Empire of Light (24 page)

What made this fight different was that this time we had an audience. It was recess. Right? Playground fights draw crowds that rival the Good Humor Man during an August heat wave.

Giacomo had barely finished the follow-through of his open-handed smack across my face before a circle of cheering elementary school kids had formed around us, egging us on like blood-thirsty drunks at a border town cock fight. Nothing out of the ordinary, that is, until some snot-nosed white kid dropped the N-bomb while hanging upside down from the monkey bars.

“Kick that nigger’s ass!” he bellowed.

Both Giacomo and I froze in mid-swing.

What the hell was that?

“Bump that, Jason! Show that white cracker bitch how
we
do this!” shouted a black kid standing atop the slide.

And it was with those two asinine comments that the fight immediately came to a stop. Giacomo and I were fighting because I accidently flung his Duncan brand special edition Butterfly yo-yo down the storm grate while attempting an ill-fated Around-the-World trick. The
nigger
and
cracker
thing? That was a fight for two other idiots.

The show was over.

We went back to my house and told my mom what happened.

“Uh huh,” she said as if she were waiting for this very day to come. “Come with me.”

We followed her into my bedroom where she snatched a book from my shelf and ordered us to have a seat on the bed.

She sat, and with no lead-in, simply began reading a short story.

“And what is the book she is reading to you?” Storaro asks.

“It’s blank, but I remember it was a Dr. Seuss book. It was the one about Sneetches. They were these bird-looking things with stars on their bellies. Well, some of them had stars and the others didn’t. The ones without stars were discriminated against, like the brothas at a Waffle House. She was teaching us about bigotry.”

“I know this book. It’s perfect.”

Vittorio waves his hand and the simple black outline of the Sneetches on the cover, previously devoid of hue, begin to glow to life with a bright yellow tint. “Yellow is the color of consciousness. And green is the color of knowledge,” Storaro says as the cover slowly coats with a rich pigment of pine green as if poured by the hand of God. “Your mother taught you two about the arrogance and prejudice of man, at the same time instilling upon you tolerance and acceptance. She gave you awareness, so I will give this book the color green.”

The whiteness of the room also slowly begins to become saturated with color, a selected palette of rich earth tones. The sunlight flows through the window, a warm mixture of sepia and tangerine.

“And finally, orange, the color of familial warmth,” Vittorio adds. “Light particles that express the love you have for each other.

“My room didn’t look this good. My bedroom looked like Walt Disney vomited on the walls,” I say.

“The colors and the lighting are different from the reality of your memory, but it visually represents how you felt about everything in your life at that moment,” he replies. “Each color emits a specific wavelength of energy which we are capable of perceiving the same way we feel vibrations. Color isn't just something you see. It is also something you feel. This moment is populated with feelings of awareness and love. The light and color express this.”

He’s right. If I had a dime for every time I wished I could get back to this period of my life. Like when an entire fire department came to the set to shut down my illegal tie-in, for example.

The childhood memory fades away and blackness engulfs the room again, but this darkness is now full of stars and infinite in depth.

Vittorio cups his hand as if he were offering me water. But instead of water, a small planet hovers just above his palms. It’s a newborn world, hot with red lava.

“Red is the color of birth.”

The planet cools and dark blue water inundates the land. His hands close around the globe and blue light explodes from between his fingers, blinding me.

I open my eyes and find myself in the outdoors in the midst of bright daylight.

Both Vittorio and I are now in the middle of an immense ocean, hovering above the calm ocean water, cross-legged. I look down at the vast sea, and it’s the richest dark blue water I’ve ever seen, calm and flat. We sit under an azure blue sky, and I don’t have a care in the world.

“Blue is the color of freedom,” Vittorio says.

Clouds begin to form above us at a strange rate of speed. Soon, the sky is nothing but a blanket of white. The sea drops out from under us, leaving us hovering in a limbo of clouds.

It looks like Heaven.

“White is the completion of the journey. It’s here we find wholeness.”

The light drops suddenly. Darkness again. It’s an inky black of night where I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

But slowly a ball of light appears over Vittorio’s head and illuminates him from above.

We’re back in the black room.

“We are defined by light as it falls upon us. From above, the light spills atop our heads and gives one an ethereal presence, bathed within a divine glow from the heavens.”

The orb moves below him and lights him from the ground, making him look like pure evil.

“As children we lit ourselves from below with flashlights as we told horror stories. This light now pours up from below, where we have culturally placed Hell. From this direction it has become a symbol of wickedness.”

With a flick of his hand, the orb moves in my direction and hovers at my eye level.

It begins to sink and light me from below, making me look like a monster. It settles there, making commentary on my character no doubt.

“Interesting,” Vittorio comments.

That’s not cool.

The orb then quickly shoots up into the air!

SWOOSH!

It begins to melt, becoming viscous like lava that coats an array of invisible objects, including the massive thing that now surrounds me. The paint is changing color to define each article it coats. Slowly, a magnificent environment takes form.

A goddamn motor home.

A spacious, very lived-in motor home, full of dishes, bedding, strange machines and movie lights.

Movie lights?

All of them blazing and blinding me.

I shield my eyes as I quickly move around the motor home to click them off.

“Edgerton! Is that you?” An unfamiliar voice calls out.

