what if Mr. Levine had been hurt trying to protect her?
CHAPTER 10
The hammering stopped. Nellie held her breath and placed her ear to the door. Nothing. Was Sammy on the other side doing the same thing, their heads separated only by the quarter-inch panel? She waited and waited some more. Which of them had more patience? She had to breathe, so she turned her head and faced the contact prints.
The moonshadows on the landscape calmed her and her heart slowed. With the photos no more than four inches from her nose, she studied them, willing herself to look at each detail—the gradations of black and white and gray, the rock pattern of the chimney, the trees beyond, the shadow that obscured two white tree trunks. Perplexed, she loosened the clothespin and held the photo in her hand. She didn’t remember a shadow on the trees.
The bell rang again. And again. What in the world was happening?
“Hullo? Where are you, dagnabbit?” Brring, brring. “I reckon I’m late, but you were supposed to be here. Hullo!!”
Nellie unlocked the door, stepped outside the darkroom to an empty room, closed the door behind her, and hurried to the front. On her way, she almost fell over a bundle on the floor. Only it wasn’t a bundle, it was Mr. Levine. “Oh no!” She knelt and turned him toward her. One of the lights had fallen and the bulb was smashed. Mr. Levine had landed on the glass and his face was covered with blood, blood that dripped and congealed on her hands as it had on the floor. “Mr. Levine!” Her cry elicited no response.
“Where did you come from? What did you do to him?” A man as large as any she had ever seen stooped down to her level. His hair was white and bushy, his mustache thick with gray, and his eyes, almost buried in wrinkles, were periwinkle blue in a face tanned like leather. Their bright color stunned her for a moment.
“I didn’t do—”
“Is he dead?” The man’s Scot accent identified him to Nellie. “Did you kill him?”
“I don’t—”
Mr. Campbell grabbed her hand. She was still aghast at all the blood. With fingers as thick as ropes on a boat, the man felt at Mr. Levine’s neck. “Still alive.” He pulled a large white handkerchief from his back pocket and began wiping off the blood. “Pick up the telephone, Lassie, and tell the operator we need a doctor. Pronto.”
“But my hands—”
“Do it!” Mr. Campbell roared at her.
While Nellie searched for the telephone, finally finding it in a hall between the portrait studio and what might have been another studio, Mr. Campbell took two cushions from the chairs in the reception area and placed them under Mr. Levine’s feet and legs, raising them higher than the photographer’s head, and then he leaned over the body. She watched his back as she cranked the handle and an operator came on. “Jacob, honey, what can I do for you today?” A distinct southern accent spoke words as slowly as the proverbial molasses in winter.
“Mr. Levine is hurt. We need a doctor right away!” Nellie could hardly keep a shake out of her voice. “His face is cut all over. There’s blood everywhere.” She wiped her hand on her apron. Blood had even caught under her fingernails, which she kept purposely short so chemicals wouldn’t rest there. “Hurry!” She rang off, opened the door to the darkroom, pulled a towel off a hook, and sped to help Mr. Campbell.
“Goddamn mess,” he scowled. “That glass cut his lip, his nose.” Red lines seeped in a dozen places and she turned her head. He grabbed the towel from Nellie and applied it to Mr. Levine’s face. “You do this, Lassie?”
“No! No—” Nellie sank to her knees beside the two. She leaned over Mr. Levine, thinking she should touch him, smooth the red lines away.
“Get me some ice. See if there’s a box in the kitchen back thataway.” He jerked his head in the direction Nellie had come from. “Gotta stop this blood.”
A kitchen—maybe that was the other door. Nellie ran back and found a kitchen that appeared as neat and tidy as the darkroom. She opened the icebox, then needed a pick to chop off some ice. One drawer after another, she jerked open, scattering utensils and dishcloths and hot pads all over the floor. She found a pick and jabbed at the ice until several chunks fell off. She gathered them in her bloody apron and scurried back to drop them by Mr. Campbell’s hands. One, scarred and battered, held Mr. Levine’s head and with the other he grabbed a chunk of ice and applied it to the bleeding lips.
The front door slammed open against the wall and another man hurried in, carrying a leather bag. He, too, knelt by the unconscious man on the floor and pulled gauze pads out of his bag. “Here, hold these—one to his nose and one to his lips,” he instructed Mr. Campbell. The doctor took a bottle labeled “Alcohol” from his bag and poured it over the cuts, as Mr. Campbell slowly moved the pads away.
“My gawd, he lost so much blood,” Mr. Campbell said. “More blood’n a sheep, I’d say. Look at this towel and that girl’s apron!”
