The Spider Truces (32 page)

Gerd was the only man Ellis had met who could eat pizza, smoke a cigarette, watch television and read a Graham Greene novel in his second language at the same time. He was waiting for Ellis at a coffee bar in Boston airport, an
ashen-faced
forty year old with potholed skin and a lost, thin-lipped smile. Ellis would learn that Gerd rarely laughed, although occasionally he smiled a narrow slit of a smile. Many things fascinated Gerd but few things amused him.

“The diner we were going to shoot in Famingham is off,” Gerd said, shaking Ellis’s hand, stubbing out his cigarette and standing up, all in one languid movement. He spoke with no expression, his chin raised and his eyes peering down his nose through a pair of non-existent half-glasses.

“Right.” Ellis smiled eagerly.

“Let’s go.”

Gerd wandered away, carrying a silver metal suitcase in one hand and a carton of cigarettes in the other. Ellis followed on his heels.

“I’m Ellis,” he said.

“OK,” Gerd said.

Gerd placed his silver flight case in the trunk of the hire car, next to his camera case. He opened it to dig out a fresh cigarette lighter and Ellis saw that it contained a pair of jeans, a grey V-neck sweater and a white T-shirt, all identical to the ones Gerd was already wearing. There were two pairs of socks, no underwear, a toilet bag and a dozen cheap plastic lighters. Gerd had no coat, only the Mod-like charcoal jacket he wore every day.

They drove out of Boston on a series of looping highways.

“I have no interest in food, Ellis. Sometimes the thought of putting more matter into my mouth makes me temporarily depressed. So you are going to have to say when you want to stop and eat otherwise you could starve for being polite.”

“Right.” Ellis smiled. “Me, I love food.”

“You’re heading for small-town America so you might change your mind about that,” Gerd said, lighting another cigarette. “They serve coffee in this country, so I’m happy.”

You look happy, Ellis thought.

In Buffalo, Ellis had a motel room wedged between the sound of the elevator and the noise of the ice machines. He found a present from his dad tucked amongst his clothes. It was a brown leather travelling pouch and in it was Denny’s fountain pen with a small tag tied to it on which Denny had written
Postcards please
. Into the pouch Ellis put his own camera, a notepad, the postcard he had written for Tammy and the photograph of him and his dad standing in the snow, taken by Mafi.

They went to a timber-clad bar beneath an ancient tulip tree. The roots of the tree were breaking up the surface of the Lake Erie highway and the deep crevices in the bark hinted at a less modern, more robust America. Ellis met an elderly man named Moses Mahler who told him that he had lived at number 121 Lackawanna Street all his life, and still slept in the room he was born in. Ellis asked him about his life and Moses told him and Ellis bought Moses a drink and, later on, Moses bought Ellis a drink back.

“Don’t you think that’s amazing, Gerd, to live in the same house for seventy-five years? Why don’t you do a book photographing people who have lived the same place all their lives?” Ellis suggested, as they drove back to the motel.

“Why don’t you?” Gerd said.

“’Cos I’m the assistant, not the photographer.”

Gerd emitted a despairing breath, an expression Ellis came to learn signalled mild amusement, mild reproach or both.

“Ellis, yesterday I spent three hours deciding not to photograph a barber’s shop sign. Today, I spent eight hours photographing a juke box. I think you’ll find time to fit in your own photographs here and there, don’t you?”

Gerd photographed the neon lights of a bowling alley in Cleveland, a street lamp in Akron and a rusting 1940s petrol pump in Coshocton. The drive from Columbus to Cincinnati was dull but Gerd scrutinised the faceless Ohio road for something of interest. Ellis watched the road signs with naive fascination. He saw turnings for towns called London and Lebanon and Portsmouth, and was surprised by all of them. He took out his pen and paper with the intention of writing a list of what he saw but found himself putting them in a letter to Tammy instead. He was hungry and felt hot in the
glass-sharpened
sunlight. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Gerd leaning forward to light his cigarette and he saw his dad doing the same thing a thousand times before. He pictured Denny’s profile at the wheel. He remembered when his own feet didn’t reach the floor. He heard Radio 3 playing on the car radio and the faint whistling sound his dad made when he was happy or thoughtful. He abandoned his letter to Tammy. There were too many things to write. He didn’t know where to start.

