Journey (2 page)

Cooper appeared, as he always did, through my bedroom window, this time carrying his baby brother close to his chest in a sling, like a chimpanzee carrying its young. Cooper’s face was round and smooth, his brown hair cut even around his face as if his mother might have placed an aluminum bowl over his head. Cooper’s face grew even fatter with love when he saw my sister. Cat, sitting on my bed, looking through the photograph album, smiled back at
Cooper. She liked him even though he was
my
best friend. She liked him even though he was, in my grandfather’s words, “besotted” with her. Almost every year since he was six Cooper had proposed marriage to my sister.

“So?” Cooper raised his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head. Cooper knew that Mama had gone, but he wouldn’t ask questions. Questions like Where is she? Why hasn’t she written a letter? Why did she go?
Who’s to blame here?

I looked up, startled at my own thought, half afraid I’d spoken out loud, but Cat and Cooper were looking at the baby.

The baby, Emmett, reached his small hand out to Cat, the movement jerky, as if his head wasn’t telling his hand how. Cat, smiling, put out her finger, and the baby took it, a sudden contented look settling like silk over his face.

Cooper smiled down at Emmett.

“I’ve got him for a whole hour while Mama weeds the garden,” he said, happily untangling Emmett from the sling. “To shape or ruin his lima-bean brain. What shall it be?”

Emmett leaned back against Cooper and stared at me, as if waiting for an answer, his eyes
all dark-wet and wise, and so direct that after a moment I looked away.

“He looks like you, Cooper,” said Cat.

“We all look alike,” said Cooper. “The whole family, down through the ages, over prairie and sea, desert and mountain. You could toss all our pictures up in the air, and when they came down they’d
all
look like me.”

Cat laughed and the baby laughed, too, making us all laugh.

“Well, I don’t look like anyone,” I said. “Anyone that I know.”

Cat scrambled over the bed to pick up the album, turning the pages. Cooper pointed suddenly.

“Is that you, Cat? In the garden?”

Cat was quiet.

“No,” she said slowly, “that’s Mama. Mama a long time ago.”

“Oh.” There was a pause, and Cooper looked at me uncomfortably. “It’s just that…”

“We look so much the same,” finished Cat.

She turned back in the album.

“There. That’s who I look like!”

It was Grandma’s picture in the garden swing.
With the smile. Very carefully Cat took the picture out of the album and walked to the mirror. She held the picture up in front of her and smiled.

“There. You see?”

Cooper and I stood behind her, the baby grinning at us all in the mirror.

“Yes,” said Cooper. “I do.”

Cat looked at me, waiting.

“Yes,” I said. It was as if we all stood there, taking a strange oath, in front of a girl with light-touched hair and another who looked the same but not the same in the picture and now had gray hair tied back with a string.

“But,” I couldn’t help adding, “you look like Mama, too.”

Cat’s smile became set and her eyes narrowed, and then the baby gave a sudden excited leap in Cooper’s arms, and Grandfather stood behind us.

“Ah,” he said to the baby. “Look who’s come for a visit. Hello, Cooper.”

Grandfather took the camera from around his neck and handed it to me. He held out his arms, and Emmett went to him happily, grabbing for his glasses. Laughing, Grandfather
took off his glasses and held them out for Cooper to take, and in that moment I held the camera up to my eyes to hide my surprise. Without his glasses my grandfather’s face changed; sharp places became softer. Through the camera I could see the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that made his eyes less hard; his face smoothed out. He looked younger.
He looked
… without thinking I pressed the button and the shutter clicked. Grandfather looked up.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“No, no, Journey.” He smiled at me and sat down on the bed with the baby. “You can take all the pictures you want.”

Grandfather sat Emmett on his knees and took his hands.

“Trot, trot to Boston;

Trot, trot to Lynn …”

Emmett bounced and grinned. I held the camera up to my face, my eyes closed.

We are in the garden, the light slanting through the trees. Tall flowers—hollyhocks—are nearby, blooms against the barn. Up and down I go, my eyes fastened on white buttons against a blue shirt. The smell of summer fills the air, and voices rising and falling, and laughter.

