Gathering String (20 page)

He gave her a key to the
Journal
, too, so she could use the huge, old-fashioned darkroom. Thelma groused every time Tess came in. Jack ignored her, uneasily aware that Tess was finding the interest of the townsfolk more than a little intrusive.

She met more and more of his friends. There were a lot of them, and not just from Lindsborg. In June, Buddy Tolliver, who had played center on the same Iowa State team as Jack, was named head coach at St. Louis University. Most of the old team met at a Des Moines sports bar to celebrate.

Watching the noisy camaraderie from a quiet spot near the bar, she saw a different side of Jack, louder, a little cocky, the one they all looked to still to set the tone.

It wasn’t until Buddy got up and joined her that she had a chance to really talk with him. She knew he’d been Jack’s closest friend, knew they were roommates all through college. He said, "They're already getting rowdy.” It was clear he was the quiet one of the group.

She smiled and nodded toward his outstretched arm, as he took his beer from the bartender. “Tell me about those tats.” She noticed his right bicep bore the same tattoo as Jack’s. “Jack just shrugs whenever I ask him.”

His grin was a little self-conscious. “Ah, well, I guess they were sort of our last hurrah.” She raised her eyebrows to encourage him. “Got ‘em about four in the morning, after we’d drowned our sorrows in tequila at a downtown Kansas City dive, the night we played our last game.”

“Was it close?”

Tolliver shrugged. “Lost to Duke by ten. I rolled my ankle early and didn’t play for shit. Jack fouled out with a little over a minute left, trying to draw a charge. After that, there was nothing left to do but get tattoos.”

“But just you and he got them. No one else?”

He laughed softly. “Well, we were the last two still standing, know what I mean? The place had a big old sign outside saying not to bother coming in if you were drunk, but we were determined. I’ll say this for Jackie, he can act sober better than any drunk I’ve ever seen. He probably won’t say much about it because it’s all a little fuzzy.”

For a moment they were quiet, watching the table erupt in laughter at something someone said. Then she asked, “What was it like for him, Buddy?”

Tolliver still watched his friends, and she had to lean a little closer to hear. “That’s when he stopped sleeping. He couldn’t be still. If he wasn’t on the court, he was slamming away at the books all night, or out in a little Jag he bought with some of the life insurance money, driving like he could outrun his own thoughts. He’d go home because he needed to be surrounded by their things, just wanted to hide under what was left behind, I suppose. But he’d nearly go crazy with the emptiness and quiet. I went back with him sometimes, trying to help.” A vague smile came to his lips. “Not easy for a shy guy like me. A big black man in that little farm town drew a lot of stares.”

She said softly, “In a different way, I’ve sampled some of that myself.”

“I bet you have. That town keeps an eye on Jackie. But they’re well meaning, and they were right to be concerned for him. I don’t know if he’d have made it without them and Swede Erickson. You know, the hardest thing the rest of us had to get over was losing in the Final Four. But for Jack, loss was a whole different world.”

She nodded, well aware of what he meant.

She also saw more of Governor Erickson. She knew from the start that he and Jack were close. Erickson had stepped in, a guiding hand that helped keep Jack on track through the worst. Now they seemed to drift between an older brother/younger brother relationship and adult friendship. Erickson was always full of advice, though Jack rarely asked for any. Tess liked Swede for the fact that he’d opened his home and shared his family with Jack. Unlike the gossipy townsfolk, Augusta Erickson’s interest in the couple felt more grandmotherly than snoopy. Her kind-hearted observations seemed more practical than prying.

It amazed Tess, when she had a minute to think about it, how quickly and naturally Jack made himself a fixture in her life. And finally, after months of getting calls from the guard at the
Record’s
front desk saying Jack was in the lobby, or finding him waiting patiently on her front steps when she came home in the evenings, she had a key to her house made for him.

“Good point.” He came to her, his face serious as he leaned down to brush his lips to hers. Holding the key up, he said, “I won’t take it lightly.”

The first time Tess woke in the middle of the night to hear his key in the lock, she was startled, and hurried out to the landing to find him nearly at the top of the stairs. Before she could speak, he grabbed her close and whispered, “Couldn’t sleep without you.” After that, it wasn’t unusual for her to wake to find him slipping into her bed to wrap his arms around her, having driven down late after he’d finished at the
Journal
. Always he was up early to rush back. In no time, they were spending more nights together than apart, him driving down to Des Moines during the week, her coming up on the weekends. Sometimes when she came in from a night shoot, she’d find him asleep on her sofa, having drifted off reading with his laptop in front of him on the coffee table. When she woke him, he always denied being tired.

But she knew it was stressful, splitting his focus, because she was feeling it herself. In the days before the gallery opening Tess felt overwhelmed. Naturally Dolly wanted more of her attention, calling several times a day with details from lighting to guest lists. Jack had helped her pick several of the pieces to be displayed, and to Tess’s delight, one had already sold to a friend of Dolly’s.

Work got the short shrift. When she first started out, she was excited by each assignment, but now every shoot was pretty much like the last. For days on end, she slipped into a kind of autopilot while she worked, not thinking of much beyond the mechanics of the job.

The Lindsborg gossips still appalled her, and it was obvious they went out of their way to make sure she knew their gimlet eyes were glued to her and Jack. But she tried to shrug them off, knowing as soon as she was headed back to Des Moines they'd be forgotten. As far as she was concerned, the stresses they lived with were just the price paid for the happiness they shared. And she was willing to keep paying it.

Then the accident brought her up short.

