He pointed to a drying print hanging on the drip line.
“Oh my God,” she said.
The picture showed Dean taking a picture of himself in the mirror. It was a reflection of him, head bent down, looking into his Brownie box camera. In front of his chest, inches away from the camera, hovered the black gerbil.
Dean had almost accepted his fate—a death sentence—but Carol hadn’t.
“Maybe it’s just a fluke,” she said. “We don’t know this foretells anything.”
“Maybe, but I got an appointment with Jason just in case.”
Jason Phillips was the attorney who had drawn up their wills.
“Let me use the camera and take a picture of you,” Carol said. “Just to make sure.”
Dean didn’t want to, but the faster Carol accepted his death, the better. Then they could plan things out, spend some time with James and the grandkids. God, why did this have to happen now. Dean wasn’t old, not even sixty. When you were a kid, fifty was ancient, but in your fifties you weren’t old until you hit eighty, maybe ninety.
He explained how to use the Brownie. “Hold the camera at waist level. Hold your breath while you take the picture.” She took several shots of him, exposing just a few frames on the roll of 620 film, but it didn’t matter. He’d develop what he had, wasting the extra.
Dean put the darkroom curtains back up. The brace holding the inside curtain rod had ripped from the wall, leaving a hole in the sheetrock. He attached it a couple inches above the original spot. Then he developed the film, setting the empty spool aside to wind fresh film onto. Why? Just habit.
An hour later, after the negative had dried, Dean examined the film with a magnifying glass. He couldn’t see any anomalies in the negative so went through the process of producing prints. Once complete, he grabbed the wet prints, still dripping, and left the darkroom.
Carol sat on the bed in the spare bedroom. She stood as Dean approached.
“Nothing.” He handed her the prints.
She took the photos, examined them, then looked at him, eyes questioning.
“I don’t know what it means,” he said. “Maybe I have to be the one to take the photos?”
She took his hand in hers. “I think this is a good sign.”
They sat on the bed together, still holding hands. Quiet for a moment.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s go to the animal shelter. Both of us take photographs of animals about to be put down. If this gerbil is going to appear again, it’ll be on those pictures. We’ll see if it shows up for both of us.”
He flung her hand from him and stood. “Would you give it a rest? I’m as good as dead. The quicker you accept it, the better.” He stormed from the room.
In retrospect, Carol’s idea hadn’t been bad. Especially if it shut her up and got her to accept things. But Dean didn’t want to drive anywhere. What if he died in a car accident? He was a great driver, but you can’t control the other guy on the road.
She called the dog pound and made some excuse about doing a flyer for the Humane Society. “To raise neighborhood awareness,” Carol had said. The Animal Shelter said they’d be glad to have them.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Carol asked, as they went into the garage to leave.
“Hell no.” Behind the wheel he’d have some control.
Dean triple-head-checked while backing out of the driveway. He planned on driving as safely as possible.
“How do you want to work it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Taking the pictures. Maybe if we alternate, you take one then I take one.”
“That’s got to be the stupidest idea you’ve ever had. I don’t have all day to switch off and on with you. I’ll take the first half of the roll, you take the second half.”
“Well you don’t have to get all huffy.”
He glared at her, realized his eyes were off the road, and focused forward again.
“Maybe afterward we can grab a bite to eat,” she said. “Sylvia Bennet said that new steak place, Shenanigans, has the tastiest prime rib she’s ever had.”
Dean grunted. Would she ever stop talking? He tuned her out.
There was so much he still wanted to do. Run a marathon for instance. Funny, since he was so out of shape a flight of stairs made him breathe hard, but the idea had been in the back of his mind for years. Someday he’d get fit, maybe run a marathon.
Dean never had made a bucket list. He should have. He should have done lots of things.
A cigarette sounded good. He pulled into a 7-11.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He got out of the car, ignoring her. Inside, he asked for a pack of Marlboro Reds and snagged a disposable lighter.
“That’ll be $9.72,” the cashier said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Dean said.
The cashier shrugged. Dean tossed a ten on the counter and didn’t wait for change. The pack was open, a lit cigarette in his mouth, before he got back to the car.
He stood in front of the car and inhaled deeply. Lightheadedness washed over him. Smoking was a friend who never let you down. Carol glowered at him through the windshield.
He got into the car and cracked the window to let the smoke out.
“Dean Alan Weathers, you should not be smoking. Put that out now.”
He ignored her and backed out of the parking space.
“What has it been, fifteen years since you quit?”
He ignored her and merged into traffic.
“It’s a dirty habit and not very healthy!”
He looked at her, squinting one eye in the curling smoke. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and die of cancer.”
That shut her up.
Behind the counter at the animal shelter a teen-age boy with a mop of greasy hair, looked up from a Rolling Stone magazine.
“We’re here to take some pictures of your animals,” Dean said.
“Cool. Ah, which ones?”
“The ones scheduled to be put to sleep.”
“Oh man, I don’t know. I’m the only one here now and, uh, I don’t know.”
“I talked to a Shirley,” Carol said. “She said it would be quite alright.”