In an effort to put thoughts of home behind him, Ellis decided to like Cincinnati the moment they arrived, to preoccupy himself with liking it. He liked the circular concrete of the Riverfront Stadium, home to the Cincinnati Reds. He liked the River Ohio cutting between the city and Kentucky, and he liked the steel bridges spanning the river like a jaded Meccano wonderland. He liked the rust-red roller shutters on the pawnbroker shops in the blazing sunshine. He liked the swagger of the people at the run-down end of Elizabeth Street, he liked the way the sunlight glistened on the downtown office blocks and the elevated walkways and he loved the warm breeze rising up off the river and sweeping through the streets.

They watched the Cincinnati Reds play the Florida Marlins and when the game halted at the seventh innings, Ellis climbed to the back of the stadium and surveyed the suburbs at dusk, the reflections of a pearl-pink sky embossed on every bridge and window. The city grew dark and became a sparkle of lights. Ellis watched the brooding, unlit goods trains drag themselves out of the metropolis. He saw car headlights appear and disappear amongst the forested hills. He imagined the lives going on beneath him. Millions of lives. People who had never seen England and never would. People whose every thought and action and influence was entirely unconnected to his own. He asked himself, What does it mean to travel? What am I meant to learn from this? How should the world change me? Could I change it? He shut his eyes and wondered if everything laid out before him would cease the moment he left the city and only resume if he returned. In a country this size, he reminded himself, towns and cities he had never heard of were in existence every day. In them were millions of people, each one as wrapped up in their own life as he was in his. When did we become so many? When did we build all this? How did it all ever get so big? He pressed his hands against his head and felt a surge of panic rear up in him. Before he could identify the panic, there was a tap on his shoulder. It was Gerd, wearing the expression of profound disinterest that only sport could bring to him. Behind him, thousands of people were leaving the stadium. They joined the exodus. Not until they were outside did Ellis realise that he had left the leather pouch under his seat. He ran against the crowd but the bag had gone.

There was a Hoover at one end of the motel corridor and it caught Gerd’s eye as he and Ellis walked to breakfast. The corridor was bathed in meagre, deep green light which seemed to make the interminably long and narrow passageway darker not brighter. Carpet covered the floors and the lower half of the walls.

“Go on without me,” Gerd muttered.

Ellis reported the stolen bag at the stadium office and to the Cincinnati PD.

“It’s the photograph more than anything. I haven’t kept the negative, I’m a bit disorganised. I don’t care about the rest, just the photograph, you see?”

They didn’t see.

He watched the steam boats on the Kentucky side of the river and listened to the rumble of cars on steel bridges. The vast maze of rail lines converging on the city made it all seem like a toy and he realised that he had to forget about the bag and its contents and make the decision not to care.

You can make that decision, Ellis, he told himself. You can choose to make it matter or let it be of no importance. You can decide what sort of person you are going to be when it comes to dealing with these things.

He found Gerd motionless at his tripod in the motel corridor. The German was transfixed by the Hoover, as if it were about to perform a trick.

“You been here all day?” Ellis whispered.

Gerd laced a barely noticeable nod into his stillness. Ellis looked at the frame counter and then for evidence of how many films Gerd had been through.

“You’ve taken three frames in eight hours?”

Gerd nodded again.

“Three …” Ellis repeated. “What have you been doing all day, earning its trust?”

Gerd put his eye to the viewfinder. “Get me a coffee.”

“You’re the Dian Fossey of the electrical appliance world.”

“Coffee …” Gerd muttered again, “or I’ll kill you.”

Across the river, on the quiet streets of Covington, Kentucky, jobless men and uninterested children slouched on benches kicking up the dust. Next to the German washhouse, where women sat on the steps, Gerd parked in the forecourt of the Anvil Bar and Grill. A red neon sign flashed OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY 7 DAYS A WEEK. Beneath it, on a
white-painted
wall which glared harshly in the sun, were painted large blue letters, WE MAY DOZE BUT WE NEVER CLOSE.

