Chapter 1

Everyday the old man would walk from his townhouse condo to his car carrying a brown leather case and a plastic grocery store bag. In the summer the old lady across the street would sit on the balcony and watch. In the winter she saw him from her living room window. She wondered what he could possibly have in the bag and what he did on his outings.

She and her neighbors knew little of the old man. But suspected that he was a retired executive of some kind. No one had ever been in his house, so no one knew that the second bedroom of the condo had been converted to a darkroom.

They did know that the post office made regular pickups at his condo. There had even been some discussion within the condo's governing board about discussing it with him. After all, they didn't want anyone running a business from the complex. It was one of those absolute no, nos. They decided that since no one ever came to visit him, the post office pickups almost daily could be overlooked. The same postman delivered the mail so it didn't really create any extra traffic.

A couple of the widows had spoken with the old man now and then, but he had little to say. They all knew that he shopped in the local market near the complex. Also that he bought fresh vegetable from the farmer's market. The distinctive yellow plastic bags from the farmer's market often went inside his condo. They just as often came out with him on his almost daily outings.

It was to be a typical day for Edgar Taft. Edgar was a closet photographer. No he didn't make pictures of, or in his closet. He just didn't let it be known. Edgar knew the owners association would stop him from working from his condo. He could not allow that, Edgar had nowhere else to go.

Edgar drove his beat up old Dodge from the parking lot, then he turned it toward a small park about a mile from his home. The mile was about as far as he dared to drive. Any more and the odds began to increase for him to be involved in some kind of accident. You see Edgar's mind tended to wander.

Edgar found the park empty as he did most mornings. People didn't seem to make it to the park until later in the day. Sometimes he would find a play school using the facilities but not so often that he had to be concerned by their loud voices.

Edgar moved along the wooden bridge to a shaded picnic table. Once he arrived he placed the yellow plastic bag and the leather satchel onto the tabletop. He sat for a long moment catching his breath. It seemed to take longer each day to get his mind open.

Edgar liked that particular picnic table for a reason. Behind it grew a very large tree. The tree made a natural background for anything he chose to photograph on the tabletop. The gray of the tree bark complimented the gray of the tabletop. It was in fact the ideal setting for Edgar's work.

That morning from his plastic bag Edgar removed a tin can with the top still attached at one spot. The can had been opened with the kind of opener that cut it in jagged edges. The can's label, made on his ink jet printer, was plain white with large black letter stating the contents of the can to be WHOLE TOMATOES.

Beside the can Edgar placed a fork with one bent tine, a wax paper covered stack of saltine crackers, and a green pepper. It was most likely that week's ugliest pepper at the farmers market. Then from his light weight jacket pocket, he removed a crystal wine glass.

For the next half hour he studied the arrangement. He made changes every few minutes. the changes were minor but nonetheless he made them very carefully. He seemed to be thinking and then second guessing himself.

Edgar finally removed a large camera from his leather satchel. He also removed several pieces of Mahogany colored wood. The pieces screwed together making a very strange looking holder for the camera. After the camera was assembled, Edgar began rearranging the items on the table yet again.

It was almost 90 minutes after he arrived in the park when Edgar finally slipped a film holder into the camera. He slowly and methodically measured the light and adjusted the camera's lens. When he finally snapped the picture it was anti climatic. It was like the period at the end of a sentence. Maybe it would be one day.

Edgar returned home that morning to develop his one negative. Part of Edgar's mystique, if there was such a thing, was the very low number of images he made. Also his age and health issues added to his popularity. Everyone in the gallery business knew there wouldn't be many more prints arriving in the mail.

In a far corner of his 2nd bedroom, turned darkroom, sat a four foot cabinet. The cabinet was made for him by his son in law. On top of the rough cabinet sat a large black box. It was a table top changing room. The front door dropped forward to allow easy access to the two compartments. The front compartment was his work space, the rear was for the storage of paper and film.

Edgar slipped a long thin tube into the work space. It was followed by the single negative holder. Edgar was careful. He knew that he was clumsy and forgetful. He also knew that if the negative wasn't any good, he would have the rest of the day off to watch the all day news channels. That was a truly depressing thought and a great motivator.

