Wrapped in Rain(15)
When set on high-speed advance, the motor drive on an EOS-1V can shoot ten frames a second. Add to this the fact that I never carried my camera turned off, and it meant that when the little boy gripped my camera, placed his finger on the shutter button, gritted his teeth, and squeezed it like he was launching a missile, it spun through half a roll of Kodachrome 64 in just over a second.
The rapid clicking of the motor drive scared the little cowboy, and he let go like he had just squeezed the guts out of his pet frog. I squatted slowly and looked into the boy's face, bloated with bubble gum and smeared with sticky saliva-a picture of total fear mixed with complete delight. Without a word, I held up the camera and motioned to the boy. "Well," I whispered, "now that we've started, we might as well finish the roll. This time, hold it down two more seconds. Count `one mis'sippi, two mis- 'sippi."' I held the camera closer to the boy. "Go ahead. Same as last time. Just squeeze longer and count this time." There was no way on earth the boy could speak. Pink, halfchewed bubble gum was spilling out the cracks of his teeth, and it was all his lips could do to contain it. Realizing his delightful predicament, the little boy just nodded and uttered a muffled, "Ye-fir." Slowly, he lifted his hand and placed his finger on the camera like he was reading Braille. Finding the shutter button, his eyes lit up as if he had just found the last cookie in the jar.
He squeezed.
Thirty-six perfectly good frames, gone in 3.6 seconds. The motor stopped and started to automatically rewind, and the boy flinched, quickly shoving his hands in his pockets and looking over both shoulders like he was expecting a blow. "All right," I whispered, "now we're rewinding." I turned the camera sideways. "Here, listen." The boy leaned in, tonguing his gum from one cheek to the other-which required some effort-and listened. The motor clicked to a stop and I opened the back, lifted the roll, wound the tail inside the canister, and handed it to my new friend-something I had done ten thousand times, absent the boy. "There, it's all yours. I'd say you did great your first time around. Next time we'll work on looking through this little hole right here and then aiming at something." Holding a six-shooter in one hand and the film in the other, the little cowboy looked at the film like I had resurrected his frog.
I patted him on the shoulder, and the lady behind the counter said, "That'll be forty-seven dollars even."
"What about all this?"
"Naw, honey," the woman said after sucking through her teeth. "Coffee's on me. Cinnamon roll too. That nasty old thing's probably stale anyways. And you can have them nasty of beans. They give me gas. And don't tell me I make good coffee." She looked down at the little boy and pointed, causing ripples of fat to jiggle up and down her short arm. "Chil', you better get your butt back over there by that bathroom door like yo' mama done tol' you to 'fore you get in any more trouble." The boy's eyes grew wide, fear replaced delight, and he threw a glance at the door, shoved the film canister in his pocket, and sprinted to the bathroom door where his mom was apparently washing her hands. Running around the first aisle, four pieces of gum fell out of his back pocket, and bubble gum wrappers flew everywhere.
I grabbed my coffee, cinnamon roll, and can of beans and whispered, "Thank you, Bessie," and headed for the door.
"Honey"-she put her hand on her hip-"you come on back when you need your oil changed. Anytime. First one's free. And, sweet thang, bring that camera." I pushed open the door with my back, which rang the cowbell hung by a tattered piece of twine, and she turned her attention from me back to the television. She kept one watchful eye on the boy in the corner and then picked up the phone and dialed an eleven-digit number from memory. She wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder and reached for the almost empty bag of pork rinds as her entire body clanked beneath the drapery of jewelry. "Yeah, George, this is Bessie. I want one of them bracelets. Number 217." Instantly, the dialogue box in the lower left corner of the television screen switched from "Only 24 Remaining" to "Only 23 Remaining."
In the short time I had been inside, a breeze had picked up and rain clouds had blown in and blocked out the October moon. The temperature had dropped too. It was October 4 but still a warm night. Now it was maybe only 85 degrees rather than 93. I looked up, smelled the coming rain, and thought to myself, Weather man was right. Definitely rain. Might even get a twister.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, I knew about both. Five years ago, just after we buried Miss Ella, Doc sent me to spend a week with a team of scientists from NASA who were chasing twisters through the cornfields of the Midwest. The scientists were young, eager, and naive, as was I, so like Pecos Bill trying to lasso the whirlwind, we got close. Admittedly, too close. They lost a million-dollar van, and we all got pretty banged up in the process.
When the tail of the twister hit the barn above the cellar we were piling into, it just completely erased it from the earth. The only thing left was the dirt. I was closing the cellar door with one hand and squeezing the shutter with the other. Doing so earned me a shattered wrist, a few cracked ribs, and a nice cut across my right eye, but that was the shot. The path and damage were extensive, so I taped the cut across my eye and spent a day following the outcome.
When Doc got the pictures in New York, he immediately put them on the wire. A few days later, my pictures were on the front cover of three national magazines, including Time and Newsweek, and seventeen newspapers across the Midwest. Reader's Digest even sent their top roving editor from London, a crusty old New Zealander who had written something like 150 stories, to meet me in the Nebraska cellar and write a story relaying the harrowing events. The next month, I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and looked up to see that his story about me had made the lead in the U.S. edition. That put me on the map, and to be honest, I owe it to Doc. I nursed my wounds at home, and Doc called me saying, "Son, I've been in this business forty years, but you got a gift. You're not the best, but you could be. I don't know how, but what you do with a camera is nothing short of miraculous. Closest thing to art I've ever seen in this business." If he knew the truth, he wouldn't be so amazed. Oh sure, I took the pictures, and maybe my craft was getting better, but if he knew what was going on inside my head, he might not be so amazed. I hung up the phone and there in the silence echoed Miss Ella, Don't even think about letting that go to your head. 7b whom much is given, much is expected.