evening. It could be after nine before I’m finished. Then I’ll want to clean up a bit. So I might not be there until nine-thirty or ten. Is that all right?”
No, it wasn’t all right. She didn’t want to wait that long, but she only said, “Oh, sure. Get your work done; that’s what’s important. I’ll fix something that’ll be easy to warm up when you get here.”
Then he added, “If you want to come along while I’m shooting, that’s fine. It won’t bother me. I could stop by for you about five-thirty.”
Francesca’s mind worked the problem. She wanted to go with him. But what if someone saw her? What could she say to Richard if he found out?
Cedar Bridge sat fifty yards upstream from and parallel to the new road and its concrete bridge. She wouldn’t be too noticeable. Or would she? In less than two seconds, she decided. “Yes, I’d like that. But I’ll drive my pickup and meet you there. What time?”
“About six. I’ll see you then. Okay? ‘Bye.”
He spent the rest of the day at the local newspaper office looking through old editions. It was a pretty town, with a nice courthouse square, and he sat there on a bench in the shade at lunch with a small sack of fruit and some bread, along with a Coke from a cafe across the street.
When he had walked in the cafe and asked for a Coke to take out, it was a little after noon. Like an old Wild West saloon when the regional gunfighter appeared, the busy conversation had stopped for a moment while they all looked him over. He hated that, felt self-conscious; but it was the standard procedure in small towns. Someone new! Someone different! Who is he? What’s he doing here?
“Somebody said he’s a photographer. Said they saw him out by Hogback Bridge this morning with all sorts of cameras.”
“Sign on his truck says he’s from Washington, out west.”
“Been over to the newspaper office all morning. Jim says he’s looking through the papers for information on the covered bridges.”
“Yeah, young Fischer at the Texaco said he stopped in yesterday and asked directions to all the covered bridges.”
“What’s he wanna know about them for, anyway?”
“And why in the world would anybody wanna take pictures of ‘em? They’re just all fallin’ down in bad shape.”
“Sure does have long hair. Looks like one of them Beatle fellows, or what is it they been callin’ some of them other people? Hippies, ain’t that it?” That brought laughter in the back booth and to the table next to it.
Kincaid got his Coke and left, the eyes still on him as he went out the door. Maybe he’d made a mistake in inviting Francesca, for her sake, not his. If someone saw her at Cedar Bridge, word would hit the cafe next morning at breakfast, relayed by young Fischer at the Texaco station after taking a handoff from the passerby. Probably quicker than that.
He’d learned never to underestimate the telecommunicative flash of trivial news in small towns. Two million children could be dying of hunger in the Sudan, and that wouldn’t cause a bump in consciousness. But Richard Johnson’s wife seen with a long-haired stranger—now that was news! News to be passed around, news to be chewed on, news that created a vague carnal lapping in the minds of those who heard it, the only such ripple they’d feel that year.
He finished his lunch and walked over to the public phone on the parking of the courthouse. Dialed her number. She answered, slightly breathless, on the third ring. “Hi, it’s Robert Kincaid again.”
Her stomach tightened instantly as she thought, He can’t come; he’s called to say that.
“Let me be direct. If it’s a problem for you to come out with me tonight, given the curiosity of small-town people, don’t feel pressured to do it. Frankly, I could care less what they think of me around here, and one way or the other, I’ll come by later. What I’m trying to say is that I might have made an error in inviting you, so don’t feel compelled in any way to do it. Though I’d love to have you along.”
She’d been thinking about just that since they’d talked earlier. But she had decided. “No, I’d like to see you do your work. I’m not worried about talk.” She was worried, but something in her had taken hold, something to do with risk. Whatever the cost; she was going out to Cedar Bridge.
“Great. Just thought I’d check. See you later.”
“Okay.” He was sensitive, but she already knew that.
At four o’clock he stopped by his motel and did some laundry in the sink, put on a clean shirt, and tossed a second one in the truck, along with a pair of khaki slacks and brown sandals he’d picked up in India in 1962 while doing a story on the baby railroad up to Darjeeling. At a tavern he purchased two six packs of Budweiser. Eight of the bottles, all that would fit, he arranged around his film in the cooler.
Hot, real hot again. The late afternoon sun in Iowa piled itself on top of its earlier damage, which had been absorbed by cement and brick and earth. It fairly blistered down out of the west.
The tavern had been dark and passably cool, with the front door open and big fans on the ceiling and one on a stand by the door whirring at about a hundred and five decibels. Somehow, though, the noise of the fans, the smell of stale beer and smoke, the blare of the jukebox, and the semihostile faces staring at him from along the bar made it seem hotter than it really was.
Out on the road the sunlight almost hurt, and he thought about the Cascades and fir trees and breezes along the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, near Kydaka Point.
Francesca Johnson looked cool, though. She was leaning against the fender of her Ford pickup where she had parked it behind some trees near the bridge. She had on the same jeans that fit her so well, sandals, and a white cotton T-shirt that did nice things for her body. He waved as he pulled up next to her truck.
“Hi. Nice to see you. Pretty hot,” he said. Innocuous talk, around-the-edges-of-things talk. That old uneasiness again, just being in the presence of a woman for whom he felt something. He never knew quite what to say, unless the talk was serious. Even though his sense of humor was well developed, if a little bizarre, he had a fundamentally serious mind and took things seriously. His mother had always said he was an adult at four years of age. That served him well as a professional. To his way of thinking, though, it did not serve him well around women such as Francesca Johnson.
“I wanted to watch you make your pictures. ‘Shoot,’ as you call it.”
“Well, you’re about to see it, and you’ll find it pretty boring. At least other people generally do. It’s not like listening to someone practice the piano, where you can be part of it. In photography, production and performance are separated by a long time span. Today I’m doing production. When the pictures appear somewhere, that’s the performance. All you’re going to see is a lot of fiddling around. But you’re more than welcome. In fact, I’m glad you came.”
She hung on those last four words. He needn’t have said them. He could have stopped with “welcome,” but he didn’t. He was genuinely glad to see her; that was clear. She hoped the fact she was here implied something of the same to him.
“Can I help you in some way?” she asked as he pulled on his rubber boots.
“You can carry that blue knapsack. I’ll take the tan one and the tripod.”
So Francesca became a photographer’s assistant. He had been wrong. There was much to see. There was a performance of sorts, though he was not aware of it. It was what she had noticed yesterday and part of what drew her toward him. His grace, his quick eyes, the muscles along his forearms working. Mostly the way he moved his body. The men she knew seemed cumbrous compared to him.
It wasn’t that he hurried. In fact, he didn’t hurry at all. There was a gazellelike quality about him, though she could tell he was strong in a supple way. Maybe he, was more like a leopard than a gazelle. Yes. Leopard, that was it. He was not prey. Quite the reverse, she sensed.
“Francesca, give me the camera with the blue strap, please.”
She opened the knapsack, feeling a little overcautious about the expensive equipment he handled so casually, and took out the camera. It said “Nikon” on the chrome plating of the viewfinder, with an “F” to the upper left of the name.
He was on his knees northeast of the bridge, with the tripod low. He held out his left hand without taking his eye from the viewfinder, and she gave him the camera, watching his hand close about the lens as he felt it touch
