Boy

by Blake Nelson

  The voice on the loudspeaker came on again: “THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. YOU ARE NOW GUILTY OF CRIMINAL TRESPASS. IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE ARRESTED, LEAVE THE AREA NOW.”

  Nobody was leaving, I noticed. A tall white man, who looked like a college professor, lifted up a little girl and yelled something toward the police. Other people started to yell. A dozen older black women came forward from the back. They had a banner from their church, which they held stretched out in front of them. Someone started to sing. Other people picked it up. Within a few seconds the whole square was vibrating with the beautiful hum of human voices.

  Richie was shooting constantly. He was moving through the crowd, searching out the best angles, the most interesting faces. I was just standing there, in awe of the situation.

  And then everything stopped. The singing, the yelling, the loudspeaker. The entire street went so quiet you could hear the police horse’s shoes clacking on the pavement.

  And then someone screamed.

  And then another sound, a kind of low rumble. It sounded like the patter of rain, but bigger, heavier. It was the police in their boots and their horses. They were coming at us. They were charging the crowd.

  39

  I got knocked down immediately. That’s how bewildered I was. But that was good because the minute I hit the ground I woke up. I scrambled to my feet. People were sprinting past me. I could hear things flying through the air, metallic pops. A very bright flash exploded to my right, scattering the crowd and adding to the chaos. People fell down. Other people helped them up. I managed to stop running and lift my camera to my face. But someone crashed into me, banging the Canon into the bridge of my nose. The flow of fleeing people drove me back. Someone grabbed the strap of my carry bag and actually jerked me backward. And then I got my first whiff of the tear gas, which scalded my throat and chest like burning gasoline.

  It was too late for the tennis towel. The gas was already on my face. It felt like a swarm of hornets had landed in my eyes. I ran wildly, blindly toward the back of the square. I fell over someone and then collided with another photojournalist, who unlike me, had set his feet and was carefully shooting the scene behind us. I tripped and found myself on the ground again, rolling, stumbling, crawling on all fours.

  I got to my feet and ran, despite the burning in my eyes and lungs. When I got to the edge of the square, I cut down a side street. But the way was blocked. I turned and followed some other people, running down a different street, which led to an empty parking lot. There, a kind of emergency sanctuary had been established. There were tables and chairs and stacks of water bottles. People were pouring water on each other’s faces. They were getting first aid.

  I found myself waving at a middle-aged woman, begging her to squirt my face, which she did. I dug out my tennis towel and began dabbing at my hot skin. My cheeks and eyelids felt like they had been singed. My face stung so badly, I couldn’t touch it, except with the wet towel.

  As my vision cleared, I could see the aid givers better. They were volunteers, it looked like. They had white handkerchiefs tied around their upper arms. Suddenly, everyone began yelling that we had to move on. People hurried away, running farther from the square. I started to run too, but then something possessed me and I stopped and slipped into a doorway. Don’t run, a voice said in my head. Stop running.

  • • •

  I moved as far back into the doorway as I could. A dozen cops came into the parking lot area, but only the volunteers remained, and a few of the protesters who were still recovering from the tear gas. The cops left them alone and went back toward the square. When they were gone, I crept back into the street and carefully moved forward until I stood at the edge of the square again. In the floodlights, you could see the tear gas drifting through the air. The main group of protesters were gone, but I could still see dark figures running among the trees. I saw someone pick up a tear-gas canister and throw it back toward the police. I looked farther to my right and spotted a serious skirmish going on between several cops and one of the anarchist kids. The kid wore a scarf and ski goggles. The cops hit him so hard on the side of the head the ski goggles flew off. When he crumpled to the ground, they swarmed over him, beating him with their clubs.

  Also, there were photographers, lots of them. They were advancing, retreating, hovering around the action like referees at a UFC fight. These were not local people. You could tell by their clothes, their equipment, their total fearlessness. One guy, screaming in a foreign language, got into a shoving match with one of the cops. The cop tried to wrestle him to the ground. The guy fought him off. Then two more cops jumped in and rode him to the ground, slamming his camera into the concrete and shattering his lenses in a crush of glass and plastic.

  I had to get out there. Take one good picture, said that same voice in my head. Apparently, this was some new part of me, which was way braver than I was.

  But maybe I could get something. I looked out over the square. What was happening? I remembered the church ladies with the banner. What had happened to them? I scanned the area and eventually spotted their banner on the ground in the central part of the square. Looking closer, I saw the ladies themselves, partially obscured behind a statue. They were sitting in a row, their hands bound behind their backs. A couple cops were standing there too. I checked my Canon. Despite being bounced off the concrete several times, it was still fully juiced, still functional, still ready to go.

  Take one good picture, said the voice again.

  I ran into the square. It was surreal out there now. There were no sides, no boundaries. Cops ran one way and then another. Other people walked through the chaos as if nothing were happening. There were pops and flashes and smoke and yelling. The anarchist kids were the ones still fighting. They threw bottles at the police, then sprinted away. They were good at it. You suspected they did this all the time. For them, this was another day at the office.