In Edgar's condo each of the bedrooms had its own bath. One of the bathrooms also had a hallway entrance. Edgar slept in the room attached to the shared bathroom. He converted the other one to a lab. It was meant to be a darkroom but had gotten itself converted to a den of mixed technologies.

After a short half hour Edgar knew that he had a negative. He also know that he had about an hour before he would be required to do anything else to it.

Edgar fixed himself a glass of vile tasting instant iced tea, then went to sit on the balcony while the negative washed and dried.

After lunch Taft removed the dry negative from its safety pin holder. He laid it carefully onto the bed of his scanner. After scanning the negative he placed it into a thick cardboard holder, then put it aside.

He worked on the scanned image for almost an hour. He worked a while, sat back drank coffee, then worked a while longer. After 48 minutes exactly he knew what he wanted from the negative. He ran a plain paper ink jet print from the image on his computer, then he deleted the image.

He folded the newly printed page, then placed it and the negative, which rested inside its cover, into a pre addressed 5x7 envelope provided by the lab. The forty eight minutes had simply been so that the lab would know exactly how he wanted their scan to me made. He had worked with that lab often enough to know that it would be just as he wanted.

The only reason he developed his own film was to make that single preliminary scan, and to make sure his custom developer was used on the negative. He wanted the proper amount of contrast and grain in the final print. To do that his negative had to look just right, then be scanned just right. Taft's mailman came late in the afternoon, so it wasn't a problem to get his negative out that day. Since the day was clear and sunny Taft attached the envelope to the outgoing mail holder on his mail box. If it had been rainy, he would have taken the envelope to the post office. A lost or damaged negative was the thing Edgar feared most.

With a successful shoot under his belt, Edgar turned his attention to his drawing board. He removed the muslin cloth which covered the table top and the 9x12 black and white ink jet print. Anyone looking at the print would have needed a moment or two in order to determine it's makeup. It was hard to make the mental adjustment, since the print was black and white but on watercolor paper. It was soft and the lines were broken by the heavy grain of the paper.

Edgar stood over the board, coffee cup in hand, for a long time. Even though he knew exactly what he would be doing, he stood making plans line by line. Making a plan of attack suitable for any general, of any army in the world.

Edgar hated his cordless phone... Well only when it rang and he couldn't find it. That evening he found it on the sofa under last night's shirt. Edgar had a habit of removing articles of clothing and leaving them where ever he was at the time.

"Hello," he said into the tiny phone.

"Hey Edgar how you doing." The voice belonged to his son in law Michael.

"I'm fine Mike, no need to call the Lawyers just yet." Michael laughed along with Edgar. It was a joke they both participated in. Michael freely admitted that he wanted Edgar's camera collection. To Edgar it was obvious that Michael did not want to display it. He pretended to believed Michael wanted it for that reason.

"Good, I still owe him for that last false alarm." The laughter was genuine. It was also at Edgar's expense. Cindy had called three times but couldn't get an answer. She panicked first, then called the paramedics. It was a simple case of the cordless phone being off its charge too long. The next day Michael was forced to buy and attach a corded phone to the upstairs extension.

"You need one phone that works," Cindy had demanded.

Edgar just shook his head. Edgar looked at the storage cabinet Michael had built him. Inside what looked like a second home entertainment center rested all Edgar's unused negative and disks. Edgar could not possibly finish a print everyday, but he shot a picture. The storage cabinet had one large drawer filled with 4x5 negative which had been scanned but not printed. Another drawer held the cd's which had also not been used. Inside three four inch thick and twenty eight inch square drawers rested about fifty prints that had been produced but not shipped to any gallery. They were Edgar Taft's 401k.

Michael had insisted on building the storage cabinet after Cindy explained the potential value of those items. It would be even more after Edgar passed to his reward or lack there of. The large cabinet doors were about two inches thick and filled with some fire retardant material. The sidewalls, back, top and bottom were constructed the same. Over Michael and Cindy's objections the doors stayed open most of the time.

