Tucker’s Grove (27 page)

Mr. Rossa opened his eyes again, looking at Danny from within himself, at some far-off place.
“
Remember, Danny.”

The boy heard the words, although they had been barely sp
o
ken. He grabbed the old farmer
’
s hand and buried his face in the wrinkled and musty shirt. “
I love you, Mister Rossa.”

The old man seemed to become completely lucid for a m
o
ment.
Danny could see a reflection of the young Emperor, with fiery red hair and a fiery red beard, the leader of men, holding his sword high in the air.

“
Danny…
my friend…
in my dresser…
bottom drawer…
it
’
s yours.
”
The strength in his voice seemed to drain into the
air, leaving him no energy at all.

“
What is it?”
Danny whispered, but grief masked his curios
i
ty.

The farmer didn
’
t seem to hear him. He gripped Danny
’
s hand so tightly it hurt, looking into the boy
’
s eyes. “…
best friend…”

“
You
’
re my hero, Mister Rossa.”

A spasm went through the old man
’
s entire body. His loud gasping breaths were almost convulsions in themselves, keeping a different rhythm.

Danny wanted to cry out, but his vocal cords froze. This wasn
’
t the way it was supposed to happen. He had seen peopl
e die on TV before. They said goodbye, or whatever they needed to say…
they closed their eyes and then breathed their last. Mr. Rossa
’
s eyes were so tightly clenched that tears streamed b
e
tween them. His teeth ground together, and a continual force of shudd
ers rippled through his body.

But Mr. Rossa was already dead. The spirit had left his mind, and his body hadn
’
t yet accepted the fact. Danny slid to the floor, beside the farmer
’
s bed, and cried and cried until Mr. Rossa
’
s body settled into a peace. And Da
nny continued to sit, staring at the old man who told so many stories, until his tears had dried by themselves.

Finally, he got to his feet, sniffled a few times, and wondered what to do. He went slowly to Mr. Rossa
’
s dresser, afraid. The old chest of draw
ers sat dusty in the shadows, cluttered on top with odds-and-ends, treasures of a sort. The handle of one of the drawers was broken off.

He bent to the bottom drawer and pulled it open, surprised to find it lined with plush red velvet in imperial splendor.
And i
n
side the drawer, nestled among the velvet: it had been lovingly polished and oiled over the years, more than a memory, more than a story.

Danny trembled with awe and reached down to lift up Barb
a
rossa
’
s sword,
Danny
’
s
sword now, the Emperor
’
s sword
. He smiled broadly and vowed to care for it.

Henry Franklin
’
s testament, recounting the events of February, 1944:

“
Finding the mysterious camera was no accident, and it wasn
’
t luck. The camera found me.

“
The war sounds outside began to d
ie down inside the bombed-out town in France. I had hidden in the corner of a r
u
ined building during the bombing raid, and now I could smell the smoke of fires outside. I dearly wished I could have warmed my hands over one of them. Snow started to fall in
the night, and that made the silence seem deeper. I could hear an occasional moan from wounded people still trapped in the rubble.

“
Then I saw a very odd thing. An old man dressed in a baggy gray business suit came striding over the broken debris in the st
reet; he had an ancient camera on a wooden tripod tucked u
n
der his arm, and he carried a black leather satchel in his right hand. His left arm dangled by his side, and the left half of his face sagged in paralysis, his eye squinted shut
—
as if he
’
d had a st
roke or something. Despite his partial paralysis, though, the old man moved surprisingly well with his awkward burden.
A
g
ile
—
that
’
s the word I
’
m looking for.

“
As I watched from hiding, he set down the camera box and his leather case, then snapped open the
tripod with a flick of his wrist. The camera was one of those old monstrosities where the photographer has to hunch under a cloth and take pictures on heavy glass plates. Despite its age, the camera was in beautiful condition, a lovely antique…
and I
’
ve al
w
ays had more than a passing interest in photography.

“
Steadying his tripod, the photographer bent over several bodies, some of them crushed beyond hope of life and others still quivering and moaning. Then the man adjusted his camera and took a photograph o
f the victims
—
like a parasite, a ghoul, trying to capture the death and pain around him on film. For his scrapbook? Christmas cards, maybe? Something in me thought it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen. I was very naive then.

“
I lifted m
y rifle, lining him up in my sights. I was supposed to shoot Germans, and looters
—
that would make me a good so
l
dier. I was already hardened to the many horrors I had seen on the front…
but something else repulsed me about this old man. I
wanted
to kill him.
That feeling made me hate myself, and I had a sudden terror that I was becoming one of those
‘
combat barba
r
ians,
’
like Sam, who actually enjoyed the war and found it exci
t
ing. I didn
’
t want that to happen to me.

