The death of Henry Anthony shouldn’t have hit him so hard. The Anthony Brothers had been the closest thing Brady had to enemies in the years since the war. Yet, they had been friends once, and companions in the early days of the art. All of photography was dying; Morse was gone. Henry Anthony dead. And three of Brady’s assistants, men he had trained to succeed him, dead in the opening of the West.
Levin opened the door and peeked in. “Uncle, a visitor,” he said.
Brady was about to wave Levin away when another man stepped inside. The man was tall, gaunt, wearing a neatly pressed black suit. He looked official. “Mr. Brady?”
Brady nodded but did not rise.
“I’m John C. Taylor. I’m a soldier, sir, and a student of your work. I would like to talk with you, if I could.”
Brady pushed back the needlepoint chair beside him. Taylor sat down, hat in his hands.
“Mr. Brady, I wanted to let you know what I’ve been doing. Since the end of the war, I’ve tried to acquire your work. I have secured through various channels, over 7,000 negatives of your best pictures.”
Brady felt the haze that surrounded him lift somewhat. “And you would like to display them?”
“No, sir, actually, I’ve been trying to preserve them. The plates the government bought from you years ago have been sitting in a warehouse. A number were destroyed due to incautious handling. I’ve been trying to get them placed somewhere else. I have an offer from the Navy Department—I have connections there—and I wanted your approval.”
Brady laughed. The sound bubbled from inside of him, but he felt no joy. He had wanted the portraits for so long and finally, here was someone asking for his approval. “No one has asked me what I wanted before.”
Taylor leaned back. He glanced once at Levin, as if Brady’s odd reaction had made Taylor wary.
“My uncle has gone through quite an odyssey to hold on to his plates,” Levin said softly. “He has lost a lot over the years.”
“From the beginning,” Brady said. “No one will ever know what I went through in securing the negatives. The whole world can never appreciate it. It changed the course of my life. Some of those negatives nearly cost me that life. And then the work was taken from me. Do you understand, Mr. Taylor?”
Taylor nodded. “I’ve been tracking these photographs for a long time, sir. I remembered them from the illustrated papers, and I decided that they needed to be preserved, so that my children’s children would see the devastation, would learn the follies we committed because we couldn’t reason with each other.”
Brady smiled. A man who did understand. Finally. “The government bought my portraits of Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. I got paid a lot of money for those paintings that were made from my photographs. Not my work, mind you. Paintings of my work. Page would have been so happy.”
“Sir?”
Brady shook his head. Page had left his side long ago. “But no one wants to see the war work. No one wants to see what you and I preserved. I don’t want the Navy to bury the negatives. I want them to display the work, reproduce it or make it into a book that someone can see.”
“First things first, Mr. Brady,” Taylor said. “The Navy has the negatives I’ve acquired, but we need to remove the others from the War Department before they’re destroyed. And then you, or your nephew, or someone else can go in there and put together a showing.”
Brady reached over and gripped Taylor’s hands. They were firm and strong—a young man’s hands on an older man’s body. “If you can do that,” Brady said, “you will have made all that I’ve done worthwhile.”
1882
Julia huddled on the settee, a blanket over her slight frame. She had grown gaunt, her eyes big saucers on the planes of her face. Her hands shook as she took the letter from Brady. He had hesitated about giving it to her, but he knew that she would ask and she would worry. It would be better for her frail heart to know than to constantly fret. She leaned toward the lamp. Brady watched her eyes move as she read.
He already knew the words by heart. The letter was from General A. W. Greeley, in the War Department. He was in charge of the government’s collection of Brady’s work. After the opening amenities, he had written:
The government has stated positively that their negatives must not be exploited for commercial purposes. They are the historical treasures of a whole people and the government has justly refused to establish a dangerous system of “special privilege” by granting permission for publication to individuals. As the property of the people, the government negatives are held in sacred trust …
Where no one could see them, and not even Brady himself could use them. He wondered what Taylor thought—Taylor who would have received the letter in Connecticut by now.
Julia looked up, her eyes dotted with tears. “What do they think, that you’re going to steal the plates from them like they stole them from you?”
“I don’t know,” Brady said. “Perhaps they really don’t understand what they have.”
“They understand,” Julia said, her voice harsh. “And it frightens them.”
1883
In his dreams, he heard the sounds of people working. Twice he had arrived at the door to his gallery, and twice it had been locked. Behind the thin material, he heard voices—“Here, Andre. No, no. Keep the same years on the same wall space”—and the sounds of shuffling feet. This time, he knocked and the door opened a crack.
Ceiling lights flooded the room. It was wide and bright—brighter than he imagined a room could be.
His work covered all the walls but one. People, dressed in pants and loose shirts like the woman who hired him, carried framed portraits from one spot to the next, all under the direction of a slim man who stood next to Brady’s wagon.
The man looked at Brady. “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to see—”
The man turned to one of the others walking through. “Get rid of him, will you? We only have a few hours, and we still have one wall to fill.”
A woman stopped next to Brady and put her hand on his arm. Her fingers were cool. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re preparing an exhibit.”
“But I’m the artist,” Brady said.
