According To Bug
Chapter 2

Copyright© 2006 by MysteryWriter

Monday morning traffic wasn't too bad, since Bug had put off leaving until after her run, breakfast, and a shower. It was almost ten before she turned left out of her parking lot and headed for the interstate highway.

"So where to Edgar?"

"Hey, you are the one who had to get out. I could have stayed right there in the condo."

"Like hell, you get stir crazy to."

"Well, I still don't have a preference. How long are you planning to stay gone anyway?"

"Just as long as it takes to find something worthy of one of my two shots."

"Good for you." Edgar replied.

"We are approaching the highway so it is east or west?"

"I don't care there are good things both ways."

"Alright damn it think of a number," Bug demanded.

"Got it," Edgar replied.

"Odd or even?" Bug asked

"Odd," he replied...

"Then east it is." Bug headed east toward the coast. She had no idea what she would do next, or where she was headed. She didn't even know how long she would stay on the highway. She was damned sure that it wouldn't be long. Neither she nor Edgar liked the busy highways. They had always driven on the older version of the same highway whenever possible.

Bug, for no particular reason, turned south on the next highway with a numbered sign. She was again headed toward the coastline but the road she had chosen would end about two hundred miles father south. She had absolutely no plan to go all the way to the coast. She was simply looking for one or two things to photography. To do that she had to get off the inter state highway system.

She saw a sign just before she would have come to a busy intersection. The sign advised her that at the funky intersection, she should make a left turn, in order to exit onto the older two lane version of the highway.

Bug knew that historically those older versions went through every small town on the way to the coast. Surely in one of them she could find something worth filling her two exposures.

In the first small town she drove through she saw several building she might have photographed, if she had more film. Since she didn't, she passed them up. She was headed for the next small town, when she realized that she had learned a lesson in what not to shoot. It was a subtle lesson, but it was there. Every cute thing isn't worth the wasted film, if you are a serious photographer.

"That's right bug. If you are out shooting for the family album, then you shoot the abandoned filling station. If you are shooting for a show, unless there is reason to think someone might like it, you pass it by and keep looking.

"So what am I looking for?"

"Ah bug you know I can't tell you that, I'm dead. I can only drag things out of your memory. Just look around you and ask yourself, why would anyone buy this?"

She saw the sign just in time to make the right turn. Okay the turn was on two wheels and it almost scared a bodily fluid from her, but she made it safely. She hadn't realized that she actually had a destination in mind. Not until the black and white sign popped into view.

Bug was driving down a narrow, flat, poorly maintained, two lane road headed for the town of Gold Hill. Gold Hill, she found out about ten minutes after the hair raising turn, had a population of 541. That was most likely a figure pulled from mid air for the last census.

It was also the birthplace of one Edgar Taft, second rate artist. Edgar was remarkably quiet all things considered. Bug didn't try to engage him in conversation. That hadn't worked in life or death with Edgar. Edgar spoke only when Edgar had something to say. One of his less endearing qualities.

Bug began with an idea. Just as soon as she saw the sign, the idea began to form in her mind. She wanted to shoot something for Edgar. She saw the town's one diner across from the old post office. It had obviously been converted to the office for a used car/tractor lot.

At Edgar's insistence, she had lost her fear of side of the road diners. She actually enjoyed the small town, mom and pop restaurants. The one she entered was white frame and badly in need of an oil change on the walls. Still the place was cool and smelled of fried food. Edgar had taught her that anyplace that smelled of grease couldn't be all bad.

"Hi there what can I get you?"

"Any chance I can get a salad with some turkey chunks?" She asked it not expecting much.

"Is this going to be in a movie?" the woman asked. When she saw the blank look on Bugs face she went on. "I can give you a garden salad and a turkey sandwich. Closest I can come to what you want."

"Okay, then I want it on very well done toast."

The salad was small which suited Bug fine. The turkey sandwich was dry and that was fine too. Bug tore half of one piece of the toast into small pieces and added it to the salad. Then she ate the salad with a glass of sweetened iced tea. She knew the sweet tea was an addiction but it was cheaper than coke.

