Page 99 of Playworld
The memory was overwhelming: a drive he and Millie had taken from New York to the tip of Long Island, all the way to Montauk. It was early May. Impossible to believe this was only months ago. She’d called him on a Saturday morning. “I’m sick of the city,” she’d said. “I want to see the sea.” It was like an order, a test. “I’ll pick you up,” he answered. He announced to his father that he was borrowing the car. Miraculously, his father said yes. The morning was so spectacularly bright the Plymouth’s interior seemed dark as a closet, even felt several degrees cooler, like a room when you come inside from a day at the beach. Driving over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, the sky was such a polished blue that against its backdrop Manhattan’s buildings seemed livid with detail, the water towers and antennae tines as distinct as a Dürer etching. In the gusts, trees waved their branches from penthouse roofs. The illusion of great speed as the suspension girders whipped past, of motionlessness if you focused on the river instead. They took the Queens Midtown Expressway to Route27, a two-lane road they remained on for hours. At a gas station, they bought sandwiches, Cokes, a map, and were off again. The Pine Barrens framed the final stretch of highway, the trees narrowing toward their tips like arrow fletchings. Heat haze smoked the blacktop, the approaching cars lambent and blurred until they solidified into chrome and glass and, trailing a great spill of air, hissed west. On a desolate stretch between Amagansett and Montauk, a commuter train ran alongside them, its windows green as pond scum, its few passengers sitting still and floating alongside them, like witches on brooms. Shel could remember nothing he and Millie talked about, just that he held her hand for what seemed like the entire drive; and later, as they walked along the point’s grounds, after they laid out a blanket on the grass, theyhad watched the fishermen on the rocky beach below. The men would wade up to their waists to cast. When one hooked a fish, his rod arced toward the water. He’d lift the creature from the surf, the pole bowed by its weight, and walk it to shore holding the end of his line. Shel and Millie stood at the overlook beneath the lighthouse, staring at the white boats emerging from the Atlantic and the sound, at the gray cargo ships on the horizon; and what he recalled most clearly was the feeling he had as he held her in his arms:We could keep going.
The next morning Shel saw Logan at mess, sitting three tables across from him, the man’s nose distended, its bridge flat and swollen, his eyes blued with bruise. When they glanced at each other this time, it was Logan who averted his gaze.
Just because you stand your ground doesn’t mean you’ve won the day. Nor are all bullies cowards. On the deck force he was singled out; taunting him became a form of fellowship; he was like a bottle you kicked because it was in your path. The baiting came from all sides, some of it run-of-the-mill. Instead of Hertzberg they called himBurger.“Watch your back,Burger.” “Hey,Burger,you missed a spot.” Other times the threats were more insidious: from Turret One, a gang of sailors approached, Logan among them. Shel, headed aft, slowed, but now there was no turning back. As a unit they took the inside lane, forcing Shel toward the gunwale’s edge, throwing elbows to his back when they passed, some punching his arm, cuffing the back of his head. He took a few hard slaps to his ears. He rode this out, hanging on to the grab rails, their metal wires bowed by his weight, his chest pressed over his toes like a ski jumper, the ship’s wake foaming the hull far below. A voice from somewhere among the group, at once light and heavy on the wind said, “Hope you can swim, Hebe.”
One night, he came upon a mound of feces on his bed. Everyone in the berthing knew it was there—they’d given it space, as if it were a coiled viper. Barney Freele appeared by his side, carefully gathered up the blanket, and, with the assurance of someone owed a favor, said under his breath, “I know the lieutenant commander.”
This man’s name was Maldrick. He invited Shel to his quarters the following afternoon. He told Shel to close the door and invited him to sit while he finished a report, scratching out sentences for a time. A framedpicture of the Virgin Mary hung above his secretary’s desk. Stunned by this privacy, Shel took deep drafts of the calm.
Maldrick put down his pen, swiveled in his chair. “Are you familiar with theDaisy May?” From his desk he handed Shel a copy of the ship’s newspaper, a four-page broadsheet, which Shel thumbed blindly.
“They need a photographer,” Maldrick said. “Mr. Freele tells me you’re quite accomplished.”