“Well, uh, she’s at lunch and …” He trailed off, staring at the space between Dean and Carol, as if an invisible third person stood between them. After a moment he continued. “Whatever, follow me.”
He grabbed a clipboard and led them through a wooden door with a tiny rectangle window in it, into a large room with a concrete floor. Wire cages lined the left. Each cage spanned floor to ceiling and all but the front cage contained one or more dogs. Along the room’s right side extended a metal wash table merging into large utility sink with overhead cabinets. Stacked next to the sink were several smaller kennels, the plastic kind people use for traveling their pets.
The boy looked at the clipboard. “There’s the sad little dudes. The ones at the end, numbers 348, 349 and 352 need rescuing before tomorrow night or —” He made a motion across his throat like a knife cutting and made a squelching sound.
Several dogs barked. The smaller ones yipped. Dean walked past the boy and examined the dogs. There were labs, black and yellow, and a shepherd and collie, a schnauzer and hound, but most were mutts. Over a dozen dogs of different colors and sizes, each wore a collar with a black number written on a white tag. Most of the dogs seemed somber, with big round sad eyes, as if aware of their fate.
“You want cats they’re through that door.” He pointed to a door next to the sink. “You’re not supposed to be back here without someone present, but I kinda have to hang out in front in case anybody comes in. If Shirley said it’s okay …” He trailed off again.
“She said it was fine. Thanks,” Carol said.
Dean focused his camera on the dogs.
“No prob. Whoa! Awesome camera, man. You build that yourself?”
Dean glared at the boy. “You can’t build these. It’s a classic
.”
The boy bobbed his head up and down, goofy grin on his face. “Nice.”
Dean looked back into the camera. “I’ll shoot the dogs here, Carol. Then a few cats. Then you do the same.”
“I gotta go out front in case the warden comes back,” the boy said. “Need anything just holler.” He disappeared through the door.
Carol approached Dean, put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know you’re stressed. I don’t want to fight.”
Dean looked at her. “Me either.” He smiled. He looked past her and his lips curved downward.
“What?” Carol looked around.
The teenage boy stared at them through the small window in the door, nose pressed against the glass, one eye filled up most of the space. When he saw Dean and Carol looking, he removed his face from the window and showed them his fist, giving them the thumbs-up sign.
Dean and Carol photographed the animals and drove back home in silence, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. Once home, Dean rushed to the dark room to develop the film. Carol wanted to join him, but he explained it’d be too crowded. So she waited, sitting on the spare bedroom’s bed, chewing her nails.
After almost an hour, Dean burst through the darkroom curtains, carrying several negative strips in one hand and magnifying glass in the other. “I didn’t do any prints. Thought you’d be curious.”
He sat on the bed next to her, held a negative up to the light, the magnifying glass in front of the second frame. “This is one I took. See the white dot next to this dog?”
Carol squinted. “Not really. I need to get my glasses.”
“It’s there, trust me.” He fished through the negatives, pulled out another one, and held the magnifying glass over the first frame. “This one you took. Same dog. Same white dot.”
“I thought the death gerbil was black.”
Dean sighed. “These are negatives. Point is, it shows up for both you and me.”
“What does it mean?”
“I think I’m safe. The gerbil wasn’t in the last photo you took of me. I want to try another test, in front of the mirror like the first time.”
He grabbed the Brownie off the spare bedroom dresser, stood in front of the full-length mirror, and took several quick shots.
Carol held out her hand for the camera. “Let me.”
“Good idea.” He handed her the camera.
She took pictures of herself in front of the mirror.
He took the camera. “Okay, I’ll make this as quick as I can.” He disappeared into the dark room.
She sat on the bed and laid back. The minutes ticked slowly by. After thirty minutes, which seemed like two hours, she went to the darkroom curtain. “Dean?”
“What?” he hollered from inside.
“How’s it going?”
“I’m making prints just to be sure.”
“Do you see the gerbil?”
“I said I’m making prints.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes.”
“You hungry?” she asked. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“I could eat.”
“I’ll make us a sandwich.”
Carol had just finished making two sandwiches, ham and swiss on wheat, when she heard the crash. It sounded like a sledge hammer going through a window. She ran down the hallway to the spare bedroom. Halfway there she heard another crash. She stopped just inside the door.
Dean stood panting, hair wild, face red. On the floor in front of the shattered mirror was the Brownie camera. Dean picked up the camera, a broken box now almost in two pieces, and hurled it at the broken mirror.
“What’s wrong?”
Dean looked at her, mouth moving but no sound came out.
“Oh my God, Dean, are you okay?”
He wagged his head back and forth, pointed to the dresser and rasped out one word. “Look.”
Carol went to the dresser. On top of it lay several fresh prints. With mounting horror she looked at the topmost picture. It showed Dean and the camera and a little black gerbil floating in front of Dean’s chest. The next one also showed Dean and the camera and the gerbil. The next photo caused her to gasp. It was her, looking down through the camera, and the gerbil sitting on top of it. The gerbil was in her photos now. The last photo also showed her and the gerbil, but this time gerbil was to the camera’s right.