“
The camera came into focus in my rifle sig
hts, and I could see how beautiful the antique was
—
a Stradivarius of cameras. I wanted to have it, badly and without any discernible reason. I didn
’
t know what I was doing.

“
A few scattered shots bounced around the night from fighting in the streets
—
and I
fired my rifle. The old man jerked and fell backward to the rubble, clutching at the camera for pr
o
tection. The camera wobbled on its tripod, but regained its ba
l
ance. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I felt no remorse for kil
l
ing the old man, but I had ver
y nearly damaged the camera!

“
Silence returned, and I crouched low as I ran from my hi
d
ing place. In the sparse light of the dying fires, I looked like no more than a flickering shadow, a cat stalking a downed bird. I smelled the blood, the dust, the snow.
I licked my lips.

“
The old photographer sprawled on the ground next to one of the wounded. The expression on the dead man
’
s face
—
the frozen left side an emotionless mask of rubbery skin, the right side twisted into an impossible expression of surprise
—
was
so unna
t
ural that it made my skin want to crawl off my bones and go back to where I had been hiding.

“
All of the victims on the ground
—
the old man
’
s photograp
h
ic subjects
—
had died. But I knew they had been alive only m
o
ments before when he
’
d taken a pictu
re of them.

“
The camera itself called me, and I ran my fingers over the wooden veneer on the box. Strange symbols had been etched around the lens. In the leather case at the foot of the tripod I found a stack of coated glass plates wrapped in black paper a
nd some jars of chemicals, one of which glowed with a sickish warmth, like a fever. The old photographer
’
s equipment was more desirable than anything I had seen before. When you
’
re fighting a war, the animal instincts come closer to the surface, and ratio
n
al thought doesn
’
t always enter into the making of d
e
cisions. I was trapped, and it was such a perfect trap that I didn
’
t realize it until decades later.

“
Suddenly I felt naked out in the open. I snatched up the camera and the leather case and scurried int
o one of the ruined buildings. Already I began thinking of how I could bring the camera and the equipment home with me.

“
Why did I ever see the cursed thing in the first place?”

With eyebrows raised, Will Steiger stared at the five framed photographs on t
he wall of old Uncle Henry
’
s cottage out in the woods. The photographs seemed so real, so hypnotic, so lifelike despite the blurred sepia tone. Will had seen antique pictures in old family scrapbooks, the faded brown-and-white portraits in which nobody ev
e
r smiled and everybody dressed in funeral costumes.

Like for Uncle Henry
’
s funeral.

Three of the five framed photographs showed gruesome detail of wounded World War II soldiers and civilians. Uncle Henry had been in Europe during the War
—
had he taken pictures of people lying in the rubble of a bombed-out street? Why would anyone do that? The photographs seemed to ooze pain and su
f
fering, striking at a gut level. Will felt uncomfortable just looking at them.

Nancy would take them down, with
out a doubt, when she packed and sorted through all the old photographer
’
s things
—
the pictures wouldn
’
t bother their young son Chet, with his macabre interest in such things, but she would insist the images were a “
bad influence on the children.”

The other
two framed photographs were portraits. One showed an old, elaborately dressed woman, decked with gaudy jewels and wearing a sour expression. The portrait next to hers showed a thin, middle-aged man dressed in a chauffeur
’
s un
i
form
—
he seemed to be gazing t
oward the old woman
’
s phot
o
graph with something like lighthearted tolerance. But Will could see much more in the photographs: satisfaction from the chau
f
feur, but a gnawing hopelessness of knowing he
’
d never do an
y
thing else in his life; the rich lady seem
ed lonely, not happy that she was forced to wear a stern mask in front of the chauffeur with whom she wanted to be friend as well as employer….

Will was delighted. Though he knew a little about photo
g
raphy himself, he could not discriminate how Uncle Henry
had captured so much “
depth”
in the pictures. He must have had an incredible rapport with his camera. Now, Will wished he had known the old man better.

“
Dear Mr. Steiger, We regret to inform you that your u
n
cle
—”
the letter had read.

Imagine dying all alone. Isolated in a cottage deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota
—
with a heavy wooden beam fallen across your back. Waiting, paralyzed, without a friend in the world to look for you…
it must have taken a week for him to starve. And how
many more weeks before someone found him?

What had Uncle Henry been thinking about all that time?

Will put it out of his mind. Again.

The house
’
s fireplace stood cold and empty next to a wall full of bookcases. Will ran his index finger along the spines
of some of the books. Now with Uncle Henry
’
s estate, maybe he could afford to go to grad school, get his Master
’
s in history. Nancy had already begun to talk about how she wanted to plant a garden and make pickles and learn to quilt and sew and raise her
c
hi
l
dren. All that from an uncle whom Will had never known b
e
cause his mother refused to talk about him.