Shel had never used a camera in his life. “Sir?”
“Of course, I’ll have to pull you from the deck force,” Maldrick said. When Shel made no protest, he added, “Report to Ensign Lewis tomorrow. The dark room is off the pilot house.”
To call this space a room was generous. It was barely bigger than a closet, a miracle of organization to pack in so much equipment, not to mention both men at one time. Lewis was thin-faced. His narrow cheeks were moon-mottled with acne scars. Giving the tour, he made no-look reaches for film canisters and flashbulbs. It was intimidating, like being in the presence of a wizard among his unmarked potions, and yet instantly incited admiration, for he alone knew the spells.
“Enlarger’s here,” Lewis said. “Cameras”—he took down a Pentax and held it expertly—“on this shelf. Lenses”—he indicated over Shel’s shoulder—“to your right. The tripod’s hanging behind you. All your chemicals are below your trays.” He tapped each. “Developer, stop bath, fixer, wash. If you need to order anything—film, paper, even hardware—just submit a requisition to Ensign Sandbrook. Sky’s the limit.”
He offered the camera to Shel, who gripped it in two hands, then tilted the lens toward his chin.
“You get open gangway at every port,” Lewis continued. “Set your own schedule. I’d keep this job forever if I hadn’t gotten promoted.”
Shel waited.
“Any questions before I hand her over?”
Shel scanned the dark room again. Just above eye level, a row of photos was pinned to a clothesline like fresh laundry, their gentle tilt indicating theDes Moines’s attitude as she listed.
“How do you know what to take?” he asked.
Lewis puffed his cheeks at the question’s obviousness. “I take whatever I want,” he said. “Or whatever’s happening.”
Shel nodded. “What if nothing’s happening?”
“Something’s always happening.”
Timidly, Shel brought the viewfinder to his eye. Lewis frowned and took the camera from him, removing the lens cover.
“You don’t know a thing about this stuff, do you?”
Shel shrugged.
“I didn’t either,” Lewis said.
They stared at each other.
“You got something to write with?” Lewis asked.
After Shel tapped his pants pockets, Lewis removed a small pad and pen from his own. He checked his watch. “I’ll give you three hours.”
His was a furious tutorial. First a primer on film itself, its various speeds and grains, followed by instruction on loading it into the camera. Next its basic parts—the winding reel, tripod socket, accessory shoe. The rings on the lens. Terms came in a blur and only a few were caught, like card faces spotted when a dealer shuffles. “The shutter speed’s how long the camera looks at something,” Lewis explained. “The aperture’s how wide the lens opens. The faster your subject, the wider you set the aperture. The wider your aperture, the lower your f-stop. Understand?” Shel did not. They wandered the vessel shooting a roll of film. From the prow’s platform, camera aimed aft, the battleship, seen through the viewfinder, exploded into detail. The two turrets filled the foreground, their triple barrels bristling and erect and, rising behind them, the forward main battery—theDes Moines’s central command tower—its facade vaguely anthropomorphic, like a totem pole’s gods. Lewis gave a brief exegesis on depth of field, the effects of front- and sidelight. The information pouring from his mouth ran off the roof of Shel’s mind like rain. They returned to the dark room: an introduction to the changing bag. The infernal task of removing the negatives in its pitch-dark and then fastening them to the developing tank’s reel, in the meantime Lewis listing the proper admixtures of T-max and diluting agent. There followed an extensive lesson on the enlarger, the machine flamingo-necked, beaked with a lens. In its slot Lewis loaded a strip of negative, twisting the knobs until the beamed image, fuzzy on the palette below, shrank to fit its borders and then finally came into focus. He walked Shel through several exposures and then made him develop them. Like a ray’s wings,the submerged photopaper gently rippled in the chemical baths. Shel watched the white sheet, mesmerized as the image fogged to visibility, a fade-in clarifying into something actual, like your sight restored after glancing at the sun. Lewis tonged the first print, lifted it from the tray, and then clipped it to the hanging line. For a time, both men considered the photograph.
“How am I supposed to learn all of this?” Shel asked.
Lewis shrugged. “You just play.”