Chapter 35: Restitution

I’D SEEN ENOUGH war movies to be haunted in my dreams. The Guns of Navarone. The Longest Day. Exodus. Von Ryan’s Express. The Bridge on the River Kwai. I’d even seen a special screening of PT109 when I was maybe twelve years old. Enough war stories to give me nightmares about the horrors of war. And all those imaginings were nothing compared to what I imagined happened to Billy Lamonte.

The guy went to Vietnam a young high school sports hero who had sex with at least one of the beautiful cheerleaders. If I had to guess, probably several. But he came back from the war with a dent in his skull the size of a baseball. He limped. From what I understood, he was impotent. And all he had to his name was what was in a little room in the Humane Society where he took care of dogs who loved him.

This guy who could lead an entire town to the cemetery on Memorial Day had been stealing dumb shit and drawing limp dicks on bridges and banks. Such stupid stuff. And I was going with the constable in the morning to arrest him. I felt like shit.

For the second night in a row, I didn’t get any sleep.

I showed up at the constable’s office at ten o’clock with my good camera, the Planar 100mm lens, and a pocketful of rolls of film. What I found surprised me. Constable Stoneburner was dressed in army fatigues, boots, and a hat. He had a double silver bar on one collar and crossed rifles on the other.

“Billy isn’t the only person in town who owns fatigues,” he said. I wondered if he intended to take the blame for the break-ins. “Let’s take my car.” He walked out and I went with him. “Front seat. You aren’t a prisoner,” he chuckled when I looked at the doors.

“Where are we going, sir?” I asked.

“We’re going to visit an old comrade of mine from Vietnam.”

“You served there, too?”

“Just got out last year and came here to find a soldier.”

We pulled into the Humane Society.

“Stay close and take a lot of pictures.”

I walked behind the constable as he entered the Humane Society. The woman at the desk asked if she could help and became alarmed when he just walked through the front into the kennel.

“Wait! You can’t just go back there unescorted,” she said as she followed us.

“Private Lamonte!” the constable called at the door to Billy’s room. Billy jumped off his bed and snapped to attention, throwing a salute at the constable.

“Yes, sir, Captain, sir!” he said.

“At ease, soldier. The war is over for us.”

He stepped into the room and hugged Billy. I glanced at the woman from the front and realized she was the mother who had accompanied him to the graveyard. She seemed to relax at the greeting.

“Good bivouac you have here, Billy. You get good rations?”

“Yes, sir. And I’ve got lots of dogs to keep me company. They like me.”

“Everybody has always liked you, Billy.”

“Something’s changed, Captain. I don’t have any friends but the dogs.”

By this time, I’d taken most of a roll of film, including pictures of Henry’s 1955 calendar, an old radio, the pictures of Lori, and a bottle of Jim Beam. The inescapable conclusion was that Billy was the vandal/thief.

“How are things going, Billy?”

“Not so good, Captain. I can’t think right. I keep seeing Charlie come charging at us with their guns. I try to get as many as I can, but they keep coming. Sometimes I get so scared at night, I go sleep with the dogs. The dogs take care of me and protect me from Charlie.”

“They’re half a world away from us now, Billy. We’re never going back there and they can’t get us here.”

Billy pressed the heel of his hand against his head and found the concave dent in his skull. He explored it like he’d never noticed it before.

“I don’t remember things and some things I don’t think I remember right. Sometimes I see little Lori and I want a kiss, and sometimes she gives me one. But when she gives me one, it doesn’t do anything. They took my pecker in the hospital, Captain. Why would they take my pecker like that?” Billy was near tears. So was I.

“Some things we can’t explain, Billy. Is that why you’ve been painting limp dicks on the bank and the bridges?”

“I just get so ... mad. I can’t think like I used to. My legs hurt and my head hurts. My pecker don’t work. Why’d they bring me back here and keep the best parts in the hospital, Captain?”

“Billy, you were seriously wounded. We were lucky to get you out of that hell hole and into an evac helicopter. We just wanted you to live.”

“I’m alive. Could you give me back my pecker?”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Stoneburner sighed. “Why have you been breaking in places and stealing things? I can see you’ve got Henry’s calendar. Those pictures of Lori. A bottle of Beam. That radio. I bet you took that coffee mug from Mr. Lewis, didn’t you? You know you can’t go around taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you.”

“I didn’t have any music. I always liked that calendar and I remember beating off to it, but it don’t work no more. I went and got Lori’s picture. I thought I’d at least remember what it was like. That guy with the camera sees her all the time and she takes her clothes off for him. He’s okay, I guess. She’s always happy when she leaves his place. But those guys that took her out in their stupid little red car were bad guys. I got them good. They didn’t care about her at all.”

He reached for the bottle on his table and offered to give Stoneburner a swig. The constable declined and put his hand on Billy’s to steady it as the former soldier took a drink from the bottle.

“Ma won’t give me money to buy a bottle. I don’t drink a lot, Captain, but sometimes I get the shakes and think Charlie’s coming to get me. I just want a little drink, you know?”

“You know it’s wrong to take stuff that doesn’t belong to you. To break windows. To paint the bank. You know all that, don’t you, Billy?”

“I know, sir. I just couldn’t help it. Please don’t send me to the stockade, Captain. If I’m in the stockade and Charlie comes, they’ll just shoot me in my cell. Give me a fighting chance, Captain. Please!”

Billy fell on his knees and wrapped his arms around Stoneburner’s legs.

“Billy, straighten up. I’m not taking you to any stockade. And Charlie ain’t gonna get you here. You’ve got good quarters, good grub, and good friends among those dogs out there. Nobody’s going to take that away from you.”

“Thank you, Captain, sir. Thank you.”

“Now, Billy, in order to do that, we’re going to have to return the stuff you’ve taken and figure out a way for you to pay for the damage you’ve done.”

“Captain Stoneburner, sir?” I broke in. He turned to me. “I’d like to make a little gift to Billy of those two pictures of Lori. I know Lori would be happy to know he has them. Billy, if there are any other pictures of Lori you’d like, let me know. She’s working to become a model, like in those magazines you have. I’m just trying to help her.”

“I knew you weren’t a bad guy like those twins. She’s always happy when she goes to see you. She wasn’t really happy when the twins shoved her in the back seat of their car. Thank you for the pictures.”

“Well, Billy, that’s a good start. I want you to gather up the other things you’ve taken and come along with me. We’ll help you return the things you took and we’ll see about how to make up for doing the damage you’ve done. You’ve got a lot more friends here in the town than you might think.”

“Yes, sir. I guess, sir. But I can keep those pictures? Cause that guy said I could have them, right?”

“That’s right, Billy. You can keep the pictures.”

He gathered things up and we headed to the front of the store. The woman at the front stopped us.

“You can’t just come in here and take him away. You don’t have a warrant or even probable cause. That boy probably made the whole thing up,” she said pointing at me.

“Mary, Billy’s going to be okay. He’s just going to return some things he took by mistake. I may need for you to shake lose some of his disability pay to pay for his bottle. Otherwise, we’ll make everything right,” