The Traveller (46 page)

‘Yet they do it. Often, or at least often enough to cause interest and dismay. It is the same with people.’

He seemed lost in thought.

“Have you any idea how frequently people beach themselves? I’m not talking about the solitary, despondent type, clinically depressed and naturally suicidal. There are enough of them around. But people who acquiesce in their owm deaths. How they contribute to the worst things happening to them.

They marched in orderly fashion into the gas chambers.

no one ever seemed to say, “Screw you! I’m not going in

there!” and grasp for a moment at their own humanity.

Did you know that on the first day of the Battle of the

Somme, the British lost sixty thousand men? And, knowing

this. on the next day, when the whistles blew, the men still

went over the top into a wall of machine guns and fortified

positions. This was 1916. The modern world! Impossible!

“On death row in just about every state, prisoners scheduled for execution are watched carefully throughout their

last night. The fear is that they will somehow find a way

to kill themselves. The state,’ he said bitterly, ‘doesn’t like

to be cheated, you see. But what would be the difference,

really? Ultimately, I think, suicide is the greatest act of

freedom. That’s what we can’t seem to learn from the

goddamn whales. They’re sick, with what, we just don’t

know. AIDS for whales, hell, or something. So they

abbreviate the processing of their own deaths. They take

charge of their lives, take control, and make their choice.

And we wonder why. Inexplicable, the scientists say. They.

act baffled. What is inexplicable is that we can’t understand

why they do it when it seems so damn obvious.’

Jeffers picked up the pace. He was shaking his head back and forth.

“Boswell,’ he said in a tone that rang of solitude, ‘I’m confusing two different issues. It will be up to you to sort things out.’

After hesitating a moment he added:

‘Today’s lesson is really on acquiescence. Lemmings.

Watch carefully how people will embrace the means of

their demise. Remarkable. I remember reading about this

photographer from Florida. Do you remember? It was only

a couple of years ago. His name was Wilder, which I

suppose created a good bit of punning in news rooms around the nation. Anyway, the guy snatches a gal from a grand prix race in Miami. Then up in Daytona, I think. Off he goes on a cross-country tour, killing as he goes. Always uses the exact same technique: heads to a sporting event or a shopping mall, pulls out his camera, and starts taking pictures of girls. Before long he has one following after him and the next thing you know they’re in his car and …’

He looked down at Anne Hampton.

‘Fill in the rest yourself.’

‘I remember,’ she said.

‘But you know what was truly fascinating,’ Jeffers continued, ‘was that everyone knew! The FBI, the local police, the newspapers, the television stations, everybody! Wilder’s picture was on every station, every front page, every station house. His modus operandi was described, discussed, dissected, you name it. It was everywhere! You could hardly be a part of popular culture and miss it. There wasn’t a dinner-table conversation or bull session in a high-school bathroom with the girls having a smoke between classes where it wasn’t said: If a guy with a beard wants to take your picture, don’t get in the car with him! But you know what happened?’

‘He died.’

‘But not before another half-dozen women got into his car and got themselves killed. Remarkable. You know something? He never even bothered to shave off his beard, which was the dominating aspect of every description in every paper. Now that’s a phenomenon that deserves study.’

‘He died in the Northeast, I think.’

‘Yeah. New Hampshire. We’re going there shortly.’

‘He got shot by a trooper and the last girl lived,’ she insisted.

‘He was stupid and careless,’ Jeffers said brusquely.

But the last girl lived, she thought.

They approached the raceway grandstand. ‘Stick close,’ Jeffers said. ‘And watch the magic work.’

It did work.

Inside the grandstand area, a blurred melee of people, machines, bright colors, and constant sound, Jeffers worked

the sidelines expertly. He maneuvered amidst the crowd of

spectators and the car crews, picking out young women,

singly or in pairs, starting by taking their picture from afar,

then moving closer until he not only had their attention, but they were posing for him. Anne Hampton was almost

overcome by the rush of raised shoulders, sucked-in cheeks,

turned profiles, and perfect smiles that greeted Douglas

Jeffers’ camera lens. She heard him give the same story

over and over again, and she dished out business cards witth a blind enthusiasm that mocked her sickened heart.

He told the young women that he was on assignment for Playboy and they were going to do a feature called ‘Racetrack Girls’. He was doing some of the preliminary

photography, he explained. He and a couple of other

photographers were shooting young women at tracks in various locations. Then the editors back in Chicago would look at the pictures and decide where to head for their photo spread.

He had Anne Hampton take the names and numbers of some of the young women; she did this hestitantly, ill,

knowing that it was merely a part of the general playacting. In the background the crowd cheered the cars and drivers, but often the noise from the track was so great that it drowned out the sounds from the stands. She looked up as one particularly immense black dragster filled the air with mechanical tumult, to see the crowd rising to its feet in appreciation. But she was unable to hear their response and she thought suddenly of the appearance of a row of fish in a market, lined up on the white shaved ice, eyes and mouths open, as if with animation, their deaths masked by the lights and sounds.

‘Boswell,’ she heard his voice fade in as the car noise flew away down the track, ‘another roll, please. Ladies, this is my assistant, Anne Boswell. Say hello, Annie …’

She nodded her head at a pair of young women, probably loose to her own age. One was blonde, the other brunette,

and both wore tightly fitting tank tops and cut-off blue jeans. She did not think them particularly pretty, the blonde’s teeth seemed to bump about in her mouth haphazardly so that her smile came forth slightly skewed, while the brunette’s nose was too pert for real beauty, rising ski-jump from her face. Anne Hampton thought that the young woman probably had a mother who always told her that she was cute, and thus she aspired only toward cuteness, not realizing that it would translate from high-school cheerleader into a simple marriage and family and small home in rural Pennsylvania or Ohio, with the television on even-night and a weekly trip to the beauty parlor to keep her looks in check after suffering the ravages of childbearing. She tried to remember her own mother talking to her about beauty. She could hear in her head her mother, speaking calmly but enthusiastically, brushing her hair with long strokes, telling her how pretty she would be when she grew up, which, at age twelve, had seemed such an impossibility. She recalled her mother’s look of dismay when she returned home from her first college semester with her hair cropped to her shoulders. I always did so much to distance myself. Anne Hampton thought. Even when it grew out long again, something was different. A loss of trust. A voice intruded on her memory.

‘ … Must be exciting, huh?’

It was one of the young women. The blonde.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne Hampton said. ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘Oh,’ said the young woman, waving her hands about, ‘I just said that I thought being a photographer’s assistant must be exciting. A really special job. I mean, I just work in a bank and that’s nothing special at all. How did you get the job?’

Douglas Jeffers interjected: ‘Oh, I picked her from hundreds of possibilities. And she’s worked out pretty good so far, right, Annie?’

She nodded.

‘Well,’ said the young woman, ‘I bet it’s real exciting.’

‘It’s different,’ Anne Hampton replied.

The brunette was examining one of Jeffers’ cameras. Anne Hampton saw that she’d stuck the business card in her front pocket.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think being in Playboy would be just

too wild. I mean, I’d just love to have my picture in that

magazine. And so would Vicki.’ She gestured at the blonde.

And my boyfriend would think it was neat! But I bet my

folks would just die!’

Anne Hampton saw Jeffers smile.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘like I explained, these are just preliminary shots. But sometimes the really pretty girls like you two get called back for the spread …’

‘Isn’t there any way we could, I don’t know, help make sure they choose us?’ asked Vicki, the blonde. ‘I mean, take some extra pictures of me and Sandi, maybe.’

Jeffers looked at the pair of young women intently. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t guarantee anything. Here, stand together for an instant …’

He held his arms wide, then narrowed them, directing the two young women. He raised the camera and Anne Hampton heard the motordrive speed forward as he clicked off a series of pictures, moving about the two young women, dipping up and down, framing them rapidly.