Watch out, little boy
,

Or you’ll…

My eyes go up from the shirt button to the neck.

But there is no face.

“… fall in!”

Cooper and Cat laughed; my eyes opened, and I looked through the viewfinder at Grandfather and at Emmett falling back between his knees, their faces in identical expressions—eyes wide, mouths in an O. The baby’s laughter fell like sunlight across the room, and as I pressed the button I wished for a way to save that sound, too.

And then Grandfather stood up and put on his glasses again. Slowly I lowered the camera. The baby crawled on the floor. Cat was turning the pages of the photograph album. Cooper yawned. Everything had changed.

Grandfather ran his fingers through his hair,
looking over my head into the mirror behind me. I turned and our eyes met. I frowned and he frowned, imitating me, but I wouldn’t smile. I took the camera from around my neck and handed it to him.

“Things don’t look the same through the camera,” I said. “Not the way they are in real life.”

Putting the camera strap around his neck, he paused, then straightened.

“Sometimes.” He tilted his head to one side and spoke to himself in the mirror. “And sometimes pictures show us what is really there.”

“How? How can that be?” I asked.

Grandfather lifted his shoulders in a familiar way, then said something unlike him.

“I don’t know, Journey. Maybe that is why people take pictures. To see what is there.”

Cat shut the photograph album with a snap, like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. Emmett on the floor began to fuss, and I bent down to pick him up. He looked at me closely, then with a sigh he put his arms around my neck and lay his head down. My heart seemed to beat faster with the feel of it.

“What do you mean, ‘to see what is there’?” I asked after a moment, but when I turned around, Grandfather had gone.

“What does he mean?” I asked Cat.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she handed me a photograph. It was old, very old and grainy, as if taken through water or sand or wind. In the picture there was a boy holding the reins of a horse. Plowed fields spread out behind him, furrows as straight as train tracks. The horse nuzzled the boy’s pocket, as if there might be sugar cubes there, or an apple; but the boy stared into the camera with a face so familiar that I caught my breath.

“Boy,” said Cooper beside me, “that could be you, Journey.”

“Eee,” said Emmett, echoing Cooper.

“Is that a picture of Papa?” I asked Cat.

Cooper snorted.

“Even I know who that is.”

Emmett, stirring in my arms, turned to stare at me as if he knew, too.

“Two of a kind,” said Cat.

I saw the face in that picture every day in the
mirror. And I had just seen that face through the camera.

The picture was of my grandfather.

It is late June, the longest day of the year, Grandma tells me, and the hottest so far. Grandfather and I argue all the way to the car. Actually, Grandfather calls it a “dialogue” we’re having. I call it a fight. We fight because he wants me to drive to town.

“I don’t know how,” I tell him loudly, following him to the driveway.

“You’ll learn.”

“I don’t want to learn.”

“You’ll be glad someday.”

“Why?”

“I’m an old man. If I die in back of the wheel one day you can drive.”

My sister, surrounded by books in the backseat in case she gets bored, laughs.

I throw her a look that makes her laugh more.

“I’m only a little boy,” I plead.

“Then drive like a little boy,” says Grandfather.

The subject is closed, but not before Grandfather tries to take another family picture. In the distance waves of shimmery heat rise off the fields, but Grandfather doesn’t care. He sets his camera on a fence post and places us by his car. He makes Grandma come out of the house to pretend she is going to town too.

“Get a hat, Lottie,” he calls to her.

Grandma puts on her straw hat with the cloth strawberries and grumbles all the way down the path to the car.

“Look fetching, Lottie,” he tells Grandma as he leans down to peer through the camera.

“I’m not an actress, Marcus,” says Grandma sharply. “I am a hot, old woman.”

“You are a fetching hot, old woman,” says Grandfather, making Grandma laugh.

Beside me, Cat wipes the sweat off her forehead.
Grandfather’s car is already hot; the black surface gleams in the sun.

“Why are we doing this?” I ask loudly.

“The timer is set!” calls Grandfather, ignoring me. “Ready? Ten … nine … eight…”

“Why?” I ask Cat, my teeth clenched.