  But they weren’t the story. The church ladies were the story. I made my way in their direction. I tried to keep my camera as inconspicuous as possible. Since I didn’t have a big zoom lens, I didn’t look like one of the pro guys. And also, my general demeanor separated me from the real photojournalists. They didn’t hesitate. They went for every shot. I was kind of . . . well . . . I was a kid. And I was scared half out of my mind.

  I worked my way across the square until I got close to the statue. Then I made a dash and got behind it, out of sight of the church women and the cops on the other side. Once there, I sat with my back to the base of the statue, in the dark, and caught my breath. I pulled my strap around. I checked the Canon. I put the flash on. Then, gripping it with one hand and my finger on the button, I crawled on my hands and knees toward one end of the statue, easing my way silently around the marble base, until I could see the church women and the police. Nothing was really happening. The policemen were talking on their radios. They looked a little embarrassed, like they weren’t sure what to do with a bunch of middle-aged church ladies.

  The women were sitting on the ground, in a row, their hands secured by plastic ties behind their backs. Another woman lay on her stomach with her face on the ground, her hands and her feet bound behind her, like an animal. In the middle of this was a little girl, about five years old. She was holding on to the arm of one of the seated women, her mother possibly. The girl was sucking her thumb. She was sitting there, huddled against her mother, staring up at the cops and sucking her thumb. That was the shot.

  I didn’t move another inch. I eased the Canon around and lifted it to my still-burning face. I found the girl in my viewfinder. The leg of one of the cops would be in the picture. But that was okay. I activated the flash, which made a slight whirring sound. I had the shot. I lined it up. I gave it that one extra beat, to “let the picture become itself,” as Richie often said. Then I slowly pressed down on the button.

  There was a bright red flash. And that was the last thing I remembered.

  40

  When I opened my eyes, I
was in an ambulance. But the light was too bright. And everything hurt so much. So I closed them again. . . .

  When I opened my eyes a second time, I was lying on a gurney in a hallway somewhere with a big bag of ice on my face. I closed them again. . . .

  When I opened my eyes a third time, I was in a darkened room with a bright light shining in my face. A man was leaning over me, tugging on the skin beside my nose. He wore bifocals and a surgical mask. He was deeply absorbed in doing something to my face.

  “Hello,” he said.

  I didn’t know if I could talk, so I looked up at him.

  “I’m sewing up your face,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  He continued with his work. It was an odd sensation to be “sewn.” He stuck the needle in, pulled it through, pulled it tight, and stuck it in again.

  “Usually we staple these,” he told me, “but yours is in a tricky spot.”

  I blinked my eyes once.

  A nurse was beside him. The doctor wore light green gloves. Most of what he was doing involved my nose, which didn’t feel like it was in its usual spot on my face. I tried to move my mouth. Though my head was completely numb, my mouth seemed to work. I tried to talk: “Ith my nothe broken?”

  “Your nose? I don’t think so. We’re waiting for the X-rays.”

  “What happenth?” I said.

  “You seem to have received a blow of some kind,” said the doctor.

  “Wherth my camera?”

  “We have it,” said the nurse. “It’s here.”

  “Don’t talk,” said the doctor. “Stay still.”

  So I did.

  • • •

  Richie found me. It was light out by then, seven thirty in the morning. I was in a waiting area, in a chair, my head back, an ice pack across my nose, my entire upper body tingling with Novocaine and painkillers.

  Because I was a minor, the hospital needed my parents’ permission to release me. Plus, there were forms and insurance papers I needed to fill out. There was also a bill for $1,276. Someone from the Seattle Police Department was on their way, to take my statement. Richie was the one they explained this to, since I was so drugged up I could barely think.

  We sat there for a while, waiting for all this to happen. Then Richie told the nurse I had to use the restroom. She pointed down the hallway. Richie helped me up and walked me slowly in that direction. When we got to the restroom, Richie squeezed my arm and indicated to me to keep walking. In this way, the two of us shuffled to the end of the hall, around the corner, and out the main entrance. There, in the bright overcast, we slowly made our way down the steps and to the curb, passing the police, the security people, a few nurses smoking cigarettes. Richie waved for a cab. When one pulled up, he eased me inside and got in after me.

  • • •

  So we escaped.

  Richie drove the RAV4 back to Portland, while I lay in the backseat. As the painkillers wore off, my face began to hurt. But at least I could sit up and mumble a few words.

  Eventually my head cleared enough to get out the Canon, which Richie had snagged from the emergency room. It had a big dent in the casing, but otherwise appeared fine. I pushed the power button. The battery was low but it turned on. The viewfinder, which had a thick scratch on it, came to life. I scrolled through the pictures. Had I got the girl sucking her thumb? The last picture was a dark blur. I went backward one shot: another blurry shot, of trees. I went forward: a dark blur. I went back again: a blurry shot of the trees. “Oh God,” I said, letting the Canon fall into my lap. “I didn’t get it.”

  Richie kept driving. When I recovered myself, I lifted the Canon and went through all my shots. I clicked through picture after picture. I hadn’t gotten anything. Not a clear face. Not a protester. Not a cop. Not a single decent photograph. Not one.