"So how was it?" the waitress asked.

"It was adequate," Bug said smiling.

"Well, we don't exactly get that kind of order often."

"I know and I made allowances for that." Bug grinned and the woman grinned back. "Tell me is there anyone around who might have known a friend of mine. He lived here a long time ago?"

"How long?"

"Oh he was over sixty when he died, but he was here his first eighteen years at least, maybe longer."

"Try the antique store on the way out of town. The woman there is kind of a town historian. It's in her blood, just like furniture polish I expect. If anyone knows about him and his family she will. She saved all the old records from the town and the schools system when they were going to throw them out.

"Hi, my name is Sarah Wilson. They told me at the diner you knew everything worth knowing about this town." Bug said it hoping to charm the older woman.

"I know a little about a few things, that's all. So what is it you need to know about Gold Hill?" The woman looked like a high school librarian, half frame glasses and all.

"A friend of mine passed away. He told me he grew up here. I was hoping you could tell me where he lived, and anything about what his life here might have been like?"

"What's your friend's name and date of birth?" The older woman seemed bored more than anything else. The stack of papers on her desk looked daunting, but then Bug had no idea what they were.

"He died six months ago so that would have been in 2000. He was 62 years old according to what I have heard." Bug was hard at work trying to edit it all into chronological order.

"That would make it 1937 or 38," the older woman said. "Now what is his name." She was looking through the books trying to find just the right one when Bug answered.

"Taft, Edgar Taft," Bug was surprised by the woman's reaction. She put the book down and just stared at Bug for a long minute.

"You are the second person to ask about Edgar Taft since his death. I went through all the research for the last one."

"Who was asking?" Bug was curious as hell.

"Some college professor, she was really interested in how he got from here to where he died. I couldn't help her much though. I know that he was born here in late 1937. Edgar was one of those depression babies. The south was full of kids who were born into despair. He was spared the horrors because he was too young to remember. The country was coming out of it by 1940. By the time he started school thing were looking up around these parts. That's a quote from the governor at the time."

"So was it true?"

"People were surviving better but barely. The churches were still feeding families, but the people here lived off the land. Then there was the fire."

"What fire?"

"In 1939 all the tax records went up in flame. The people were living hand to mouth and barely able to feed themselves from the land they lived on. They couldn't pay the taxes at all. The county had to pay it's bills so they were planning to call in the land owner's tax liens. About three days before the deadline for payments, the county courthouse had a fire in the tax department. All the records were destroyed."

"Oh so they didn't have to pay the back taxes."

"They had to pay up eventually, but it took years to figure it all out. By then the war had started and people had money again. The tobacco farmers began to have a huge market and things were back to normal around here in just a couple of years."

"So is there anyway for me to see where Edgar's family lived?"

"The house is gone, and the land is over grown now. I went out there with that professor lady. Just wasn't nothing to see. We couldn't even find where the house had been."

"So there is nothing left from the time Edgar lived here?"

"Just the old school. Edgar would have gone to the local school. We had local schools back then. The county took over the schools about twenty years ago. They used our old building to store equipment. They tried to sell it last year, but there were no buyers. I think they plan an auction now. The lot might bring something, but I doubt it. There wasn't much land and tearing that old building down is going to probably cost more than the lot is worth."

"I sure would like to see that building. Maybe I could make a picture of it."

The women didn't answer, she simply stood and walked to the door. When she was on the porch, of the two story frame farmhouse that she used as an antique store, she pointed across the road. "Go down that road about half a mile. Look on your left. You will see a boarded up frame building. That's the school.

Bug found the school easy enough. She even carried the heavy 4x5 graflex camera as she walked away from Edgar's yellow convertible. She looked around the outside of the school but didn't see anything worthy of expending any of her precious film supply. Kids or someone had broken the lock on the rear door. It stood open. Bug didn't even think twice.

