Universal Harvester(47)
“Holy shit, the keys are in the ignition,” James said when he and his father had reached the rusting body of the Oldsmobile.
Ed smiled, out exploring in the great wide world with James, his once-small companion. Just like old times. “Be pretty surprised if the engine turns over,” he said, so pleased to find himself here, now, a grown man talking with his son about this gutted husk of a car. You have to guard moments like these ones, and you do it by keeping them quiet. You never know how many more you’re going to get.
“I’m going to open the trunk,” said James.
3
The first tape was just street scenes: no commentary, no known locations, no titles. The locales varied—there were park benches, and bus stops, and grassy hills by freeway off-ramps. In all these places two constants remained: people, and garbage. There were men and women in dirty clothes, digging through trash cans, sometimes scrounging in the nearby grass, eating with their hands, casting furtive glances around as they ate; often, when they’d left the scene, the camera would remain trained on the spot, as if waiting for something new to develop. Nothing did. Five minutes would pass with no action in the frame, then seven. There was no news to report after the garbage eaters had gone, but the camera, possibly mounted and left unmanned, kept at its work until someone remembered to turn it off. The scene would end then, cutting out abruptly, and just as suddenly the next scene would begin: static, familiar, identical save for the particulars.
“It’s somebody’s college project,” James offered. The army-green plastic garbage bag full of videotapes from the trunk of the Oldsmobile bulged on the cellar floor nearby.
“No way,” said Abby. “This took years.”
“Big expert,” said James.
She pointed at a teenage girl on the screen. “Those are acid-washed,” she said. “Eighties.” She picked up the remote, hit PAUSE for a second, then REWIND. The footage scrolled backwards for a minute, then two.
“There,” she said, hitting PLAY again. A woman in jeans, a halter top, and oversized brown sunglasses was stopped mid-stride. “Those are Dittos. Mid-seventies.”
“You ever heard of this amazing invention called the thrift store?” said James, more out of habit than conviction.
“There’s no way,” she said. She froze the screen again and pointed in sequence at several spots. “Macramé purse. Birkenstocks.”
She let it play for another minute.
“Orange polyester pants,” she said triumphantly.
“Are you spending Mom and Dad’s retirement studying fashion design?”
“It’s weird, at Reed we have these courses in this subject they’re tentatively calling ‘history.’ Deeply experimental.”
James watched, again, the woman with the macramé purse, who paused to talk to the people scavenging in the garbage: the camera’s station, no nearer than across the street, was too far off to pick up any dialogue. Traffic obscured the view from time to time.
“You’re right,” he said after a minute. A green car rolled slowly into the frame from the right, accelerating suddenly. “Jesus, that’s a Gremlin. Those things are legendary.” More cars passed: big Fords like boats, several Honda hatchbacks in quick succession.
“They’re all scenes of basically the same stuff happening over a long period of time,” Abby said when they’d been sitting in silence for a while.
James didn’t know what to say. He was curious. Curiosity had always felt, to him, like something you ought to be ashamed of, an accusing finger pointing out that there’s something you don’t know yet.
“There’s no label on the tape?” he said finally, cross-legged on the floor in front of the television down in the cellar.
“It just says Street Number Five on the container,” said Abby, sliding the TDK-branded cardboard shell from the top of the VCR and handing it over even though she’d already told him all there was to know about it.
*
“Half of this is going to be porn,” said James; Abby was arranging the tapes into tidy stacks on the floor. Some were missing; all nine of the Street series were present and accounted for in all their excruciating tedium, but others, judging from their titles, were from the middle of a sequence. Driveway 5–7. Church Services 3.
“You hope,” said Abby.
“I hope I get to watch porn with you, Abs?” he said, eyebrows up. “Am I hearing this right? I just want to make sure I understand what it is you imagine I’m thinking.”
She emulated the universally recognizable voice of the stupid older brother, laying it on thick: “‘I just watched ninety minutes of people at a bus stop. I bet the next tape’s porn.’”
James laughed; she was right. “It’d be better than if it’s all bus stops,” he said.
She tallied her win on a scorecard in her head and let him off the hook. “These nine are Street,” she said. “There’s also Field, three of those but they’re numbered one, three, and four. Then two with a bunch of two-letter combos in a row but no numbers, MN IA NE SD on the one and then MO IA SD on the other.”
“Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota.”
“Wow, they’re really working you hard out there at St. John’s,” she said.