“He says—”
“I know what he says,” the man said. He squinted at Brady, then glanced at a portrait that hung near the wagon. “And so he is. You should be finishing the exhibit, Mr. Brady, not gawking around the studio.”
“I didn’t know I had something to finish.”
The man sighed. “The show opens tomorrow morning, and you still have one wall to fill. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Brady said. The woman took his arm and led him out the door.
“We’ll see you tomorrow night,” she said. And then she smiled. “I like your work.”
And then he woke up, shivering and shaking in the dark beside Julia. Her even breathing was a comfort. He drew himself into a huddle and rested his knees against his chest. One wall to fill by tomorrow? He wished he understood what the dreams meant. It had taken him nearly twenty years to fill all the other walls. And then he thought that perhaps dream time worked differently than real time. Perhaps dream time moved in an instant, the way he did when the woman whirled him away to another place.
It was just a dream, he told himself, and by the time he fell back to sleep, he really believed it.
1884
By the time the wagon appeared beside him, Brady was shaking. This place was silent, completely silent. Houses stood in neat rows on barren, brown treeless land. Their white formations rested like sentries against the mountains that stood in the distance. A faint smell, almost acrid, covered everything. The air was warm, but not muggy, and beads of sweat rose on his arms like drops of blood.
Brady had arrived behind one of the houses. Inside, a family sat around the table—a man, a woman and two children. They all appeared to be eating—the woman had a spoon raised to her mouth—but no one moved. In the entire ti
me he had been there, no one had moved.
He went into his wagon, removed the camera and tripod, then knocked on the door. The family didn’t acknowledge him. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, setting up the camera near a gleaming countertop. Then he walked over to the family. The children had been frozen in the act of laughing, gazing at each other. Their chests didn’t rise and fall, their eyes didn’t move. The man had his hand around a cup full of congealed liquid. He was watching the children, a faint smile on his face. The woman was looking down, at the bowl filled with a soggy mush. The hand holding the spoon—empty except for a white stain in the center—had frozen near her mouth. Brady touched her. Her skin was cold, rigid.
They were dead.
Brady backed away, nearly knocking over the tripod. He grabbed the camera, felt its firmness in his hands. For some reason, these specters frightened him worse than all the others. He couldn’t tell what had killed them or how they died.
It had become increasingly difficult, at the many varied places he had been, but usually he could at least guess. Here, he saw nothing—and the bodies didn’t even feel real.
He climbed under the dark curtain, finding a kind of protection from his own equipment. Perhaps, near his own stuff, whatever had killed them would avoid him. He took the photograph, and then carried his equipment to the next house, where a frozen woman sat on a sofa, looking at a piece of paper. In each house, he captured the still, frozen lives, almost wishing for the blood, the stench, the fires, the signs of destruction.
1885
Brady folded the newspaper and set it down. He didn’t wish to disturb Julia, who was sleeping soundly on the bed. She seemed to get so little rest these days. Her face had become translucent, the shadows under her eyes so deep that they looked like bruises.
He couldn’t share the article with her. A year ago, she might have laughed. But now, tears would stream down her cheeks and she would want him to hold her. And when she woke up, he would hold her, because he knew that they had so little time left.
She didn’t need to see the paragraph that stood out from the page as if someone had expanded the type:
… and with his loss, all of photography’s pioneers are dead. In the United States alone we have lost, in recent years, Alexander Gardiner, Samuel F. B. Morse, Edward and Henry Anthony, and Mathew B. Brady. Gardiner practiced the craft until his death, going west and sending some of the best images back home. The Anthonys sold many of their fine works in stereoscope for us all to see. Morse had other interests and quit photography to pursue them. Brady lost his eyesight after the War, and closed his studios here and in New York …
Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps they wouldn’t have laughed together. Perhaps she would have been as angry as he was. He hadn’t died. He hadn’t. No one allowed him to show his work any more. He hadn’t even been to the gallery of his dreams since that confusing last dream, years ago.
Brady placed the newspaper with the others near the door. Then he crawled onto the bed and pulled Julia close. Her small body was comforting, and, in her sleep, she turned and held him back.
1886
One morning, he whirled into a place of such emptiness it chilled his soul. The buildings were tall and white, the grass green, and the flowers in bloom. His wagon was the only black thing on the surface of this place. He could smell lilacs as he walked forward, and he thought of Julia resting at their apartment—too fragile now to even do her needlepoint.
This silence was worse than at the last place. Here it felt as if human beings had never touched this land, despite the buildings. He felt as if he were the only person left alive.
He walked up the stone steps of the first building and pushed open the glass door. The room inside was empty—as empty as his gallery had been when he first dreamed it. No dust or footprints marred the white floor, no smudges covered the white walls. He looked out the window, and, as he watched, a building twenty yards away shimmered and disappeared.
Brady shoved his hands in his pockets and scurried outside. Another building disappeared. This shimmering was different, more ominous than the shimmering left by his benefactress; in it, somehow, he could almost see the debris, the dust from the buildings that had once been there. He could feel the destruction, and knew that these places weren’t reappearing somewhere else. He ran to his wagon, climbed inside, and peered out at the world from the wagon’s edge. And, as he watched, building after building winked out of existence.