She wandered around the building for a few minutes then came upon what must have been one of the few classrooms. There was one single broken down child's desk. It was almost in the middle of the floor. The room should have been as dark and dreary as the rest of the building, but there was a strong light coming through the very tall windows.

What really grabbed her attention was Edgar sitting in the broken desk, and looking out of the window. Bug did a quick read of the light, then she framed the picture as quickly as possible and fired the shot. The shutter speed was a slow 1/25th of a second, so she was braced against the door frame. She would be surprised if the shot came out. She was shaking from the excitement of seeing Edgar again. Just as quickly as he was there he was gone.

What Bug saw was different from her pretend sightings of the old man. She would swear, if asked, that Edgar had been in that room. Bug had her money shot. She knew that she no longer needed the second exposure, but she took a shot of the school from the outside. That one was more for reference than anything else.

"Well Edgar," she said before starting the car. "It wasn't much of a road trip after all." There was no answer from Edgar,

Bug drove way too fast in her effort to get home. Well to Edgar's home at least. It just didn't seem like home to her yet. Nonetheless she hurried to get to her developing equipment. Bug desperately needed to see the shots she had made. Unpacking the car was a forced chore for her. She wanted to rush in with the one film holder and leave the car for the thieves. Instead under the imagined steely gaze of Edgar Taft, Bug unloaded the car. Two quick trips and it was done.

Bug forced herself to make coffee before she began working on the image. When she finally did begin, she started with the record shot. The outside of the school. She loaded and developed in within fifteen minutes. When she pulled the negative from the film tank, she noticed that it was sharp and contrast. It was also only mildly boring. It was an abandoned building nothing more. There was no magic in the shot, so she was a little discouraged when she started on the money shot.

If Bug was a nail biter, her fingers would have been bloody. The wait was almost unbearable. She had to literally force herself to wait the whole two minutes for the fixer to do it's job. Finally it was time to see what she had done.

When she fished the stiff negative from the tank she was shocked. There was no Edgar of course, and she hadn't expected one. There was however light spots and dark spots where they didn't seem quite right. Again Bug forced herself to wait while the negative dried. She didn't want to get dust embedded in the negative, so she let it air dry in a closed, but vented cabinet. The drying cabinet was a small corner cabinet in the kitchen which could hardly have been used for anything else. The bottom had several holes cut in it Over the bottom Edgar had careful spread a layer of very thin muslin. The muslin filter could be washed and drying, but it appeared to have never been cleaned. Edgar had always done exactly the same thing Bug did. About once a month Bug shook the filter outside the rear patio door.

Bug made a few calls on her cell phone. It was the only phone she had. She had never bothered to have Edgar's phone turned on. He hadn't owned a cell phone, but she couldn't have survived without hers. First she called her mother, then her father at work. She asked a few questions about her finances before she changed the subject with her father. Bugs family needed a crisis to operate efficiently. It had to do with there not being a need to worry about survival or even comfort issues.

The latest crisis was about her of course, they usually were. It was all about why she wasn't married with her 2.3 kids. The questions hadn't gotten to the speculation stage at that point, but it was only a matter of time. The speculations would never be voiced of course. Her mother and father would turn to each other and pass a 'look' that said volumes. That most likely would start within a few weeks if she didn't find a boyfriend soon. Bug was trying to decide what she should do when she realized that the required amount of time passed.

It was time for bug to begin work on he negative. She put it first on the flatbed scanner that Edgar used. The combination of the high resolution scanner, the super computer, and the quality of the negative resulted in a truly astounding image. Bug was so shocked that she simply sat in awe of the image.

The darkened interior of the room made for an almost black frame around the image. On most of the right side were the large windows. Ther were almost too bright but not really. On the left side in a pool of light, as if a spotlight was shinning down on it, sat the broken down old desk. Something about the lighting made it seem to glow. The effect of the image was unbelievable. It as somehow almost primordial. It made her want to cry, and it would have even if she didn't know the story behind it. Bug was totally in shock, she could not believe that she had made the image displayed on her computer screen. It was so far above anything else she had ever done.