The doctor gave quiet orders, including a call to the operator again to summon an ambulance from the hospital. The slow southern voice said she had already asked for one and wanted to know how Mr. Levine was. Nellie wasn’t certain she should tell what happened, so just hung up. When the ambulance came, the doctor accompanied Mr. Levine on a stretcher out to it and wouldn’t let Nellie or Mr. Campbell climb in. The emergency auto wheeled away, its siren wailing, echoing the sound in Nellie’s head.
Mr. Campbell and she entered the studio again. “All right, Lassie, what went on here?”
Nellie sat down by the table where just yesterday she had first seen Mr. Levine. Again, she wiped her hands on her apron, but the blood was dried and burgundy red now. Flecks dropped onto the carpet. For the first time, she felt dizzy.
“Could I have some water?” She leaned over to rest her head on the table. It must have scared Mr. Campbell, as he hurried off, calling back, “Don’t faint now. Don’t faint. Can’t handle a fainting woman.”
What did happen? There they’d been, working together in the darkroom. An argument in the reception area and then Mr. Levine was lying on the floor. Did the loud voices happen before or after all the pounding on the darkroom door? She couldn’t remember the sequence of sounds. Nellie stood up and tiptoed to the door of the portrait room. She heard Mr. Campbell banging cupboards. With luck, she could get the negatives into her pack and hide the prints in the drying blotters, pushed as far back as she could get them, for later retrieval. She hurried into the darkroom.
When Mr. Campbell returned with a glass full of water, she was in place again at the table, and felt much better. He plopped down and looked as if he might expire on the spot. “You’d better drink this instead of me,” she said, offering him the glass.
“I sure as hell need something stronger than that!” He closed his eyes and she felt as if two blue spotlights had been turned off. After a minute, he said, “Any alcohol in those chemicals of his?” It might have been a different man entirely asking that question. The voice was low and tired and old. She realized for the first time that he was probably sixty years or more, and that his tanned leather look had washed out to a gaunt beige. “Never could stand it when the lambs were slaughtered,” he added. “Now wool, that’s another thing. Undressing those sheep with shears and sending them out naked as jays to grow another crop felt good.” He seemed to be seeing all this activity behind his closed lids, lids that were veined and white. A smile hovered on his lips. “Too bad the bottom dropped out of the wool market when it did.” He opened his eyes. Nellie felt as if she were pinned to her chair by their intensity.
“Do you want me to look for—”
“Where were you when Jake there got slammed down on the glass?” He took his index finger and mimicked a knife across his own throat. “May as well answer me. The police are going to want to know where you fit into this deal.”
“I was in the darkroom—”
“Hiding from Jake or from the man that caused that mess?”
“No, I was—” This time, she was interrupted by the door opening and three policemen rushing into the room.
“Jake’ll be glad to know he merited the whole damn Twin Falls Police Department,” Mr. Campbell said, “about an hour too late.”
The tallest one reported Jake was conscious and bandaged and in bed with ice packs on his face. He had sent them over to make sure Miss Burns was all right. He hadn’t seen his assailant, had no idea what happened, but worried that someone was lurking outside and wa
iting for his guest to come out of the darkroom. Then he turned to Nellie, “Did you see what happened?”
“She was crouched over the man when I come into the room,” Mr. Campbell said. “But I didn’t see a bludgeon.”
Nellie looked at Mr. Campbell. Was he implying that she had hurt Mr. Levine? Her expression must have conveyed her shock at such a suggestion.
“I didn’t mean you done it, Lassie, but you damn well could have!”
“I was in the darkroom,” she said to the tall policeman. He looked like a cowboy dressed up in someone’s idea of what a police uniform should be. So did the others. Their shirts were dark blue, and so were their pants, but any uniformity ended there. Two wore sheepskin coats and the tall one standing by her wore a canvas coat that reached to the tops of his boots. All three wore hats—no, Stetsons, she remembered. “Mr. Levine had left the darkroom to meet Mr. Campbell, and I thought I heard him arrive and some bumping around in the portrait room there.” She pointed to the room and saw that the position of the remaining light had changed. It had been raised to focus light on the face of a tall person. She turned back to Mr. Campbell.
“You could have done it, too. Maybe you did it while he was adjusting the light.” Her first thought had been to retaliate for suggesting she had hurt Mr. Levine, but as she pointed out the height of the lamp, she realized it might be true. And judging from the fury that dashed across his face, she was afraid it was and a cold chill grabbed her.