He clutched the camera to him, but took no photographs. The smell of lilacs grew stronger. His hands were cold, shaking. He watched the buildings disappear until only a grassy field remained.
“You can’t even photograph it.”
Her appearance didn’t surprise him. He expected her, after seeing the changes, perhaps because he had been thinking of her. Her hair was shoulder-length now, but other than that, she hadn’t changed in all the years since he’d last seen her.
“It’s so clean and neat.” Her voice shook. “You can’t even tell that anyone died here.”
Brady crawled out of the wagon and stood beside her. He felt more uneasy here than he had felt under the shelling at the first battle of Bull Run. There, at least, he could hear the whistle, feel the explosions. Here the destruction came from nowhere.
“Welcome to war in my lifetime, Mathew.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Here we get rid of everything, not just a person’s body, but all traces of their home, their livelihood—and, in most cases, any memories of them. I lost my son like this, and I couldn’t remember that he had even existed until I started work on this project.” She smiled just a little. “The time travel gives unexpected benefits, some we can program for, like improved eyesight or health, and some we can’t, like improved memories. The scientists say it has something to do with molecular rearrangement, but that makes no sense to you, since no one knew what a molecule was in your day.”
He stood beside her, his heart pounding in his throat. She turned to him, took his hand in hers.
“We can’t go any farther than this, Mathew.”
He frowned. “I’m done?”
“Yes. I can’t thank you in the ways that I’d like. If I could, I’d send you back, give you money, let you rebuild your life from the war on. But I can’t. We can’t. But I can bring you to the exhibit when it opens, and hope that the response is what we expect. Would you like that, Mathew?”
He didn’t know exactly what she meant, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He wanted to keep making photographs, to keep working here with her. He had nothing else. “I could still help you. I’m sure there are a number of things to be done.”
She shook her head, then kissed his forehead. “You need to go home to your Julia, and enjoy the time you have left. We’ll see each other again, Mathew.”
And then she started to whirl, to shimmer. Brady reached for her and his hand went through her into the heated air. This shimmer was different, somehow; it had a life to it. He felt a thin relief. She had traveled beyond him, but not out of existence. He leaned against the edge of his wagon and stared at the lilac bushes and the wind blowing through the grasses, trying to understand what she had just told him. He and the wagon sat alone, in a field where people had once built homes and lived quiet lives. Finally, at dusk, he too shimmered out of the blackness, and back to his own quiet life.
1887
Only Levin and Brady stood beside the open grave. The wind ruffled Brady’s hair, dried the tear tracks on his cheeks. He hadn’t realized how small Julia’s life had become. Most of the people at the funeral had been his friends, people who had come to console him.
He could hear the trees rustling behind him. The breeze carried a scent of lilacs—how appropriate, Julia dying in the spring, so that her flower would bloom near her grave. She had been so beautiful when he’d met her, so popular. She had whittled her life down for him, because she had thought he needed her. And he had.
Levin took Brady’s arm. “Come along, Uncle,” Le
vin said.
Brady looked up at his nephew, the closest thing to a child he and Julia had ever had. Levin’s hair had started to recede, and he too wore thick glasses.
“I don’t want to leave her,” Brady said. “I’ve left her too much already.”
“It’s all right, Uncle,” Levin said as he put his arm around Brady’s waist and led him through the trees. “She understands.”
Brady glanced back at the hole in the ground, at his wife’s coffin, and at the two men who had already started to shovel dirt on top. “I know she understands,” he said. “She always has.”
1887
That night, Brady didn’t sleep. He sat on the bed he had shared with Julia, and clutched her pillow against his chest. He missed her even breathing, her comfortable presence. He missed her hand on his cheek and her warm voice, reassuring him. He missed holding her, and loving her, and telling her how much he loved her.
It’s all right, Uncle, Levin had said. She understands.
Brady got up, set the pillow down, and went to the window. She had looked out so many times, probably feeling alone, while he pursued his dreams of greatness. She had never said what she thought these past few years, but he saw her look at him, saw the speculation in her eyes when he returned from one of his trips. She had loved him too much to question him.
Then he felt it: the odd sensation that always preceded a whirling. But he was done—he hadn’t been sent anywhere in over a year. He was just tired, just—
spinning. Colors and pain and dust bombarded him. Spinning. And when he stopped, he stood in the gallery of his dreams … only this time, he knew that he was wide awake.
It existed then. It really existed.
And it was full of people.
Women wore long clingy dresses in a shining material. Their hair varied in hue from brown to pink, and many had jewelry stapled into their noses, their cheeks and, in one case, along the rim of the eye. The men’s clothes were as colorful and as shiny. They wore makeup, but no jewelry. A few people seemed out of place, in other clothes—a woman in combat fatigues from one of the wars Brady had seen, a man in dust-covered denim pants and a ripped shirt, another man dressed in all black leaning against a gallery door. All of the doors in the hallway were open and people spilled in and out, conversing or holding shocked hands to their throats.
The Year's Best SF 09 # 1991 Page 55