Cat elbows me gently, and we watch Grandfather begin to run to the car. Grandma licks her lips.

“Four,” chants Grandfather, standing tall and trying, I know, to look stately.

“Three,” we all say together, our smiles set. Above us is the droning noise of a small airplane.

“Don’t look up!” yells Grandfather, but he does, and we can’t help looking, too.

Not one of us hears the soft whirring sound of the shutter clicking.

* * *

“Oh, Marcus,” said Grandma, “it’s just…” She stopped.

“Lottie,” said Grandfather, his lips tight. “I love you dearly, and we’ve been married for
what seems like a hundred and fifty years, but you know there is no such thing as ‘just a picture.’”

They looked at each other, and Grandma touched his arm. “I know,” she said.

“Take another,” I said, hoping he would forget teaching me to drive the car. “I’m really sorry,” I added, and when I said it I realized that I
was
sorry.

Grandfather waved his hand.

“Never mind. Let’s get going. I’ve got rolls of film to drop off and pictures to pick up. I’ve got things to get in town.”

“Things?” asked Grandma. “What things?”

“Things,” said Grandfather, moving toward the car. “Photo things. Come on, Journey. Drive.”

* * *

Grandfather gets in the passenger seat and waits as I climb behind the wheel. There are no seat belts because Grandfather’s car is so old. It has scratchy seats and huge fenders. It has a
running board. I have never seen another car like his car. My sister says they are extinct. Grandma calls it the passenger pigeon.

I start the car. I know about the clutch and the brake because I can drive a tractor. But Grandfather’s car is different, and we lurch off, Grandfather bracing himself with one hand, hanging on to the roof strap with the other, Cat laughing in the backseat.

The moment we get out of sight of the farm my grandfather takes out his camera and hangs out the window, and suddenly I know that he wants me to drive so he can take pictures as we move. I know that if we are in a car crash, Grandfather will photograph it as it happens.

“Keep it steady,” says Grandfather, and we pass Millie Bender’s parents’ fruit stand. Out of the corner of my eye I see a blur of watermelon and peaches, strawberries and Mrs. Bender sitting under a striped umbrella.

We pass a cornfield filled with crows.

“Hey!” yells Grandfather, and the crows rise up in a flapping of wings above us. He leans out backward and aims the camera to the sky.

I laugh.

“Look!” I cry, suddenly excited.

Cooper rides toward us, recognizing the car. He stares at it, about to raise his arm in a wave, when he sees it’s me driving. His jaw drops.

“Quick!” I shout. “Take the picture!”

Grandfather leans over me, and he snaps the picture just as Cooper’s bicycle begins to wobble. I look in the rearview mirror and watch Cooper watching us.

“You know,” I say after a moment, “I bet the picture of us all looking up at the airplane will be fine.”

Grandfather looks at me.

“I think you’re right, Journey,” he says.

“Two of a kind,” says Cat.

Summer rains came, soft at first, with mists that lay like lace over the meadows. When the sky grew darker and the rain steady, Grandma sent us out to gather peonies. Grumbling, we carried
dripping pink and white armfuls into the house, filling all the pitchers we could find and a washtub in the kitchen. The smell filled the house, and so did the ants that crawled down from the blooms, crisscrossing the house like sightseers.

Grandfather, restless, lurked through the hallways, taking pictures with the new flash attachment bought in town and breaking into sudden dances of ant-stomping. Blasts of light popped everywhere until Grandma ran out of patience.

“I have spots in front of my eyes, Marcus! I can’t read! Go away. Be a farmer.”

Grandfather was insulted.

“I am a farmer who takes pictures,” he said haughtily. Then he brightened. “I am a photographer-farmer.”

Grandma, only a little amused, banished him to the barn, where I watched him take cow close-ups until the cows, bothered by the lights, showed him their backsides.

“Maybe the chickens,” he muttered.

