claw—bruised muscle pulling tight beneath damaged skin—and the camera in my right seemed to get heavier with each passing second. Then the rope stopped moving, and for a handful of minutes there was nothing, nothing at all. Just boredom.
I could hear Floyd fidgeting two berths to my left. “How long—” he started to say, but motion down in the parking lot stopped him short. The three officers had stormed out of their command tent, their eyes turned up toward the building.
I panned back in time to see the soldier fly out of the window.
Not fall.
Propelled out into empty space. Thrown, perhaps. Or maybe he dived, throwing himself out the window at full sprint.
For a split second, the soldier fell through the air, his body perfectly limp, spinning toward the sky. Then he hit the sidewalk with a loud
Then the fallen soldier heaved himself up off the ground.
Shedding first his helmet, then his backpack, the soldier—injured and broken—stumbled away from the building, moving in a crazed, drunken gait.
Photograph. October 19, 09:23 P.M. The red guitar:
A close-up of guitar strings. Solid white lines against deep red lacquer.
The shot is far enough back to show the curve of the instrument’s body, a pair of graceful S’s just inside the top and bottom of the frame. The red lacquer is immaculate, smooth as unsmudged glass. Near the central hole it is a dark red verging on burgundy, but it lightens up as it nears the body’s edge, where it glows like a brilliant flame.
There is a hand hovering over the guitar—dirty fingers frozen in motion, caught coaxing the thin nylon strings into indistinct blurs. The index finger has a cracked, ragged nail, and a thin band of blood encircles the dirty cuticle. The pad of the finger-turned partway toward the camera—is coated with blood, matching the guitar’s grisly color.
I had the falling soldier on my mind all the way to Mama Cass’s: his brief flight through the air, his impact, and then that odd drunken stagger. The fall should have killed him. But he got up and continued on, a spring-driven wind-up toy, too damaged to comprehend, too damaged to just lie down.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” Sabine asked as we crossed under I-90 and approached the restaurant.
“He went totally limp, like a wet noodle,” Floyd said. “And noodles don’t break.”
“But why did he jump?” Sabine asked. “What did he find in there?”
I was watching Taylor as we walked. She stayed a couple of steps ahead, leading the way. In response to Sabine’s question, she looked back over her shoulder and shrugged. Her eyes were vacant, her thoughts a million miles away.
Nobody spoke. There was no answer to Sabine’s question.
Sabine grunted and looked down at the camcorder in her hand. She’d flipped open the viewscreen and was watching the video of the falling soldier. Her fingers shuttled back and forth between “play” and “rewind,” as she watched the fall over and over again.
We continued in silence.
It was a little after one o’clock when we reached Mama Cass and the Char-Grilled Miracle. We found the tables packed with hungry lunchtime customers. There were at least thirty people seated in the open dining area and another fifteen gathered on the sidewalk outside. It was a shock, seeing so many dirty faces gathered together in one place. It made me wonder just how many people were left here in the city. Two hundred? Three hundred?
Wandering the empty streets, it was easy to get caught up in the desolation of this place, easy to think that we were the only people left in the world—just our little household, along with the military, of course. But there were other civilians out there, holed up behind doors, making do without electricity and hot water, without Internet, cable, and phone service.
I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures, trying to get some candid shots. These were truly interesting people. Beneath all that dirt and exhaustion—beneath the ragged clothing, snaggled hair, chapped lips, and bloodshot eyes—there was genuine character and resolve.
These were the people who had stayed despite having every reason to leave.
“Cool it, Dean,” Taylor hissed beneath her breath. “You’re making everyone nervous.”
She was right. I glanced up and found myself the focus of wary glances and more than a couple of threatening glares. Several people had turned their bodies away, trying to shield themselves from my camera.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, addressing the crowded room. I un-slung my backpack and tucked the camera back inside.
“Why, if it isn’t my favorite band of vagabonds … plus one!”
I turned and found a smiling, middle-aged black woman striding our way. She was thin as a stick, and her wide smile revealed pearl-white teeth. She was dressed in stylish ski gear, impeccably clean and perfectly fitted.
“Sharon!” Sabine exclaimed with a grin, moving forward to give the older woman a hug. “When’d you get back?”
“About an hour ago. I got a lift from the infantry.” She pointed to a table of soldiers on the other side of the room. In response, the uniformed men looked up from their massive plates of food and snapped off nearly synchronized salutes.
“Well, it’s good to have you back,” Sabine said. She cast a nervous glance toward the back of the dining area, then lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to tell Bobby, but the food’s suffered without you. Hell, I was thinking of taking my business somewhere else.” She held a straight face for a couple of seconds, then broke down laughing, moving to hug the older woman one more time.
“Who’s your friend with the camera?” Sharon asked, watching me over Sabine’s shoulder. There was a hint of distaste in her voice, like the word
“That’s Dean,” Sabine said. “He’s an artist. A good guy. He’s staying with us while he works on a project.”
Sharon shrugged. “Well, any friend of yours,” she said, still sounding a bit skeptical. Then she turned and gestured toward the back of the room, once again playing the gracious hostess. “Right this way,
The chef’s table was an immaculate hardwood oval tucked into an out-of-the-way corner. It had intricate knurled legs and was polished to a high gloss, something you’d find in a suburban mansion. Sharon seated us in mismatched folding chairs.
“Sharon was a stockbroker back before all of this shit started,” Sabine said, addressing me with a sly smile as Sharon helped us with our chairs. “She moved to Spokane to retire, to live the relaxed good life. Then the world went crazy.”
Sharon shrugged. “I know it sounds bad, but I was starting to get bored, anyway … just sitting on my ass, watching cable news. Retirement just wasn’t my thing. Besides, I always wanted to open my own restaurant.”
“Why ‘Mama Cass’?” I asked. “Why not ‘Sharon’s’ or ‘Mama Sharon’s’?”
