Charles Adkins shook his head. He honestly didn’t know.
“Happens all the time,” he offered. “Probably Harding’s fault.”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Clifford said, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t even know who to talk to about it. Ferguson said it wasn’t his decision.”
“Ah, let it go,” Charles Adkins advised.
Steve nodded a vague agreement from his seat at the equipment bench. He had taken apart his old CP16 to clean it. Brown gave him the film camera when they changed over to videotape.
“You deserve it,” Brown said.
He could tell Clifford how it felt to be one of the best in the business and have the business change around you and some mealy-mouth punk hands you an old camera and says, “You deserve it.”
He could tell him how it felt to be working with kids who didn’t know the beauty of film, didn’t know the feel of it, the weight of it, who didn’t know how to open a camera and see in a second what was wrong. Now they brought the equipment back to the station and called an engineer to fix it.
“I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” Charles Adkins was saying to Clifford.
“Well, fuck, man,” Clifford shouted, “sometimes I think this nigger is too black for the Fat Boy. Is that it? Is this nigger too black?” he drawled.
Charles Adkins gave a short laugh.
“No, man, that’s it and it ain’t making me laugh.” Clifford gave a hard shake of his head as he picked up his equipment. “No, I ain’t laughing,” he said, and left the room.
“You know,” Charles Adkins said to Steve after a slight pause, “Across the Street they give out ice-cream cones when somebody leaves.” He took one last slug of soda. “Isn’t that strange?
“Good old George is leaving,” he chanted, “and here’s an ice cream cone. I think that is perverse.”
“More than we get,” Steve said, his head bowed to his work.
He cleaned the old camera at least once a month and kept it in the back of his van. Sometimes he would say he was going to take it out and shoot a few hundred feet but he never did. Why bother? Who was going to develop it? The processor hadn’t been used in two years. Sooner or later they would get around to tossing it.
“It’s not the same. The quality is all wrong,” he had argued about videotape. “Film has a texture to it, a depth. Videotape is flat.”
They didn’t know what he was talking about. The only ones who were into film wanted to go to Hollywood to make movies. Of course, they didn’t want to shoot the camera. They wanted to direct.
He also had a sweet little DR. Best little camera every made. They covered the war in Korea carrying that camera. Hell, they were using them for news right up until about five years ago. Sometimes he’d bring it in. Some of the guys liked to look at it. It was so damn simple. Fit right into your hand. Made for it. Cappy knew. Cappy started with a DR. Neatest, tightest little camera ever made.
Well, he’d keep his CP16 in the back of the van, ready to go. There might be that one time when he would need it, reach for it and it would be there, taking those beautiful film pictures. He sighed and Charles Adkins made a clean shot into the trashcan with his empty red soda can.
23
They came to the city by the thousands, a ragtag army. They stretched across the parks, piles of rags and tatters pushing grocery carts filled with their lives. The newer arrivals tried to wash themselves and their clothes in the few working fountains and under the spigots city janitors had neglected to cap. The others, the ones who had found themselves here for years, accepted their filth. They were young men with woolly beards and wild eyes. They were middle-aged men with frightened eyes and missing teeth.
They had a schedule to keep, given to them by those who cared and those who made money by caring. They began at the plasma center, selling their blood for the few dollars that bought booze at the corner convenience store. The booze brought friends and conversations and finally, at night, brought the laughing or stench-sick cops who dragged them into the detox center. A few days later they began the cycle again.
In the mornings they lay on the grass in their parks or played cards at the picnic tables. Then, when the time came, they rose to the march, a gray Confederate shuffle in the dust and sun and across the cement. They became a slow-moving line feeding into the charity dining hall
Twice a year the Best went there as well. They showed up in a van, a grim reporter and a sullen photographer, to show the audience how charity was dispensed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Behind them or in front of them were other crews from other stations. Each had been given or had requested a specific time slot for the story. It was the one story Ellen swore she would not do. It was that horrible.
The reporter would wander up the aisles, mike in hand, past the tables filled with the poor and the crazy. The photographer was told by those in charge not to embarrass these people and to ignore any anger they might show.
They had enough dignity, these people, to resent the reporter and his camera and his words. Even the craziest, the never-ending mumblers, the worst of the shufflers, the rag-layered worst of them, had enough dignity to be ashamed and angry that they were being used as a story. On the other hand, the holidays were slow news days and this was a sure thing.
The managers of the dining hall allowed the television people in because they felt it might help donations.
“We’re usually okay during the holidays,” they’d say, “but we operate all year round. We need more help after the holidays.
