I continued on to my room.
I spent the rest of the morning staring at my computer screen, trying to assemble a forum post. It was a stressful task. The way I looked at it, this was the most important thing in my life. It was the next step in my journey, putting my pictures out there for the whole world to see.
These were my dreams and aspirations. In pieces on my computer screen.
More than anything, I wanted to make the right first impression. I wanted to capture people’s attention and establish credibility right off the bat. I wanted people to look at these pictures—really look at them—and take me seriously. I wanted them to recognize my passion, my skill, my art.
No wonder I was anxious. I had the weight of my entire future sitting right there on my shoulders.
I decided to start with some of my more mundane images. If I started with the insane stuff, I reasoned, no one would believe me. I could hear the arguments now: Yeah, he just Photoshopped a finger onto that spider; and that face in the wall, it doesn’t even look real—it’s just a mask, a mannequin.
No, I decided, it was better to start off with the stuff no one would dispute.
First up: the soldier in front of the ENTERING SPOKANE sign. Then an empty city street. Then Riverfront Park. And finally, a pair of pictures from Mama Cass’s: one showing the crowd of refugees gathered around the storefront, the other showing a handful of dirty faces watching me suspiciously. I liked this final picture; I thought it ended things on the right note. It put some human faces—ragged and tired, haunted and angry—amid all the desolation.
I was laying groundwork. Setting the scene.
I’d get to the insanity later.
I spent several hours tweaking the images, trying to make them perfect. Then I composed a couple of sentences for the top of the post. I tried to keep my preface simple; I wanted to let the photographs speak for themselves.
Greetings from Spokane! Here are some pictures from my first week in the city. I came here to document the conditions and, perhaps, find the truth behind the stories we’ve all been hearing. I’ll try to post more as events and pictures happen, but my Internet connection is pretty much nonexistent (I had to sneak this post out of the city, passing it hand to hand across the border).
I added the “hand to hand” thing to take heat off of Danny, in case this post ever caught the attention of the authorities.
After I finished the preface, I read it over a couple of times, trying to imagine the impression it would make. I found it lacking. It felt cold, clinical. There was no emotion, no hint it had been written by a real human being, someone capable of being moved by the things on the other side of the camera’s viewfinder. Tentatively, I typed out another line:
It’s strange here. It feels like a different world.
I stared at the post for a long time, reading over that sparse handful of sentences, studying each and every aspect of the photographs. It still felt insufficient somehow, incomplete. It is incomplete, I told myself. There is no end here, no conclusion… not yet.
But it is a beginning.
Floyd stuck his head into my room just as I was finishing up my post.
“Come here, man,” he said, stifling a yawn. “There’s something I want you to see.”
I saved my work and followed him into his room.
At one time, this had been a child’s bedroom. There were alternating rows of clowns and balloons peering out from the wallpaper, bright cartoon shapes turned bleak and gray beneath a layer of dingy smoke residue. Across from Floyd’s child-size bed, some of the clowns had been gouged out of the wall, as if attacked with a potato peeler. All the balloons remained intact. In the corner, a black sweatshirt shrouded the shape of a hobbyhorse.
The room smelled of pot and stale sweat.
Floyd was still half asleep. He stopped in the middle of the room and stretched his hands up over his head, letting out a loud yawn.
“What’s up?” I asked, and I smiled. “Did you have a bad dream? Do you need me to tuck you back in? Maybe sing you a lullaby?”
Floyd let out a fake laugh. “Fuck, man, you’re funny,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were so fucking funny.”
He grabbed my elbow and pulled me over to the window. He had his blinds drawn almost all the way to the bottom, and I had to crouch down in order to peer through the gap. “Check it out. Across the street.”
The view was the same as I’d seen from my window earlier that morning. The street was covered with snow, and there was absolutely no sign of life. Then I noticed the tracks leading from our front door to the house directly across the street.
“Upstairs window,” Floyd said, crouching down at my side.
I focused on the upper story, slowly scanning from one room to the next. All the windows were shuttered save the biggest one, just above the front door. There was movement there, on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like somebody pacing back and forth.
“It’s Devon,” Floyd whispered conspiratorially. “I’ve seen him over there before, but I’ve never been able to figure out what he’s doing. Sometimes he’ll go over there and we won’t see him for days.” Floyd let out an annoyed grunt. “And when I ask him about it, he won’t tell me shit.”
I went back to my room and got my camera, then returned to Floyd’s side. I raised the camera to the sill and zoomed in on the window across the street.
I hadn’t noticed the electric-blue light, dwarfed in that world of startling white snow. But now, magnified inside my camera lens, it became obvious. An eerie blue glow illuminating one side of Devon’s face. The light moved across his features as he paced back and forth, striding quickly from one side of the room to the other. Every once in a while, he raised his hands in a gesture of apparent frustration.
I couldn’t tell what he was doing. Did he go over there to vent? I wondered. Is he just storming about in an empty room, blowing off steam?
As he passed in front of the window, Devon paused suddenly and looked our way. There was a strange expression on his face—a look of both fear and annoyance—and for a moment, I thought we’d been caught in the act of spying. But I quickly realized that that was impossible. We were hidden in Floyd’s dark room, staring out through a tiny crack in his blinds. There was no way he could see us here, not from that distance.
Then I noticed Devon’s lips moving in the faint blue glow.
“Is he alone over there?” I asked. “Have you ever seen anyone else in that house?”
“No,” Floyd said, a hint of surprise in his voice. “We’re the only people on this entire block.”
I started taking pictures, snapping off a long series as Devon abruptly looked back over his shoulder toward the far corner of the room. He once again raised his hands in frustration.
He was still talking. Explaining. Arguing.
“What’s he doing?” Floyd asked. “I can’t see shit.”
I turned away from the window, putting my back against the wall and sliding down to the floor. I handed the camera to Floyd, and he raised it to his eye. After a moment of silence, he lowered the camera and took a step back from the window. There was a shocked look on his face.
“What’s going on here, Dean?” he asked, his eyes wide, his voice wavering. “Who’s he talking to? Who’s he meeting? And why there, across the street from our own house?”