She looked at Dean, at a loss for something to say.
She looked at the Brownie, laying in pieces on the floor. Great job Dean, she thought, destroying the camera. We’re dead. It’s dead. She laughed. The camera is dead.
“What the hell is so funny?” Dean asked.
“We had it wrong,” she said. “We’re not going to die. The gerbil appeared in pictures with the camera, not in the ones of you by yourself. The gerbil wasn’t telling us we were going to die, it was indicating the camera was going to die.”
The Train Bandits
James Thackeray scooted his chair back from the table. “Interesting, Mr. Bell. Benjamin Franklin said ‘Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events’ but your story about Giuoco Piano really takes things to a whole new level.”
Thackeray stood, using his cane to help himself up. As he spoke, he ambled over to the open window. He stuck his head outside and inhaled, catching a slight whiff from the rose bushes below. He sighed, lamenting the passage of years; the sense of smell is one of many things which diminish with age.
“Before the next story, let me share a small discovery.” He stepped back from the window and, using the cane’s tip, pulled the curtain aside, revealing a boy no older than thirteen. The boy stepped forward, his eyes darting around the room.
Those seated at the table looked as startled as the boy.
Thackeray pointed at the boy with his cane. “You’re Widow Hennessey’s son.”
The boy crossed his arms over his chest. “Billy’s my name.”
Thackeray hobbled back toward the table. “Son, you neglected to note the curtain’s length. Your dirty, scuffed loafers stood out like a beacon, advertising your presence. You also failed to realize any movement made behind the curtain is magnified—you brush the bottom and the entire curtain moves. Had you stayed perched on the stepladder outside the window, you may have remained undetected indefinitely.”
Billy didn’t reply.
Thackeray settled into his chair. “Rogers,” he called out.
Rogers stepped forward, appearing almost magically, and bowed slightly. Perhaps the Majordomo had been there all along, unnoticed until needed.
“Please have our young interloper escorted out.”
“I got a story,” Billy said to save himself.
As one, all heads turned to the boy.
“I been listening to all yours and I got one even better.”
“Very well. But I warn you, should your story be either juvenile or maudlin, I’ll have my man Rogers send you out the window whence you came, headfirst.”
This is the story of the last time I thought I’d ever see my best friend, Duffy.
It was last summer when me and Duffy Jenkins went fishing over to Trundle Creek. This was when I lived in Warner’s Crest. It’s in Washington State. The town’s so small it only gots two buildings. The Sheriff and Post Office share one and Sanfordson’s Mercantile is the other. You can get just about anything you need at Sanfordson’s and if they don’t have it they can order it from Spokane and get it on the next week’s shipment. The sign coming into town says “Welcome to Warner’s Crest” on both sides so you can see it either direction you’re coming from.
It was one of those lazy summer days where time moves slower than molasses. If you don’t have nothing to do, you can sit and relax for hours. We sat on the Mill Road Bridge over the creek, our legs dangled over the side, and our fishing line dangled between our legs. The fish weren’t even nibbling. I didn’t care, but I think Duffy was getting a mite itchy for some action.
&
nbsp; “Wanna play Injun?” Duffy asked.
“And do what?” Playing Injun meant either tracking or scouting.
Duffy had this grin that was one part trouble and two parts fun. I call it his “shit-eater.” When he used this grin, you knew an adventure was coming. He flashed his shit-eater at me, saying “My old man says he saw a grizzly in the woods north of the creek.”
“Ain’t no grizzlies here. Brown bears, maybe a few black.”
Something I got to tell you about Duffy. A body couldn’t ask for a better friend. He was the best friend I’ll probably ever have, but he had it rough. His old man distilled fruit, mostly apples, to make liquor. He drank most of it but sold some to make money to buy more apples. Duffy’s old man was a mean drunk. Duffy was always coming to school looking like he had played chicken with a locomotive—and lost. One time he had a broken nose, a broken arm, and an eye so purple and swelled up there weren’t nothing but a slit for him to look through. He said he fell down the cellar stairs. Nobody believed him, but nobody said nothing about it. What a person did to their kid, as long as they didn’t kill them, was their own business.
Duffy’s brother, J.J., weren’t no better than his old man. J.J. was a thief and spent some time in county lockup down to Spokane. His mom wasn’t so bad, but when his old man was on a bender, which was most days, she’d go stay with her sister in Deer Park, leaving Duffy with his old man and good-for-nothing brother.
So when Duffy said his old man saw a grizzly, I knew there weren’t no truth to it. His old man was probably lit up like Chinese fireworks and seeing all kinds of things that weren’t there.
“Let’s go find the grizzly’s tracks,” Duffy said.
I started bringing in my line, spinning the reel fast so the wet line sent water drops onto my face. Refreshing. “What’ll we do if we find the grizzly? Poke him in the eye with our fishing poles?”
He pulled out his prized possession, his pocket knife. It had two blades, a big one and a small one. Duffy kept it sharp enough to shave with. Of course, neither of us had no whiskers yet.
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