It was Indian summer, hot for mid-September, and for Jack the day started a little after 4 a.m. with a call about a burning machine shed full of equipment on a nearby farm. He rushed to get there, then went straight to the office to process the pictures, post the video and write, not even taking the time to go home to shower off the smell of smoke. It looked like arson, and it took a number of phone calls to the state fire marshal’s office to connect with someone who had a clue how the investigation would begin.

While he worked on the story, he was vaguely aware of Thelma and Laramie carrying on about a front-page picture in the
Record
. At one point, as Thelma stomped past his desk on her way to her office, she fired off at him, “You had a look at what that girlfriend of yours has been up to? That hideous picture on the
Record’s
cover is hers.”

“She has a name, Thel,” Jack called back, continuing to type as he spoke. “It’s Tess, OK? Her name is Tess.”

“Well, whoever she is, she’s got some nerve.” Thelma slammed the door.

Tess had been on the road the last few days, picking up shots for a couple features from the southern part of the state. Their phone conversations had been short, their schedules not jibing well for their usual long talks, so Jack wasn’t really aware of what she’d been working on. He’d intended to grab the
Record
to take a look at what the fuss was about, but first he had a meeting with a new client and the web developer. After that, he hurried to edit one of Laramie’s notebook-emptying stories that wandered to hell and gone. That took him right up to press time, which was hectic as usual. After that there were a litany of voice mails to return, postings to make to the website and a couple stories he still needed to write. It was after nine when Jack finally had a moment to snatch the folded morning
Record
off the counter and take a look.

At first glance, it appeared to be a wide, panoramic shot of a beautiful sunset. But then his stomach rolled over at the central focus. Right in the middle of the purple and crimson sky was the silhouette of a man’s body, hanging upside down from a power pole, clothes dangling in strips. The cutline read that he had been electrocuted while trying to steal copper tubing used to protect the power lines. And the photo credit read "Tess Benedict."

For a long moment he just stood there, staring at the chilling photo. Then he realized that Tom, who was still there writing a story on the day’s cross-country meet, had called out to him more than once. “What?”

“Governor’s on the phone for you,” Tom repeated.

Carrying the
Record
with him, Jack continued to stare as he walked back to his desk and punched the button for his line. “Yeah, Swede?”

Erickson called every so often, just to schmooze about his day and unwind. He and Jack chatted about his re-election campaign, which was going well, and then Jack asked, “Hey, did you see the
Record’s
cover today?”

“Hell, yes. Everyone here’s in an uproar. They pulled it down off their web site, but there wasn't anything to be done about the thousands in print. The TV and radio stations have been all over it. Pretty gruesome if you ask me. No one wants to look at a dead body over their morning coffee.”

“It was Tess’s, you know.”

Swede paused and then muttered, “Sorry, I didn’t notice. I never read the credits. She taking a lot of shit over it?”

“I don’t know. She was out of town yesterday, and we haven’t connected today.” He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 9:30. “Look, I’m going to try to reach her.”

“Sure, don’t let me keep you. If I’ve heard this much about it, I imagine she’s had a tough day.”

There was no answer at Tess’s home, and her cell went right to voicemail. Jack thought about calling the photo desk, but knew it was unlikely that anyone lingering at this hour could tell him where she was. After 11, when he still hadn't raised her, he took the
Record
off his desk, locked the
Journal’s
front door and headed for Des Moines.

He made good time, and was unlocking her front door just before one thirty. He flipped on the hallway light and started for the stairs, but glanced into the living room to see her popping up on the sofa, just waking. Then he spotted the three-quarters-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table.

“You drink that all by yourself?” The blunt words were said quietly, and she looked up at him, muzzy and rumpled.

“No choice,” she mumbled. “No one else was here, and boy, did I need a drink.” She nodded to the paper in his hands. “You saw it.”

“Not until late. I’ve been trying to call.” He sank down beside her.

“Sorry. I shut off all the phones. My number’s easy to find on the Internet, you know. But how so many people came up with my cell number, I can’t even guess. If you want a cheap thrill, listen to a few of my messages.”

“Sounds rough.” He rubbed the back of her neck.

“I don’t know what people want from me. It wasn’t my decision to run it.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But a lot of readers don’t realize that. And why
did
they go with … that …” he groped for another word but there wasn't one, “horror?”

She pulled away, running her hands through her hair. “Stapleton and Taylor both thought it made a good cautionary tale.” They were the photo chief and the managing editor. “You know, any kid tempted to swipe a quick bucks worth of copper would think again after looking at that. But the editor and the publisher sure didn’t agree when they saw it this morning. They’re pretty upset. I spent an hour and a half this afternoon in a meeting with them all. They definitely frown on corpses on the front page.”

“Well, it’s never a good idea,” he sighed. And then he asked softly, “So why did you take it?” Her eyes narrowed immediately, and he felt her shoulders tighten.

“Oh my God, you too? Jesus, Jack, Stapleton got me on my cell when I was leaving Creston yesterday and told me to haul ass and get a picture. I had to drive like crazy, searching down every little country back road before I finally found the scene, and by then I was losing the light. I fired off two quick shots of the poor guy. By the time the rescue crew figured out how to go about getting him down, the sun had set, but I still shot a couple dozen of them under the big work lights. Even though they were washed out, I offered the recovery workers first, but Stapleton asked specifically if I had anything of the body, because he was hanging there for quite a while, and a big crowd had gathered. Taylor felt that was part of the story too, and I guess they thought with the dramatic sunset colors it was ... it …” She paused, catching her breath, realizing she’d become lost in her own story. Looking up into his somber, disapproving face, her frustration and temper snapped. “Bloody fuck, I can’t believe you don’t understand. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve photographed a dead body?”