  Richie laughed when I told him. “You went through all that and you got nothing?” he said. “You’ll never make that mistake again.”

  • • •

  I looked pretty bad by the time we got home. My nose was green and swollen and I had two black eyes and the bridge of my nose had black threads from the stitches hanging out of it.

  My mother and Henry Oswald were waiting at the house when I got home. Henry was talking about suing the Seattle police, but when Richie explained how we’d fled the hospital, he decided against that. My mother mostly hugged me and thanked Richie for getting me home. I’m not sure he ever knew that my mom had forbidden me to go.

  I went back to school on Monday. My face was still black-and-blue. Naturally, people asked me what happened. They didn’t believe it when I told them. Most people didn’t know I owned a camera. I was known at our school for playing tennis and dating Grace Anderson. Nobody knew I took pictures.

  When Kai saw me, though, she was speechless. And when she heard what happened, her jaw dropped. “You were in a riot? With the cops?!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God!” So then she dragged me to Antoinette’s locker, pushing people out of the way. She tapped Antoinette’s shoulder and presented me to her. They both went apeshit. Antoinette kept touching my bandages and my nose. “You’re my hero!” said Kai, in her slightly ironic, sarcastic way.

  • • •

  Several interesting things came out of the Elliot Square Riot. First, Henry Oswald called me a couple days later and told me to write my college essay about it. His brother William thought the admissions people at Cal Arts would love it. Also, his brother had liked my photos, the ones I had e-mailed before. So that was double good news.

  Then Emma Van Buskirk, who was going to be the editor of our school magazine next year, asked me if I would be the photo editor. This was based mostly on the popularity of my black eyes, and the fact that nobody else wanted to do it. I said yes. That, too, would help me get into art school, I thought.

  Another thing: On their first date, Richie told Nicole from Hawthorne Bakery the whole epic story. She seemed impressed and agreed to go out with him again. Richie did not tend to go on second dates, so that was pretty big.

  And then, most important of all, Richie got a photo agent for his Elliot Square photos. This person—who was based in New York—sold several of his pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world. The best one ended up in the New York Times. It was of two African American women helping each other through a tear-gas cloud. It went viral and was soon all over Facebook and Twitter. It eventually became the main image people associated with Elliot Square.

  But not for me. The image I would always associate with Elliot Square was the girl under the statue, sucking her thumb and holding her mother’s arm. But of course I hadn’t gotten the shot. So it was only in my mind. Clear as day. Where it will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.

  41

  So then it was summer. That was a relief. My face healed up, and soon I was back at my old job at the Garden Center with my spray hose and rubber boots. I never minded going to work there. People were always cheerful when they were at a nursery. People calm down in the presence of plants. Kai told me a bunch of stuff she had read about this: How plants are actually aware of us and communicate with us and try to help us in various ways—so that we can help them.

  The other good thing was I was old enough now to do deliveries. So I would drive around and deliver stuff in the truck. It was fun going to the different neighborhoods around the city. For a couple weeks I was delivering trees every day to this one church across town. They were redoing their landscaping. It was mostly African American people who worked there. Seeing them made me think of Seattle and the church ladies and how brave they had been but also how ordinary. When I’d show up in my truck, the church people would come out and help me unload the shrubs and saplings and fertilizer. They’d offer me some lemonade if it was hot. I would never say anything, but I felt in awe of them, in a way. I’d seen church ladies in action. I knew what they were capable of.

  During the week, my friends sometimes stopped by the Garden Center. Richie came by to get flowers for Nicole a co
uple times. He wanted to use my employee discount. Several months had passed since the success of his Elliot Square photo. His phone had rung constantly for a month or so after it appeared. But things had calmed down. “Fame is a fickle mistress,” he told me, half kidding and half not.

  He was still getting gigs, though. Bon Appétit, a food magazine, flew us down to Austin, Texas, for a big National Barbeque Sauce Competition. It was pretty ridiculous, all these overweight Texas people in big hats munching on ribs all day. But one night Richie and I drove out to the Mexican part of town where everyone spoke Spanish. We had dinner in this little place with outdoor tables, and we sat there, with the chickens and the little kids running around, listening to the crickets and the coyotes howl in the distance.

  We got some other gigs too, and then Richie got an assignment from the Portland Weekly that he couldn’t do, so he told them to send me. It was to take pictures of this vintage clothes shop that was being torn down to make room for condos. It had been there for thirty years, and the woman who ran it was this nutty, eccentric type. The SHIT WE HAVE TO HAVE list, in my mind, was the store itself, inside and outside, some clothes, some shoes. And then a couple shots of the woman herself, some of her smiling and maybe a couple looking sad, since her shop was closing down.

  But things got a little complicated once I got there. For starters, the lady was being super weird and kept saying (to no one): “The photographer is here. The photographer has come.” Then she insisted I address her as Lady Katrina. I was like, “Okay, whatever.” Then she started ordering me around and telling me what to take pictures of, like her entire jewelry collection and some weird old bag she’d had for a hundred years.