I stood behind Grandfather, trying to see what he saw through the camera. Then I walked to the back of the barn where his pictures hung,
looking again at the familiar ones of Grandma and Cat and me. There were new ones, too— Grandma smiling from the stove, and one of Cat hoeing in the garden with a fierce look, the hoe poised above the soil as if she might be killing a black snake. And then I saw it-—the picture I had taken of Grandfather with Emmett on his knees, Emmett’s mouth opened, light from the window around them both. The edges were blurred and soft, as if it were a painting. Or a memory.
Trot, trot to Boston.
For a moment I felt like I was Emmett, sitting on someone’s knees. Someone who sang to me. I stared, goose bumps coming up on my arms. I stepped back to bend down to see the picture better and bumped up against Grandfather standing behind me.

“You moved the camera,” he said. “That’s why the edges are fuzzy.” I nodded.

“It’s not a good picture, I guess.”

“Journey,” said Grandfather, his voice soft, “it is a wonderful picture.”

“But I moved the camera.”

“You did. See how it looks like Emmett and I are the only ones there, how we look like we’re
wrapped in a cocoon, away from the rest of the world? See how the edges frame us?”

Grandfather’s voice rose with excitement, and I smiled even though I didn’t want to.

“Well,” I said, embarrassed and pleased. “Well, it’s not perfect.”

“Perfect!” Grandfather almost spit out the word. His face softened. “What is perfect? Journey, a thing doesn’t have to be perfect to be fine. That goes for a picture. That goes for life.” He paused. “Things can be good enough.”

I stared at Grandfather, then at my picture. After a moment I felt Grandfather move behind me.

“Grandfather?”

“Yes, Journey.”

I turned. Grandfather was standing at the door of the barn, rain pouring off the roof behind him. His old dark green poncho floated from his shoulders like a king’s cape.

I swallowed hard.

“Do you think that Mama left because things weren’t good enough? Do you think that I wasn’t…”

“No!” Grandfather spoke loudly, his eyes
dark. “No,” he said, softer. He made a move toward me, then stopped. “Do you know that I tell you the truth? Even when you don’t want to hear it?”

I nodded.

“Which? Yes that I tell you the truth or yes that you don’t want to hear it?”

I was silent, suddenly remembering that once in this barn he had told me that Mama would not come back. That was not true. I knew that was not true. “Sometimes,” I said softly. “Sometimes you tell me the truth.”

Grandfather pursed his lips.

“Well, this is an important truth, Journey. It is not…” His voice grew louder. “It—is— not—your—fault.”

There was a pause, then slowly his face changed, and I knew somehow that we were thinking the same thing. But of course Grandfather said it.

“You need someone to blame, Journey? Is that it?”

I backed up a step.

“Well, it’s not Mama’s fault,” I said stubbornly.

Grandfather sighed.

“No, I can see that you can’t blame Liddie. But that’s all right. That’s all right.”

We stared at each other for a moment; then I turned to look at the picture of him and Emmett again.

“I remember things,” I said. “I remember ‘Trot, trot to Boston.’” I turned to look at him. “I do.”

Grandfather smiled faintly.

“I’m not surprised you remember. But you were very little. You wanted to hear that rhyme over and over and over.” His voice trailed off.

I picked up Grandfather’s camera and looked at him through the viewfinder, standing there with his poncho and rain hat.

“I remember,” I said, snapping the picture just before Grandfather’s smile faded, “that I sat on my papa’s lap. I remember the button on his shirt. And he sang to me and held my hands. And he wouldn’t let me fall. He and Mama kept me safe and took care of me until…”

I put the camera down and stared at it.

Until you made them go away.

The words were unspoken, but when I
looked up again, I might just as well have said them out loud by the look on Grandfather’s face.

“Where are the pictures?” I asked.

“What?” asked Grandfather. “What pictures?”

“The pictures of Papa and Mama and me. And Cat. When we were babies like Emmett? When I was on Papa’s knees?”

Grandfather looked down at the floor.

“There weren’t many,” he said.

“I don’t need many.”

Grandfather sighed.

“They’re gone,” he said.

Gone.

“You mean Mama took them?” I asked.

Grandfather took a deep breath and looked me in the eye.

“The truth?”

My skin prickled.

“Yes. Did she take them?”

“No, Journey,” said Grandfather. “Your mama tore them up.”