Finally we reached the porch. With all due ceremony, Charlene was ushered inside. We laid her down. She stirred for an instant, but she did not open her eyes. Around me, the others were already in motion.
“The radiophone,” Galen was saying. “I sent out a call earlier, but nobody seemed to be around. I have to—” Muttering, he hurried away.
“Has anybody seen the first aid kit?” Forest said.
“Come on.” Lucy took his hand and led him down the hall.
Mick pushed past me, saying, “Ice pack. Or some frozen peas, maybe.”
For a moment, I was alone with Charlene. Her breathing was labored. Quite plainly, she was unaware of my presence. She was not aware of anything at all. I looked her over. She was dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a man’s jacket — her usual uniform. Other than the black eye and dislocated elbow, she did not appear to be wounded. But there was moss in her hair. A smear of mud on her brow. Her sleeve was torn. She had a stick jammed into one pocket. Maybe it had caught there as she rolled down the hill. I reached toward her shoulder.
The octopus appeared suddenly. I drew my hand back with a grimace. On the coffee table, a few feet away, he ballooned into the center of his tank. He startled the life out of me as he oozed along the glass. His skin was a bright, aggressive red. His eyes swiveled on their stalks, glaring at Charlene.
The silence of him struck me anew. A dog might bark, a cat might yowl, but an octopus made no sound at all. Oliver hovered on a cloud of tentacles. I wondered how Charlene would appear to him, refracted through his bizarre, aquatic mind. I wondered what he might think had happened to her. She shifted on her surfboard, sighing. The octopus groped at the wall of his tank. He released a cloud of bubbles.
Before my eyes, the red started to wash from his skin like paint wrung from a rag. Crimson, I knew, was the color of wrath. I watched as he turned pink, then lavender, and finally blue. A pale, chalky azure. The color of concern.
25
I BEGAN TO PHOTOGRAPH the world around me when I was ten or eleven. I was not yet an artist; I was merely a child with a hobby. You indulged me, as you did with all my passions. You bought me rolls of film. You drove me to the store to have my pictures developed. You hung my best snapshots on the fridge.
Once, however, you did express a note of concern. I remember it well. It was autumn, and we were strolling through our neighborhood, window-shopping. The local boutiques had decorated themselves with paper leaves in orange and gold. We passed the post office. We stopped to gaze at the delightful wares on display at the toy store. The sky was blindingly clear as you and I rambled down K Street. I remember the jangle of your bracelet. I remember the sugar of your perfume.
A homeless man was asleep on the sidewalk. He lay in a sprawl, a stretch of newspaper over his face. It took me a moment to figure out whether he was breathing. The stench was terrible. His clothes were filthy and torn.
You fumbled in your pocket and came up with a coin to toss in his cup. I had my camera with me — a black and gray Olympus OM-1, barnacled with buttons and dials. It was an early single-lens reflex instrument, the best of its time, loaded with 35-millimeter film, heavier than my purse. Using it was a wonderfully tactile experience: the grind and swivel of the image coming into focus, the clack of the shutter, the resistance of the film advance lever. I leaned over the man’s prone form. He was missing a shoe, and his bare foot was swollen. The toenails resembled bear claws.
You laid a hand on my arm.
“Don’t,” you said.
I looked at you in surprise. You led me away.
Later, you tried to explain. It had worried you to see me like that — gazing with such detachment at another human being so obviously in distress. It had unnerved you that my first instinct had been to try to capture him on film.
“I’m not sure about this,” you said, tapping my camera.
At the time, I found this unfair. I believed I had done nothing wrong in pointing my lens at a man asleep in public. I had not hurt anyone.
Now, of course, I know better. You were right. You were so often right. More than any other art form, photography requires coldness and dispassion. Perhaps I had those qualities as a child; perhaps I developed them over the decades that followed, the years without you. This work demands a mind that sits apart.
Trauma and pain are the foundations of art. I believe that. When tragedy strikes, however, a muralist or a watercolorist has the opportunity to be a human being in the moment and an artist afterward. Faced with the death of a loved one, a sculptor or portraitist can first grieve, suffer, and heal — then create. Most artists go through life this way. They can react normally to the trials and tribulations of the human experience. They can pass through the world with compassion and comradeship.
They can make their art later. Outside, elsewhere, beyond.
But photography is immediate. It does not offer the luxury of time. Faced with blood, death, or transformation, a photographer has no choice but to reach for the camera. An artist first, a human being afterward. Photography is a neutral record of all events, a chronicle of things both sublime and terrible. By necessity, this work is made without emotion, without connection, without love.
WE HAD TO wait a long while for the helicopter. Everyone did the best they could in the meantime. Mick held a bag of frozen peas to Charlene’s head, alternating between the bump on her brow and the black eye. Forest did some exploratory palpating of her dislocated elbow. It was red and puffy, but not so swollen as to indicate a broken bone. Lucy made sure there were no other, unseen injuries, checking Charlene’s stomach and legs as the men kept their eyes averted. Charlene herself moved in and out of consciousness; she might frown when the ice touched her forehead or grumble something inaudible, but a moment later she would be out cold again.
There was not much I could to do help. I found myself tapping my fingers on my thigh, wishing I had my camera. I wanted to get a few shots of Charlene’s limp fingers, her bruised skin. This moment was ripe for capture. But I knew better than to go fetch Jewel or Gremlin. It would have seemed heartless to the others.
Finally Galen put his foot down. He summoned us all into the kitchen and insisted that we eat something.
“You’ll feel better,” he said. “This is not a request.”
Leaning against the kitchen counter, consuming a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I did not attempt to contribute to the conversation. I listened to the biologists, who seemed fairly unfazed. Everyone ate heartily. In steady, tranquil voices, they debated what might have happened to Charlene.
“Did anybody see her this morning?”
“She did say something about going up Lighthouse Hill.”
“I remember! The elephant seals—”
“She must have lost her footing.”
“The fog was bad. I got turned around at Breaker Cove.”
“Me too! I was at Dead Sea Lion Beach, and—”
“Did anyone notice if Charlene had her binoculars with her? Maybe she dropped them. They’re a good pair.”