by Tim Meyer
A strange feeling came over me; it felt like I was always being watched. As if there was a man hiding in my backseat, waiting to make an appearance in my rear-view mirror.
The feeling followed me all the way to the paper's office.
2
Downtown Treebound wasn't anything to be excited about. There were a few antique shops (if you're into that sort of thing), a library, a city hall, a police station, and a few places of business (such as two rival diners, a barbershop, and a coffee bar). I noticed an off-track betting parlor next to the barbershop, and I was oddly intrigued. I'd never been much of a gambler, but the idea of betting on horses from a bar interested me. A used bookstore also called my name, but once I spotted the paper's office, I refused to let myself get sucked into the black-hole that was downtown Treebound.
The office looked small from the outside, which didn't do the inside justice. I opened the glass door, The Treebound Tribune professionally lettered across it, and stepped inside. There were several desks on both sides of the office, and only a few of them were occupied. There were a few small offices in the back, but they were enclosed, most likely belonging to the editor and other management staff. There was a conference room next to them surrounded by walls of frosted glass.
A pear-shaped woman—a few years younger than I—sat at the receptionist's desk. She was hunched over her desk, vigorously working the pen in her right hand. Her name was Dana Jorvis, according to the name plate on her desk. Upon my entrance, she lifted her mop of red hair from the envelope she was addressing, and stared at me. Smiling, she asked, “Can I help you?”
“I'm here to speak with Sheldon Daniels,” I said confidently.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, slightly dubious.
“Um, no. Actually, Colin Gregory told me I should swing by and talk to him.” I sighed. “About a job.”
“About a job,” she repeated, as if she were asking a question. She kept that same confused look on her face while she picked up the phone and punched three numbers. “Yes, hello, Mr. Daniels. Sorry to bother you, but—” she paused, “yes, I know you're busy. But there is a man here to see you. About a job.” She listened. “I have no idea. He said his name was...” she looked to me for verification, “Gregory?”
I shook my head. “My name is Ritchie Naughton. Colin Gregory referred me.”
She repeated what I said into the phone.
I took a gander around the office while Dana sorted things out. There were newspaper clippings hanging from the walls, encased in picture frames. One of the most notable news stories was one that dated back to the seventies (before my time), when the Red River South basketball coach, Johnny McKinley, drowned his starting five in the infamous river. It was a crime that shocked the community, although, the town was no stranger to murder and bloodshed. The town was built on blood, and it's actually how it got its name: Red River. The founding British settlers were found slain near the river (the one that dissects the town in half, North and South) in 1768, by—if you go by legend—an ancient forest spirit. According to the tale, the forest spirit was pissed that they had come to chop down trees and build homes from the earth's appendages. However, most folks believe that the savage act was committed by Native Americans, after the intruders had threatened them with violence. In any case, the next wave of settlers found their friends butchered, hacked up into little pieces, most of their remains thrown in the river, thus dubbing it the Red River. The first settlers' heads were found on spikes, their open-mouthed expressions inspiring horrific versions of the same tale. The basic story is deemed true, even by most local historians. It's just a matter of which version you believe. People have wasted many hours arguing both sides, mostly over beer and wine. No conclusion has ever been drawn, no tale ever officially accepted as the truth. They just remain stories. Stories which have proved to be a powerful tool in keeping children from wandering too far into the woods by themselves. When I was growing up, the ghost of Johnny McKinley stalked the woods surrounding the Red River, or so we were told, and that was enough to keep my friends and I from venturing into the unknown. Some used to say, that late at night, you can hear the starting five of Red River South's 72' team screaming their last screams.
But those are just stories.
“Mr. Daniels will see you now,” Dana said, snapping me out of my twisted reverie.
“Thank you, Dana.” I followed her finger to the back, where Sheldon's office awaited me.
3
“Very impressive,” Sheldon said, as he thumbed through my résumé. He glanced up, and looked me in the eyes.
I took pride in figuring people out by catching a certain vibe, and usually, with minimal exceptions, I was right. I'd been told I'd be a damn good poker player, had I the desire to learn the game. For example, Dana Jorvis seemed slightly dimwitted, but in a cute, funny way I'm sure people adored. Trying to figure out Sheldon Daniels, however, was like trying to understand hieroglyphics. I couldn't catch a vibe from him, and if he threw me one, I missed it. He appeared nerdy, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and slicked back hair with too much gel. A plum-colored birthmark shaped like Louisiana graced his cheek. His stone-face expression suggested that he took things too seriously. But then his lips would twitch a certain way, like someone wanting to smile and stopping themselves, and everything I prejudged him on quickly evaporated. Quirky was perhaps the best way to describe him; the man had to be full of quirks. It might have been unfair, but I pegged him as a middle-aged virgin. There was no basis for this conclusion, maybe it was the gold-rimmed spectacles that brought the notion on. I did determine, almost instantly, that he was a person I wouldn't normally become friends with. He acted like a boss, someone who maybe enjoyed his powerful position far too much. He was no Mark Chaney, phenomenal editor, and close friend.