"By god," Edgar had remarked to himself on more than one occasion. "If they are so hot to have the damn doors closed, Michael should have but a counter weight to have them close by themselves."

"So Edgar you still want to go to that festival in Terrytown?"

"I've paid the fee, but I'm not sure. If you need to make other plans go ahead. I can find another way down there." Edgar did know a couple of people who would be more than happy to drive him to the festival.

"Not at all, Cindy just wanted to know if she should plan to take that Friday off."

"Well tell her not to do it. I don't want her losing any money on my account."

"Edgar you know it isn't like that. They just count on her being there unless she tells them a week in advance."

"Actually I had been planning to skip that festival. The attendance was down last year so I think I might just stay home and work."

"Yeah, you do enough with the gallery stuff. You don't need to do the festivals."

Edgar almost told him that it wasn't about the money, but he decided not to bother. Michael and Cindy had never understood that part of it.

"So, I should figure that you aren't going?"

"Yeah, do it that way Michael. Just figure I'm going to stay home and work." Edgar hated the part of his life that had limited his ability to do what he wanted. It made him feel like a cripple, which would come later.

Edgar agonized over the loss of his festival for about twenty minutes, then made a fresh pot of coffee. A total of half an hour passed before he sat down at his drawing table. The small, old fishing tackle box gave up the acrylic pigments, but only after a short game of hide and seek.

Twenty bottles of colored paint and one bottle of distilled water lined the smaller table beside the one with the slanted top. A three light bank of 60 watt bulbs burned behind and above Edgar. He found his paint stained mixing dish in the drawer. It was the kind they used to test drugs at the local pd. It had come from a police auction years before. The dish was like half an egg carton, but larger with many more dimples. It was also ceramic made before the days of disposable everything.

Edgar picked a bright red color of paint, then he watered it down to a consistency similar to water color. With a 000 sable brush he began the arduous task of tracing the lines of the rose. The rose would be bright red. He had laid the yellow rose, picked fresh from his rear yard, upon a Bible. He hoped that he could do the black and white print justice. He didn't feel that he ever did, but the colored prints sold much better than the pure black and white ones ever had. He had been told, more than once, at a festival that they had a 3D effect. There was a certain amount of depth from the different textures. There was the rough paper of the print itself, the strong lines of the photograph, then the elevated texture of the smooth paint on the surface. Acrylic though flat by nature was more solid looking than water color. Watercolor hinted at color and Acrylics were color. That's how he explained it when asked why he didn't just do the watercolor thing.

Edgar painted until 8 P.M. He might have continued had his daughter not called. Cindy was checking to make sure he ate his dinner. She wasn't concerned enough to invite him to her house, just enough to make an after dinner call to bother him. Edgar hung up the phone again biting his tongue. Life would have been so much more simple, if his wife had lived.

He looked back at the picture on his drawing table before covering it with the muslin. I can finish that tomorrow, he thought. The question then became where to send it, if he decided to send it out at all. It might well turn out to be one of his better pieces. Something about that bright rose on the black Bible with the gold leaf page edges was haunting. If he felt it, he was pretty sure others would to.

"Most likely some greeting card company would suck it up." he said aloud.

The thought of all that work to have it wind up on a greeting card would have been upsetting, if Taft had considered it great art. He didn't. He considered what he did poster art, most often without words, but nothing more than posters.

After dinner from the microwave, Taft sat in front of his average sized TV to watch the world news. If he had been a young man, he would have missed the news all together. Partly because he wouldn't have been interested, and partly because back then there were no 24 hour news networks. It was almost 9 PM when he found his way to the comfortably worn sofa.

After his allotted hour he came to the same conclusion that he did every night. The world was going to hell in hand basket. American soldiers were in harm's way again and the world all hated him personally. It seemed the more things changed, the more they remained the same. All of it had been exactly the same in his youth. Back then the world shared its hate between the US and the USSR. With only one giant, all the hate centered on the US. I didn't seem like a good place to be, if you were a proud American.

