Dwelling Places (18 page)

Mack

He noticed the camera three weeks ago when reaching into the linen closet at the farmhouse. While he was searching for old blankets, his fingers found the cool lens and drew back in confusion. Pulled-back linens revealed the Vivitar, its shoulder strap still attached. Young Taylor had dabbled with photography back in eighth grade. Rita found the camera in a garage sale and bought the strap in the old Woolworth's in Beulah, the one recently replaced by two smaller businesses, an insurance office and a salon for doing fingernails. The photography phase lasted nearly a year, and then the camera became family property. Jodie played around with shots of her flower garden two or three springs ago. It hasn't been dragged out at a church or family function for a long time.

For no particular reason, Mack has brought the camera to the stone house. Now it is November, and there isn't a lot to do in the woods that is functional, other than gather firewood. Maybe he should roam around and see what he can find through this lens. Maybe not. These days he can't tell when a sudden idea will lead to something or fizzle. Thoughts can be thin and unreliable. On a good day he might, on his drive to or from work, have an idea about what to do that evening or that year. There might even be a momentary feeling of purpose or enthusiasm. The plan could be as mundane as systematically checking his own remaining machinery—the garden tiller, the mower, the small John Deere that escaped the auction because it had barely any of its original parts left and just about every farmer in the county has a similar machine gathering cobwebs in a dark shed. Or he could sort through the junk in the back of the barn. He can be a little bit happy, imagining this useful thing he might do. It might take him as long as a day or two, and at the end of it he could see what he's accomplished. But something as minor as a song on the radio or a bug hitting the windshield can loosen that idea and weaken any impulse he has toward carrying it out. This is how worthless his mind is now.

In spite of all that, he buys the cheapest film he can find at Wal-Mart, two color rolls of twenty-four exposures.

The camera sits on the passenger side of the car, tucked between his thermos and the seat back. He looks at it briefly, suspiciously, knowing that he is probably setting himself up for failure.

But this evening, as he exits town on the county road leading home, the early winter heaven releases amazing colors, smudges of gunmetal and peace rose. He pulls onto the shoulder and aims the camera at the expanse. He's frustrated immediately at how little of it fits into the small square of the viewfinder, but snaps the shot anyway. A mile farther, the colors go miraculous. Just in front of great sweeps of mad ruby, with the light shining through, is Jameson's old barn, a piece of tiller jutting out from one side, boards missing like lost puzzle pieces. This gives the picture something more specific
and manageable than the entire horizon. When he looks through the lens, the shape of the barn seems to sharpen, and he is stabbed by a feeling of loss. He remembers when it wasn't abandoned, when cattle gathered around it at the end of the day, and when machinery that wasn't broken or rusted was parked by seasons, according to which task was called for. He can see it clearly, and when he snaps the picture, he feels that he has snatched the last glimmer of memory. Like the fast-leaving western light, the images are slipping and disintegrating.

After that evening, he can't take his eyes off abandoned barns. He can't stop noticing how many there are. He is compelled to gather their memories against the final winds and rains that will toss aside their remaining walls.

Sometimes abandoned barns sit beside newer generations of buildings. There are several working farms within a few miles on which Mack counts three or even four different versions of the barn, with the oldest a mere foundation or a ramshackle shadow of building that leans toward its successors as if bowing out and into retirement. Those that don't stand empty appear to be held up by the machinery or the hay they store. It isn't unusual for the oldest barn to house all the bits and pieces that no one has bothered hauling off to a junkyard. In this way families store their histories, the refuse along with the memories. Maybe it has to do with the long habit of never wasting anything. Garbage goes to the hogs or the compost; old curtains become rags; used pantyhose becomes twine for tying up tomato plants; used clothing goes to the church or community pantry. Leftover plant life gets tilled back into the earthy bed from which it sprouted. What can't go back directly travels somewhere else in the form of smoke from harvest bonfires. A man keeps whatever part might work again, even if in another machine entirely. All these pieces of life find their succession of homes, all of them within a hundred yards of each other. Nothing is lost permanently. The totally unusable items rest at last beyond all the usable things, stored in a heap at the far end of the barnyard or in a gully that can serve no other purpose but to hide
broken appliances and other various items removed from living space during someone's fit of sorting and pitching.

Mack begins to take note of these patterns of objects that until now have been—he supposes—too everyday to notice. His vision begins to hook onto ordinary sights and turn them into new information. He counts old barns, takes pictures of a family's history as represented by its unique configuration of outbuildings. He tries to capture all the straight lines: roofs of buildings, seams in the asphalt, power lines, thin shelves of clouds, planes of light, boards in old bridges, wires in fences. In fact, the earth itself is a dark and silent horizon, straight as a yardstick, sprouting electrical poles into a nearly colorless sky.

The pictures come back from Wal-Mart and are nothing like what he saw. The images are smaller and less sharp, the colors just not there in the same way. The emotions are gone. Mack tacks them up on one wall of the stone house. He arranges them several times but then takes them all down—except for a couple—and throws them away. For the life of him he can't understand why any of this is suddenly important. But he is at the mercy of some hunger that has risen up out of his days of solitude. He needs to see the second level of things. He wants to search the outward signs of others' lives and see how much those lives match his own.

But of course their lives will never match his.
They
are not roaming the roads, slowing down to look at buildings, stopping to take amateurish pictures of the county's life. They are too busy living that life, unlike Mack, who in some bizarre way has stepped outside it. That's it, he decides. He isn't trying to document anything or make artistic portraits of the countryside. He is searching for an entrance somewhere, a way back into his life, their life, the life of the place, which is all he's ever learned but for some reason is unable to learn again.