“If Colin sent you, then you must be good,” he said, over his glasses. “Tell me, how do you two know each other?” He scanned my work history, his mouth twitching as he did so. “I don't see where it says you worked for him.”
“I never did.” I shifted in my seat uncomfortably. “We have mutual friends. We ran into each other recently, at a party,” I lied, “and I asked him if he could hook me up with a job, since I just moved back home and don't know a lot of people.”
“Hm,” he said, as if he knew I was full of shit. “Mutual friends, yet you just moved back home and don't know a lot of people...”
Shit, I thought. This is going well.
“I'm confused, Mr. Naughton,” he said, his stone-cold face finally breaking, forming a smile.
“He knew an old high school buddy of mine.”
“Who?” he snapped.
Shocked, I couldn't answer immediately. I tried my best to quickly come up with another white lie. “Uh, Dan. Torres.” I never knew a Dan Torres. Nor heard of one.
“Hm,” he grunted. He knew I was lying. He had to. “Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Naughton, we don't hire very many staff writers. We only have two, and that's all we really need. We're a small publication, you see. There are a few local writers who contribute on a freelance basis, which you are more than welcome to submit commentary articles, or anything you feel is print-worthy. I can guarantee our staff will read them, I can't guarantee that any of it will be printed.” He frowned, although I hardly believed his sincerity. An emptiness overcame me. I had a really good feeling entering Sheldon's office, despite dropping Gregory's name. “I'm sorry, I wish there was more I could do. I'm not sure what Colin told you—”
“Forget it,” I said. “It's fine.” I got up from my seat and extended my hand.
Daniels shook my hand and nodded. “This is a tough business.”
Tell me something I don't already know. I walked toward the door and opened it. I was thinking about how I was going to have to go home and start applying for jobs in New York. There were probably dozens of papers and magazines I could apply for. I wasn't expecting to work for ESPN or Rolling Stone, but I was sure I could get something. Even if it was
part-time. I needed money. And fast. My cash tank was running on fumes.
I started to say good-bye to Dana, after I had walked toward the door in a daze, when I heard Sheldon call me from his office. “Mr. Naughton?” he called. “Mr. Naughton, could you come back here?”
Oh great, now what? I wondered what he could possibly want. Maybe he jotted down a few other publications where he had connections. Maybe not. It didn't matter, because anywhere I applied to was going to be the same bullshit. Full-time writers were becoming extinct.
“Mr. Naughton, I have a proposition for you. Would you come back into my office?” Sheldon asked.
I looked at Dana. She shrugged in an obliviously-cute way. She obviously knew as much as I did.
“Sure!” I yelled to him with all the cheer I could muster, and walked back to his office.
“It almost slipped my mind. The paper is actually in need of a photographer, someone to basically post pictures onto our website, and submit a few for the weekly edition. Nothing spectacular, just something to accompany a few of our front-page articles. The man previously employed in that position also worked on our website.” He waited for me to say something, but I remained quiet. “Would you be interested in something like that? It's not full-time, but the pay is decent. You'll get paid per photograph, and we can work out a small salary for maintaining the website. It said on your resume that you took a web design class in college.” I nodded, although I didn't remember ever taking a web design course. “What do you say?”
If I had known then what I knew now, I would have told him to go fuck himself with a long thorny stick. But, I didn't. Instead, I extended my hand and asked him, “When can I start?”
4
I took one photojournalism class, and that was during my last year at Rutgers. Nearly a decade ago. Couldn't tell you who the instructor was, or what was taught.
Most publications don't staff photographers anymore. The quality of cell phone pictures are just as good nowadays anyway. I, on the other hand, had the shittiest camera phone ever. It was basically worthless. Besides that, I never even owned a camera. Never needed one. Lynne was the documenter on our little vacations to Florida every year. I'm pretty incompetent when it comes to taking pictures, or so she always told me.
Sheldon Daniels offered me a job, and I wasn't going to turn it down. It wasn't long term, so I didn't worry about whether or not I could do it, or the quality of work I was going to produce. This was only to hold me over until I could find something else. Some real work, whatever that consisted of in my field these days.
The one thing a photographer needs, is a camera. And as I previously mentioned, I didn't own one. I asked Sheldon if there was one I could use temporarily, or if I could buy one and be reimbursed. He claimed money was tight and they couldn't afford to buy me a new camera, which I found to be improbable, but I kept my mouth shut. He told me to ask Dana if there was something in the basement that I could use. He grinned oddly. I thought nothing of it, just another Sheldon quirk.
I briefly explained to Dana what had happened (she congratulated me and welcomed me aboard) and that Sheldon wanted me to peruse the basement in hopes to find a camera. She searched her drawer for two minutes before coming up with the key that unlocked the supply room. Reluctantly, she got off her seat and led me to the stairs, which led down to the basement.
“I've only been down there twice since I started—which was two years ago—and it was really dark and smelled like piss,” she told me.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Sounds like my first apartment.”
She smirked (clearly not funny enough for her to laugh), and opened the door. I flipped the light switch on and a tiny bulb burned dimly at the foot of the cement stairs. “You go first, it's creepy down there.” And so I did. It took about six steps before the odor Dana had described so eloquently hit me like an unsuspecting wave. If I was to hang out down there longer than ten minutes, I'd have probably caught cancer. “See, I told you,” Dana said, pinching her nostrils together.