Sitting at the horseshoe bar of the café was a thin, elderly woman who had lost most of her hair. Beneath her apron, her loose, sagging body was visible through the arms of a man’s singlet. Her skin was the colour of ash. She was so lifeless, she made Gerd seem excitable.

A maze of small eating rooms led off from the bar. Each was clad in darkly veneered wood panelling and lit dimly by orange bulbs in wicker shades. It took time for Ellis’s eyes to adjust to the gloom.

“This place I was told about,” Gerd confided, examining a coffee-stained menu and turning to look for a waitress.

From the shadows in the corner of the room came a drawl. “It’s order at the counter before noon.”

The man who had spoken was sitting with two other men. All three of them looked to be in their seventies. They wore identical red and black checked shirts, the sleeves rolled up into a tight, thick, rope-like hem around their biceps. They had thinning hair, greased back. The man with his back to

Ellis was a little slumped, as if he’d fallen asleep. Ellis stepped back into the dazzling sunlight of the bar and wondered how, in a town where the sun beat down so hard, the people could look so pale. A television was on in the corner. The bald woman smoked a cigarette and read the paper. Two elderly men sat on bar stools looking at their coffee as if it were newly invented. A goods train crossed the steel bridge one block south, prompting a flock of pigeons to evacuate the bridge and land on the concrete forecourt of the Anvil Bar and Grill, projecting a dazzling waterfall of bird shadows on to the white wall as they landed.

“What’ll it be?” the bald woman asked.

“Scrambled eggs, home fries and toast, please. And a pecan pie.”

“You want cream or ice-cream with the pie?”

Ellis stepped back into the gloom. “Cream or
ice-cream
?”

“Is it fresh cream?” Gerd asked.

“Is it fresh cream?” Ellis repeated to the bar.

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gerd nodded.

Ellis returned to the bar. “Cream, please. Also, a coffee and a glass of milk.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Not eating?”

“Yeah, I’m having the eggs.”

“Then how about your friend?”

“Eh?”

“He not eating?”

“He’s having the pie.”

“Oh.” The lady raised her eyebrows at the facts before her and shuffled into the kitchen. “He don’t want eggs?” she called out.

“No, thank you,” Ellis called back.

“And you don’t want pie?” she called.

“No … thank you.”

“So, you’re not having dessert and he’s not having main?”

“Er … yeah.” Ellis called.

A man at the bar winked at Ellis and muttered, “She’s on fire today.”

As he sipped his milk, Ellis stole a glimpse of the three old men in the gloom. The man who had spoken stared back at him and didn’t blink or look away. A waitress brought the food.

“Excuse me,” Gerd said, the effort of trying to look pleasant neutralising his attempted smile, leaving only a grimace. “They said the cream would be fresh.”

Ellis and the waitress peered at Gerd’s bowl. Alongside the pie was an embankment of fluffy whipped cream, straight out of a spray can.

“That is,” the waitress said, and walked away.

Gerd shrugged fatalistically.

“Pick a tune.” The drawl came again from the man in the corner, who slid a nickel out in front of him and gestured Ellis to come over. Ellis obeyed. The man whose back was to Ellis was an identical twin to the man who had spoken, but his head was bowed and one side of his face was fallen. There were remnants of food and dribble on his shirt-front. Ellis looked at the nickel and yearned for the open road.

“Any tune,” the man said, his southern accent hiding his tone from Ellis’s untrained ear. He pointed to a small
juke-box
selector on his table.

“One on every table,” he said.

“Oh,” Ellis said, straightening up.

“The nickel goes straight through,” the man said.

Ellis pulled a face at Gerd as he returned to the table and found the music selector hidden behind ketchups, napkins and the menu.

“What if he asks me to dance!” Ellis whispered.

“Choose carefully,” Gerd advised.

There were seventy songs. Ellis didn’t know any of them.

“Go E10,” Gerd whispered.

Ellis peered at the machine. E10 was “Runaway Train” by Bo Fordford. He jabbed the buttons but nothing happened. The Anvil Bar and Grill remained musicless.

“Probably takes a while,” Ellis muttered.

“I’ll have that nickel back,” the man in the shadows said.