Taft was torn between bed and donuts. He suddenly had an overwhelming desire for Krispy Kreme donuts. Living alone with no one to stop him, he often indulged such silly ideas. He did that night as well.

It was just late enough for the most of the after dinner crowd to be off the roads, and early enough that the second shift factory workers were still in the plants. He made it most of the way to the donut shop before the tree leaped from the grass strip between the road and the sidewalk. How it got in front of his car, he had no idea.

Fortunately at night Edgar felt less than secure driving, so he drove slowly. At twenty five miles an hour the tree still buried itself in the grill, radiator, and fan housing of the Dodge. If the car had been several years younger, the damage would have been considered minimal. As it was the damage was enough to total the under valued, in Edgar's opinion, car.

A passer by with a cell phone called the police, who found Edgar seated in the car's passenger side. The passenger side was well off the street, while the driver's side blocked the curb lane. The police report said Edgar seemed confused and disoriented. Edgar said he was simply shocked to see that the tree had found it's way back onto the grassy strip. It had to be a vast left wing conspiracy.

It was unfortunate that the police felt he might have head trauma. He was disoriented and seemed unsteady so they called an ambulance. Edgar tried to tell them that he was just old, but they would have none of it. They sent him off to the hospital for evaluation. The hospital promptly called his daughter.

A few hours and several thousand dollars later, it was determined that Edgar was too old to be driving at night. At least they hadn't decided that he was too old to be driving period. He accepted the Doctor's advice with a sarcastic smile, if a smile can be sarcastic.

By the time they released him at 4 AM his daughter still hadn't arrived, so he called a cab. His daughter managed to call and wake him at 7 AM.

"I would have come to the hospital, but the nurse said you were just fine. I didn't want to wake the baby and Michael had to install some cabinets out of town this morning. He left very early."

"Don't worry I'm fine. It all worked out for the best." In his opinion it had. Since she had barely been inconvenienced, she didn't have any leverage at all. He learned again just how strained their relationship was. He said goodbye trying not to show his disappointment.

The worst thing going through Edgars mind as he lay on his bed trying to shut his mind down, was that he still wanted the donuts. That thought ran around his head as he drifted off to sleep for the second time that morning. All his other problems were just hurdles, but damn it he wanted those donuts.

Edgar's routine was shot, but he wasn't so senile that he couldn't adapt to the change. Instead of the park, he found the portable studio. He had Michael make it a couple of years before and then never used it. The thing they made was no more than two 24" by 24" pieces of 1/2 inch plywood trimmed out and hinged. A small brass chain allowed for the rear piece's tilt to be adjusted. The idea had been to take it to the park and sit it on a picnic table. With the adjustment feature the back could be moved to catch more or less light on the background. It was a pain, so seldom made it to the park, even when it was new.

He made his one shot that morning, it was his hospital bill laying on his empty money clip. It wasn't very artistic but would most likely find a buyer, if he ever got around to painting it.

After lunch Edgar found his nephew's phone number. Getting through to him was another matter. John's phone stayed busy most of the time. John was a ladies man of the first degree. He loved the ladies and from what Edgar had heard from his sister, most of them loved him right back.

"John this is your Uncle Edgar. You son are a hard man to catch."

"I've been here all morning Uncle Edgar."

"Yeah, well you should get call waiting or something."

"I have call waiting, but Uncle Edgar that was Jane Martin."

"Who the devil is Jane Martin?"

"She owns Martin Trucking Company."

"I thought it was owned by Simon Martin and his brother Everette."

"Was is right. It wasn't a pleasant divorce."

"John, you weren't the cause of it were you."

"No, but I know the girl who was. Simon likes younger women it seems. Jane's lawyer got it in front of a lady judge. So poor old Simon got the house in the country and Jane go the company."

"And now you have Jane?"

"Oh no, I'm just thinking about moving to Martin Trucking."

"I thought you were dealing in trucks now?"

"I am now and then. I'm still driving now an then as well." He paused a moment to see if I had anything else to say. Since I didn't he went on. "So what can I do for you."

"I need a favor kiddo."

"Uncle Edgar I'm 42 years old. No one in their right mind would call me that."