I reached the bottom and there were two doors on either side of me. The one to the left said BATHROOM (hence the smell of piss). The one to the right simply said SUPPLIES. Dana slipped the key into the lock and opened it quickly. It seemed she wanted this to be over more than I did.
The room looked as if it had been recently ransacked. Besides a few boxes of pens that were spread across a tiny desk, it was mostly vacant. There was a folder with a few blank sheets of loose notebook paper. A wastebasket next to the desk housed a few crumpled pieces of paper in it. There was also some on the dusty floor that had missed the target. A few empty bookshelves sat snug against the far wall. One bookcase—on the right side of the room—had a stack of newspapers in them. I shuffled through them out of curiosity, but there was nothing of interest.
“No one comes down here,” Dana said.
“Clearly,” I said. “Well it looks like there aren't any cameras down here after all.”
Then, her eyes widened, as if something exploded inside her mind. “Wait a minute.” She walked over to the far wall and bent down. There was a small cardboard box I hadn't noticed when I first scanned the room. The desk in the center of the room must have blocked my view. She combed through it furiously. “Ta-da!” she exclaimed, as if she had performed a magic trick. In her hands, she held a camera that appeared decades older than us.
The camera.
The camera that changed everything.
5
My knowledge of photography was limited, and my knowledge for cameras—makes, shapes, and sizes—were even less than that. All I knew about the one Dana had handed me was that it was old. Really old. I'm guessing it came from the 70's. Maybe 80's. I didn't know because the manufacturer failed to date it. The manufacturer? Oh, some company named Denlax. I'd never heard of Denlax before, but I knew it wasn't a Canon or Nikon. The makers had also neglected to stamp its place of origin. It was larger than any camera I ever held, certainly quadruple the size of cameras nowadays, which can practically fit inside your wallet.
“It's a little... out dated,” Dana said, as I took the archaic device from her. “Lester left it here with some of his other things.” She rifled through the box on the floor. “It's all junk, but we just haven't gotten around to throwing it out.” She thought for a moment, while I studied my new toy.
I was barely paying any attention to her, something she was used to judging the look on her face when I stopped ogling the camera. “Lester? Who's Lester?” I asked.
“He's the guy whose job you just filled.”
“He quit?” I asked, still twisting the camera in all sorts of angles, trying to get a feel for the thing. It was like holding an instrument made by Martians—I didn't know where to begin.
“He started missing days here and there. Came in when ever he felt like it. He never had his photos in on time. Sheldon was forced to fire him. I was here the day he did it. I heard them arguing in the back. It wasn't my business so I just went out to lunch.” She paused, thinking back to that day. “I'm surprised Sheldon took so long to fill his spot, I mean, I guess with cell phone cameras most of the writers take their own pictures. He didn't do such a wonderful job with the website—Lester, I mean. I don't know who is doing it now.” She watched me working the camera in my hands like a Rubix cube. “Will you be taking over the website, Mr. Naughton?”
“What? Me? No. I mean, yes. Actually I don't think we've actually... ah...” My mind had farted and shit came out.
“Mr. Naughton?” she asked, confused as to what I was doing. Honestly, so was I.
I stared at her, like a child lost in a department store would at any stranger. “Dana, I'll be honest with you. I don't have a fucking clue how to use this thing.” I smiled, but inside I was nervous as hell. I didn't think I could do it. I was a writer, not a photographer. Sure I could snap a few photos on Riddick's Smartphone while out in the field, but I was never one for taking oodles of pictures, laying them all out and deciding which ones wer
e of the best quality. And furthermore, I hated pictures. I never liked being in them, never liked taking them, never even really cared to look at them. I was always the one to avoid group photos by standing behind the tallest person in the picture, or just blatantly ruining them by making myself look like a jackass. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but give me five hundred words and I can paint an image in your mind so vivid you can practically smell a four-alarm fire, or see the grisly murder of an Atlanta hooker who had her ovaries removed by some sicko in a mask. I conveyed words into images in your head, and I was good at it.
I was a writer, and I was good one.
“Well I don't either,” Dana said. “I guess your going to have to learn, Mr. Naughton.” She shuffled over to the doorway. The hour glass in Dana's mind had expired. Our time in the creepy basement had come to an end. “I'm sure you can figure it out. You look like an intelligent man. And if you can't, well I guess there's always the Internet.”
6
Dana was right; there was always the Internet. I found dozens of Youtube videos on how to work a camera similar to mine. I say “similar” because after hours of searching the Web, I couldn't find the Denlax model that I had borrowed. In fact, I couldn't find a website for the company that manufactured it. Not even so much as an article. The only thing that triggered a hit on Google was a traveling freakshow that coincidently passed through New Jersey in the early 1900's. Denlax was the last name of the family who ran it. But there was no mention of the camera. It was as if the camera and the company that made it had never existed. I found it odd, but didn't pay it much attention. I was too obsessed with figuring out how my model worked, so I could start taking photos and start getting paid. Money was always the best motivation.