I click off the final light to discover an old man, dressed in a nice tweed suit.

“Why the hell aren’t you in the field with the Brownie?” he continues. “We’ve only got a couple minutes before the timer goes off.”

I notice the gear of a cinematographer: light meters, a neutral density loop, the ASC Handbook.

“Help me with this tie before you go,” he says fumbling with the accessory at his neck. “And then hustle your ass into that field.”

How can this guy mistake me for Edgerton? His eyes are wide open.

Oh, shit!

“You. You’re the blind Cinematographer.” I say tightening the tie gently about his neck.

“Who the hell are you?” asks the Cinematographer. “Are you that PA they hired to help wrap out?”

“That
Box of Light
story! The story that Edgerton wrote for
American Cinematographer
. You’re the guy! You’re
that 
guy!”

“Howard Edgerton? He hasn’t written any such thing. He knows I’d kick his butt if he did. Now, kid, you better get out of here because my light canon is about to spring, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen!”

“Light canon?”

It suddenly dawns on me.

I dash to the window, and in the dusk I see a young Howard Edgerton, standing out in the wheat field with the Brownie camera, staring at a timer. The Cinematographer sits in front of his light contraption: two dozen pickle jars of frozen light feeding into a fat Lamp Canon aimed at the ceiling of the vehicle, a ceiling painted with highly reflective white paint. This is the old cinematographer’s ’63 Dodge Travco motor home, and in less than four minutes it will disappear in a blast of light.

I grab a chair and quickly take a seat next to the Cinematographer.

“Look, my name is Jason. I’m from the 21st Century, and I know your whole story. Your parents were killed when you were a kid. A nun gave you a camera, a vintage 1930 Number 2 Beau Brownie Camera, the very camera Howard Edgerton has aimed at this motor home right now. You discovered a gas that could capture light and you and Edge have been spending the past few months capturing all kinds of brilliant enchanted moments within these bottles, and you’re about to release them all at once in...”

I look at the timer.

“Two minutes forty-five seconds,” I say in a calm panic.

“Now wait a second. Let’s start with this, how the hell did you wind up in my trailer?”

“Long story, but Edgerton gave me your Brownie camera, which was infused with the light you’re about to release. I let somebody take a picture of me with it, and here I am.”

We sit in silence for a bit, both of us trying to wrap our heads around what is happening.

“I believe you, Jason,” he says with conviction. “With what I’ve seen with this gas, I believe you.”

“Well, at least I got that going for me.”

“What happens to
me
after these bottles are tripped?” the Cinematographer asks.

“I don’t know. I guess you’re going to be transported somewhere, like I was.”

“Transported? What are you talking about?”

“Well,
this!
This whole trailer disappears! But you knew you’d be going somewhere. Right? I mean you’re all dressed up.”

“I’m all dressed up to die, my friend.”

“You…You’re committing suicide? You thought this would kill you?”

“Not too long ago, I released the light from a single bottle. Just one. That entire day flew by as if it were a dream during an afternoon’s catnap. It felt amazing! It felt like perpetual love at first sight, a first kiss. It was seeing your bride walk down the aisle. It was holding your child in your arms for the first time. Just the perpetual joy of everything my real life never gave me.”

“Dude, you got lit off of
light
?”

“Yep.”

“And now you want to overdose on
perpetual joy
?” I ask.

“Beats a bullet in the head. Say, if this damn thing doesn’t kill me, then where do you think it sends me?”

“I don’t know. But look, I got here just based on the contact high from your Brownie camera. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Wow,” he says after a poignant pause.

“Damn skippy,
wow
. Where you did you get this gas in the first place,” I ask.

“Don’t bother looking for it. I extracted it from a meteor’s core.”

“A meteor?”

“A meteor. It landed in my yard. Thing probably came from the edge of the universe, for all I know. There’s no getting any more. Unless, in your future you’ve figured out space travel at light speed.”

“I hate to disappoint you but we never made it past the moon.”

“What?” he asks indignantly.

“Nope. No flying cars, no moving sidewalks—”

“They get rid of VD yet?” he asks.

“Dude, don’t even get me started,” I say, waving my hand in the air at the travesty of it all.

“Well. Nice meeting you, Jason. I’m glad you came. I’m actually happier about what’s going to happen. Damned excited, to tell you the truth. I owe you for that.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Speaking of which,” he says as he reaches out and feels the hands of the timer, “we don’t have much time before my canon triggers. Maybe you best move along now, kid.”

“Naw. I’m starting to get a feel for this nonsense. My bet is that I’m supposed to sit right here with you. My guess is that your explosion of light is going to be the tail end of the Brownie’s camera flash back in the 21st Century.”

“My Brownie didn’t have a flash.”

I look at him like he’s crazy. “Come on, man.”

“Right. Okay. Magic light. Right,” he says.

“Yeah. Anything else?” I ask.

“I ain’t got nothin’.”

“Okay then,” I say.

“Okay, then,” says the Cinematographer.

We sit for the last few seconds with nothing else to say, staring at the light canon.

Four more seconds left...

“Oh. Here’s something. Probably nothin’, but I dumped the empty meteor shell into Lake Erie.”

“
What!
Lake Erie? What the hell were you even doing on Lake—”