They reached for their drinks.
“I’ll just show you a few more of these,” Dandridge said. “You’ll notice some of them aren’t game animals, strictly speaking. Of course when you hunt with a camera you’re not limited to what the law says is game, and the seasons don’t apply. An endangered species doesn’t shrink because I take its photograph. I can shoot does, I can photograph in or out of season, anything I want. The fact of the matter is that I prefer to go after trophy animals in season because that makes more of a game out of it, but sometimes it’s as much of a challenge to try for a particular songbird that’s hard to get up close to. That’s a scarlet tanager there, it’s a bird that lives in deep woods and spooks easy. Of course I had to use a telephoto lens to get anything worth looking at but it’s still considered something of an accomplishment. I got a thrill out of that shot, Roger. Now no one would shoot a little bird like that, nobody would want to, but when you hunt with a camera it’s another story entirely, and I don’t mind telling you I got a thrill out of that shot.”
“I can believe it.”
“Now here’s a couple of mountain goats, that was quite a trip I had after them, and this antelope, oh, there’s a heck of a story goes with this one—”
It was a good hour later when Homer Dandridge returned the photographs to his wallet. “Here I went and talked your ear off,” he said apologetically, but Roger Krull insisted quite sincerely that he had been fascinated throughout.
“I wonder,” he said. “I just wonder.”
“If it would work for you or not?”
Krull nodded. “Of course I had a camera years ago,” he said, “but I never had much interest in it. I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I took a photograph of anything.”
“Never had the slightest interest in it myself,” Dandridge said. “Until I substituted click for bang, that is.”
“No more bang-bang. Click-click instead. I don’t know, Homer. I suppose you’ve got all sorts of elaborate equipment, fancy cameras, all the rest. It’d take me a year and a day to learn how to load one of those things.”
“They’re easier than you think,” Dandridge said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got some reasonably fancy gear. Hell, you wouldn’t believe the money I used to spend on guns. Or I guess you would if you’re a hunter yourself. Well, it’s not surprising that I spend money the same way on cameras. I’ve got a new Japanese model that I’m just getting the hang of, and I’ve got my eyes on a lens for it that’s going to cost me more than a whole camera ought to cost, and the next step’s developing my own pictures and I don’t suppose that’s very far off. Just around the corner, I suspect. In another few months I’ll likely have my own darkroom in the basement and be up to my elbows in chemicals.”
“That’s what I thought. I don’t know if I’d want to get into all that.”
“But that’s the whole thing, Roger. You don’t have to. Look, I don’t know what your first hunting experience was like, but I remember mine. I was fourteen years old and I was out in a field down near the railroad tracks with an old rimfire twenty-two rifle, and I shot a squirrel out of an oak tree. Just a poor raggedy squirrel that I plinked with a broken-down rifle, and that’s as big a hunting thrill as I guess I ever had. Now I’d guess your first experience wasn’t a hell of a lot different.”
“Not a whole hell of a lot, no.”
“Well, when I put down the gun and took up the camera, the camera I took up was a little Instamatic that cost under twenty dollars. And I’ll tell you a thing. The picture I took with that little camera was at least as much of a thrill as I get with my Japanese job.”
“You can get decent pictures that way?”
“You can get perfect pictures that way,” Dandridge said. “If I had any sense I’d still use the Instamatic, but as you go along you want to try getting fancy. And anyway, it hardly matters how good the pictures are. You don’t want to sell ’em to Field and Stream, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Hell, no. You want to find out if you can go on having the sheer joy and excitement of hunting without having the guilt and sorrow of killing. That’s it in a nutshell, right?”
“That’s it.”
“So pick up a cheap camera and find out.”
“By God,” said Roger Krull, “that’s just what I’ll do. There’s a drugstore in town that’ll have cameras. I’ll go there first thing in the morning.”
“Do it, Roger.”
“Homer, I intend to. Oh, I’m a little dubious about it. I’ve got to admit as much. But what have I got to lose?”
“That calls for a drink,” said Homer Dandridge.
Dandridge was out in the woods early the next morning. His head was clear and his hand steady, as was always the case on hunting trips. In the city he drank moderately, and his rare overindulgences were followed by mind-shattering hangovers. On hunting trips he drank heavily every evening and never had the whisper of a hangover. The fresh air, he thought, probably had something to do with it, and so too did the way the excitement of the chase sent the blood singing in his veins.
He had another good day, shooting several rolls of film, and by the time he returned to the lodge he was ready for that first double shot of sour mash whiskey, and ready too for the good company of Roger Krull. Dandridge was not by nature a proselytizer, and in casual conversations with other hunters he rarely let on that he employed a camera instead of a gun. But Krull had been an obvious candidate for conversation, and now Dandridge was excited at the thought that he had been instrumental in leading another man from bang-bang, as it were, to click-click.
Again he stowed his cap and gear and hurried to the taproom. But this time Krull was not there waiting for him, and Dandridge was disappointed. He drowned his disappointment with a drink, his usual straight double, and then he settled down and sipped a second drink on the rocks with a splash of soda. He had almost finished the drink when Roger Krull made his appearance.
“Well, Roger!” he said. “How did it go?”
“Spent the whole day at it.”
“And?”
Roger Krull shrugged. “Hate to say it,” he said. He took a roll of film from his jacket pocket, weighed it in his hand. “Didn’t work for me,” he said.
“Oh,” Dandridge said.
“I envy you, Homer. I had my doubts last night and I had them this morning, but I went out and got myself a camera and gave it a try. I honestly thought it might be exciting after all. The pursuit and everything, and no death at the end of it.”
“And it didn’t work.”
“No, it didn’t. I’ll tell you something. I’d like myself better if it had. But for one reason or another it isn’t hunting for me without the bang-bang part. Just squeezing the shutter on a camera isn’t the same as squeezing a trigger. Some primitive streak, I suppose. I stopped enjoying killing a while ago but it’s just not hunting without it.”
“Hell,” Dandridge said. “I don’t know what to say.”
And that was true for both of them. They suddenly found themselves with nothing at all to say and the silence was awkward. “Well, I’m damned glad I tried it all the same,” Krull said. “I really enjoyed talking with you last night. You’re a hell of a guy, Homer.”
“You’re all right yourself, Roger.”
“Take care of yourself, you hear?”
“You too,” Dandridge said. “Say, don’t you want this?” He indicated the roll of film, which Krull had left on top of the bar.