Her first thought was not to touch it. She knew that she had to at least see it with Edgar's filter pack. Before she touched it, she saved the huge file on the drive. If the filter set was good enough, she would save both files onto a CD.

The file was so large, since she refused to reduce it at all, that she had to wait a few minutes for the filter set to apply itself. When it did, she knew why Edgar guarded the process with such zeal. It had gone from an amazingly good image to a glorious image in one application of the aging filer pack. She quickly saved both of the images to the hard drive, and onto two different CDs.

Bug spent the evening just basking in the warmth of having made such a wonderful image. She went to bed and had a disturbing dream. She refused to even think about it afterward. She woke and quickly got herself ready for her morning run. The dream and the image moved around just outside her conscious thoughts.

When the run was finished, Bug went to breakfast. Mildred didn't joke around that morning. Instead she looked lost in her own thoughts. It suited Bug fine to be left pretty much alone with hers. Bug tried to make a mental list of things on which she needed to concentrate. Obviously her first priority was to decide what to do with Edgar's portrait, as she began to think of the school house image. She used both names interchangeably for the shot.

She also needed to give some thought to promoting the web site, if she didn't get any orders. It had only been up a few days, but it should produce something soon, she thought.

The third and of only mild interest was the boy friend / grand children problem. The grand children might never happen, but she could at least find herself a boyfriend. It would get her mother and father off her ass.

"How hard can finding one man be?" she asked herself. She would just have to stop being a recluse. It was a habit she had picked up from Edgar. She loved her house, and she loved her work. Yes she thought of it as her work. Even though, as of that moment, she hadn't made a nickel from it.

All that changed when she arrived home. She had an email and a pay pal payment for $65. The email included an order for one of the proofs from the reenactment. Bug quickly uploaded the file to the on line printer who she had decided to use. She wanted to use him for the poster prints because he would drop ship them, and guarantee satisfaction. Her cost for the 20 x 30 photo print of the re enactor was $12 plus shipping. It wasn't a giant start but it was a start.

Before the day ended she had two more orders. Bug felt like she might be on her way. It seemed that her second highest priority was been taken care of, at least for the time being.

The decision about the school house picture was another matter. She had found the photo contest she wanted to enter. Her problem was fear. She was afraid that she would feel devastated, if she didn't do well with it. She felt that it was a glorious photograph, how would she feel if the judges didn't share her opinion. The contest which she finally chose was for retro photography. Retro defined by there definition was a photograph that had not been digitally altered more than could be done in a traditional darkroom. It had to be made with a film camera as well. More or less just shoot with an old camera and then leave the backgrounds alone. The composition could only be changed by cropping it. Air brushing was not allowed even though it was a paper technique. Bug had a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach after she transmitted the image and sent her credit card payment for the entry. If she didn't show well, she would be terribly disappointed there was no doubt about it.

The boyfriend issue would just have to take care of itself. The only change she planned to make on that front was to be open to it. She usually turned away men with a sarcastic or scornful remark. She swore not to do that again, for a while at least.

Bug was not good with boredom and it was boring a the moment. Yes there were orders to process, but she still needed something to do with her excess time. Even after she did her research on the up coming historical reenactment, she had hours and hours to fill. She began thinking of shooting pictures just for fun. It was a concept alien to her. Bug had never had anything but scorn for snapshot shooters. She took her photography seriously. After days of soul searching she decided that she couldn't loosen up enough to be a snapshot shooter.

She knew that she was no artist, but she desperately needed something to do. What Bug needed was to make something photographically that she could sell or give away even. Something that she could make herself. She wrestled with it for days, before the idea came to her. She decided to shoot a group of historical photographs, with her antique cameras. She would make a note card set, then take orders. Unlike the retro portraits, she would print the cards herself. It would be her artistic outlet, and it would be time consuming, both in the shooting and the actual printing packaging and mailing. That was if she got any orders, and she thought she just might. Her order would like come if not from the web, then at the re enactments where she could set up a booth.

 
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