“… You certainly have the look,’ he said. ‘But, you know, they’re searching for more than just a look, if you know what I mean …’

Anne Hampton saw the two young women put their heads together and giggle. She thought suddenly: I’m not here. This isn’t happening. I can’t be happening. Then she heard Jeffers’ voice again. “Look, the best I could do, and I don’t want you to count on anything, would be to take a few, uh, slightly more revealing shots. That might impress the editors. It’s worked before, but, of course, no guarantees.’

She heard the two women laugh together again, nodding their heads.

‘Well,’ Jeffers was continuing in his most upbeat and harmless voice, ‘if you’re really interested, why don’t you meet me at my car, section 13A, in half an hour. Please

don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, because I’ve told all these other women that I wouldn’t do anything special for them and I’d hate to have it get around that I was doing you two a favor …”

Both women shook their heads rapidly.

‘So if you can keep a secret, sneak out and meet me and we’ll see what we can do. Boswell, give me the long lens, please.’

Jeffers looked at the women. ‘Just got to take a couple of action shots to give the editors the right flavor, if you know what I mean. After all, I want them to come back here for the spread.’

Again the girls nodded. Jeffers gave them a little wave and started to wade away through the crowd. Anne Hampton turned and looked back once, seeing the two girls talking animatedly together. For an instant she was confused: she’d heard Jeffers give them the wrong location number for the car.

‘How will they find the car?’ she asked.

‘They won’t. They will go to a spot fifty yards away.’

‘But

‘Come on, Boswell, use your head. If they mention it to someone else, or if someone tags along with them, then I, from the position I have the car in, have the capability of exiting without fuss. And without being seen. But,’ he added, ‘it won’t make any difference. This is really an unnecessary precaution if ever I’ve seen one. Those two are in for the ride. They won’t tell anyone, and they’ll sneak out just like I asked them. They’ll be there, ready, willing and able, don’t you think?’

Anne Hampton nodded her head.

‘Lemmings,’ said Jeffers.

He thought a moment as he plowed through the mass of people.

‘Boswell,’ he said, ‘does it ever seem to strike you as contradictory the way we in America can tolerate the most fundamental, righteous, religious prudery on the one hand, and yet the easiest thing in the world is to talk someone out of their clothes? Watch.’

She followed after Jeffers as he made a simple loop of

the field, actually pausing occasionally to take a few shots,

then heading back out to the parking lot. She thought of a

night in her junior year of high school. She and her date

had parked on an empty street. She could still feel the

sensation of his fumbling hands exploring her body; his

lack of guile and barely contained excitement were what

forced her to give in - at least in part. He was not someone

that she particularly liked. But he was there, and he was

a nice fellow, and she had so wanted to experience some

of the things that were forever being talked about at school,

and so she let his hands wander, discovering that the

benefits were pleasing.

When he tried to pull off her underwear was when she realized the necessity of stopping, a moral necessity, to be certain, one that upon later reflection seemed silly. She remembered a frightening moment when she resisted, and te resisted her and she recognized then how much stronger he was. She could still feel in her memory the sudden sensation of force that gripped her and the awful helplessness that penetrated her at that moment. She shivered at the thought. This had made a great impression, the instantaneous fear and terror that she was weak and that she could be forced. But when she gasped out a panicked ‘No!’ he’d honored that request, his muscles slackening suddenly. Her gratitude had been boundless. Six weeks later, prepared in her mind, she’d let him continue. It had been alternately painful and exhilarating, and she found that memory oddly comforting. She wondered where he was now. She hoped he was happy.

Jeffers reached the car and opened her door. ‘We’ll put them in the back,’ he said.

Her memory fled and she handed him the equipment bag and her vest, which he stowed in the trunk.

“Get in and wait,’ he said. She noted that the iron edge had returned to his voice.

She did as he said. Her mind raced about her. envisioning the two young women and what was about to happen. She shut it down, forcing thoughts from her head.