He does not mention the photography to George. He knows that family and neighbors will see him with the camera and that word will get around, but to introduce the topic to George would open up a part of Mack's soul that is still being formed somehow. He cannot talk about something that he has not yet identified. And contrary to what
therapists and preachers seem to think, talking is not always the way to learn things. For now, looking at things is his main conversation.

Rita

She wouldn't swear to it, but she thinks that Tom the mechanic shakes his head when he sees her pull in. Most mechanics are happy to see business roll into the driveway. Work is work, isn't it? But what for years was the periodic tune-up and tire rotation has turned into practically a monthly visit to fix some new ailment. “This car is going to nickel-and-dime you to death, Mrs. Barnes,” he said to Rita, and that was two years ago. But Tom Longman is the son of Beth and Bill Longman, and he was brought up to have manners. When Rita stops the car and lowers the window, he smiles and walks right up to her and leans down politely.

“How can I help you, young lady?”

“You can find out what's making this bumping sound when I hit the brakes.”

“What kind of bumping sound?”

“Don't know how to describe it, kind of a
chug-chug
.”

“Only when you brake?”

“Yes, and I don't like brakes that make noise.”

“Well, noisy brakes are not something you want to get used to.”

“Wouldn't want them to just give out on me.”

“Especially the way you drive, tearing around town like a maniac.”

She allows herself to chuckle. Tom is always trying to make her laugh, maybe because every time they meet she is anxious over some problem with her vehicle.

“Scoot over and let me see what's happening.” He gets behind the wheel, and they drive around for about ten minutes. The car doesn't act up at first, but then, suddenly, there is a strange jolting underneath them, and that bumping. Tom doesn't say anything but turns the opposite direction of the garage. Rita figures out that he's taking her home, not a good sign.

“Well, we've got some kind of brake problem,” he says as he turns onto her street.

“That sounds serious.”

“You sure can't drive it this way. I can't really get under there until tomorrow morning. But I'll call you just as soon as I know what the problem is.” He slides into her little driveway, hops out, and comes around to open her door.

“Thank you, Tom. Just call when you know.” She doesn't even ask about the cost. Anything will be too much; she'll have to work numbers on this, just as she has to work numbers on everything else.

“Work numbers.” That was Taylor Barnes's phrase. Over their years together, as problems of one sort or another came up, Taylor would bring them to moments of rest by stating, “Time to work numbers. We'll figure it out, Rita Mae.” And they generally did. But the relief for Rita had always begun at that moment when Taylor told her it was time to work numbers. When he said that, she knew that he expected the numbers to work out eventually. He was stating that he had a plan and that they'd get through whatever it was they were in the middle of.

They had survived all the usual ups and downs, had kept on after failed crops and deaths of loved ones, long illnesses and bad bank sheets. But Rita had never become truly discouraged until Taylor stopped saying he would work numbers. And he stopped saying it at age sixty-two, two years before that damned tractor turned over on top of him. She's always suspected that the tractor would have stayed upright if Taylor had just kept working numbers. But it just wasn't in him anymore. He kept working as hard as always, but something important had left him.

For about ten years now, she has worked her own cussed numbers. She's worked numbers for both sons too. Lucky for her, she's got a daughter-in-law who can work numbers with the best of them. This is how they have all kept going, with Jodie and Rita working numbers, even after Alex died and Mack went silent and became unable to work numbers for himself.

She fixes herself instant hot chocolate, adding some powdered milk and cinnamon to give it more body. She drinks it sitting in her living room, which looks out at the street. She doesn't bother calling Mack at work or Jodie, who would be home about now. She'll wait until Tom knows what the verdict is, and then she'll do whatever she needs to do.

Tom calls by ten the next morning. The news is not good: she needs a new something-or-other, and it's a part he's got to order from somewhere else. She'll be without wheels for at least two more days.

She gets off the phone to Tom and punches in the number at the farmhouse. No one is home, but she'll leave a message. This is something she has finally become comfortable with. Jodie got their first answering machine about three years ago. She said it was just easier with all of them coming and going so much. She put a nice little message on there about how you'd reached the home of Mack, Jodie, Taylor, and Kenzie Barnes, and that no one was home to take your message but they'd be happy to get back to you as soon as they could. You were supposed to leave your name, number, and message after the beep. Then an uncomfortable few seconds passed before the beep came. And then once the beep happened, silence—and you realized that now it was your turn. And suddenly you were all flustered and couldn't even remember why you'd called. This whole process felt insulting at first, and Rita had refused to leave messages for the first two months they had the machine. That was one of the few times she'd ever seen Jodie truly irritated with her.

“Mom, if you don't leave a message, then I don't even know that you tried to call. Just talk as if one of us is at the other end.”

“But what if I mess it up?”

“How can you mess it up?”

“By saying something that doesn't come out right. It's not like I can rewind the thing and then try again.”

“If you mess up, just hang up and call back.”

“Then I have to go through the whole process all over again. I may as well get in the car and drive out there and write a note on the door, all the time it takes to deal with the machine.”

“Okay.” Jodie has a way of saying that to indicate that she's had enough but is going to be polite about it. The next week, Rita used the machine. She wrote down what she wanted to say in case she panicked once the beep came and went. It worked out all right, but she'd ended her message and was about to hang up when she realized she hadn't even introduced herself. So she quickly tacked on, “This is Mom,” and then hung up fast.

Now she doesn't even expect a real person to answer the phone. And she leaves messages two or three times on some days. It's part of how the family functions, and she's actually glad the machine is there, because that saves her a lot of time when she would otherwise have to call back again and again, hoping to get someone.

Thanks to her hacky cough, today she has to hang up the first time she tries to leave a message. On the second try she talks fast and keeps it short: “This is Mom. The car's at the shop again, some problem with the brakes. I probably won't have it back until Thursday. Jodie, could you pick me up if you grocery-shop sometime today? Talk to you later.”