Just After Sunset(68)

I tell him I'll take my chances, and say that in the end-more positive reinforcement-I'm sure we'll both be fine.

He utters a hollow, lonely laugh. "Wouldn't that be nice," he says.

"Tell me about Ackerman's Field."

He sighs and says, "It's in Motton. On the east side of the Androscoggin."

Motton. One town over from Chester's Mill. Our mother used to buy milk and eggs at Boy Hill Farm in Motton. N. is talking about a place that cannot be more than seven miles from the farmhouse where I grew up. I almost say, I knew it!

I don't, but he looks over at me sharply, almost as if he caught my thought. Perhaps he did. I don't believe in ESP, but I don't entirely discount it, either.

"Don't ever go there, Doc," he says. "Don't even look for it. Promise me."

I give my promise. In fact, I haven't been back to that broken-down part of Maine in over fifteen years. It's close in miles, distant in desire. Thomas Wolfe made a characteristically sweeping statement when he titled his magnum opus You Can't Go Home Again; it's not true for everyone (Sister Sheila often goes back; she's still close to several of her childhood friends), but it's true for me. Although I suppose I'd title my own book I Won't Go Home Again. What I remember are bullies with harelips dominating the playground, empty houses with staring glassless windows, junked-out cars, and skies that always seemed white and cold and full of fleeing crows.

"All right," N. says, and bares his teeth for a moment at the ceiling. Not in aggression; it is, I'm quite sure, the expression of a man preparing to do a piece of heavy lifting that will leave him aching the next day. "I don't know if I can express it very well, but I'll do my best. The important thing to remember is that up til that day in August, the closest thing to OCD behavior I exhibited was popping back into the bathroom before going to work to make sure I'd gotten all the nose hairs."

Maybe this is true; more likely it isn't. I don't pursue the subject. Instead, I ask him to tell me what happened that day. And he does.

For the next three sessions, he does. At the second of those ses sions-June 15th-he brings me a calendar. It is, as the saying goes, Exhibit A.

3. N.'s Story

I'm an accountant by trade, a photographer by inclination. After my divorce-and the children growing up, which is a divorce of a different kind, and almost as painful-I spent most of my weekends rambling around, taking landscape shots with my Nikon. It's a film camera, not a digital. Toward the end of every year, I took the twelve best pix and turned them into a calendar. I had them printed at a little place in Freeport called The Windhover Press. It's pricey, but they do good work. I gave the calendars to my friends and business associates for Christmas. A few clients, too, but not many-clients who bill five or six figures usually appreciate something that's silver-plated. Myself, I prefer a good landscape photo every time. I have no pictures of Ackerman's Field. I took some, but they never came out. Later on I borrowed a digital camera. Not only did the pictures not come out, I fried the camera's insides. I had to buy a new one for the guy I borrowed it from. Which was all right. By then I think I would have destroyed any pictures I took of that place, anyway. If it allowed me, that is.

[I ask him what he means by "it." N. ignores the question as if he hasn't heard it.]

I've taken pictures all over Maine and New Hampshire, but tend to stick pretty much to my own patch. I live in Castle Rock-up on the View, actually-but I grew up in Harlow, like you. And don't look so surprised, Doc, I Googled you after my GP suggested you-everybody Googles everybody these days, don't they?

Anyway, that part of central Maine is where I've done my best work: Harlow, Motton, Chester's Mill, St. Ives, Castle-St.-Ives, Canton, Lisbon Falls. All along the banks of the mighty Androscoggin, in other words. Those pictures look more...real, somehow. The '05 calendar's a good example. I'll bring you one and you can decide for your self. January through April and September through December were all taken close to home. May through August are...let's see...Old Orchard Beach...Pemnaquid Point, the lighthouse, of course...Harrison State Park...and Thunder Hole in Bar Harbor. I thought I was really getting something at Thunder Hole, I was excited, but when I saw the proofs, reality came crashing back down. It was just another tourist-snap. Good composition, but so what, right? You can find good composition in any shitshop tourist calendar.

Want my opinion, just as an amateur? I think photography's a much artier art than most people believe. It's logical to think that, if you've got an eye for composition-plus a few technical skills you can learn in any photography class-one pretty place should photograph as well as any other, especially if you're just into landscapes. Harlow, Maine or Sarasota, Florida, just make sure you've got the right filter, then point and shoot. Only it's not like that. Place matters in photography just like it does in painting or writing stories or poetry. I don't know why it does, but...

[There is a long pause.]

Actually I do. Because an artist, even an amateur one like me, puts his soul into the things he creates. For some people-ones with the vagabond spirit, I imagine-the soul is portable. But for me, it never seemed to travel even as far as Bar Harbor. The snaps I've taken along the Androscoggin, though...those speak to me. And they do to others, too. The guy I do business with at Windhover said I could probably get a book deal out of New York, end up getting paid for my calendars rather than paying for them myself, but that never interested me. It seemed a little too...I don't know...public? Pretentious? I don't know, something like that. The calendars are little things, just between friends. Besides, I've got a job. I'm happy crunching numbers. But my life sure would have been dimmer without my hobby. I was happy just knowing a few friends had my calendars hung in their kitchens or living rooms. Even in their damn mudrooms. The irony is I haven't taken many pictures since the ones I took in Ackerman's Field. I think that part of my life may be over, and it leaves a hole. One that whistles in the middle of the night, as if there was a wind way down inside. A wind trying to fill up what's no longer there. Sometimes I think life is a sad, bad business, Doc. I really do.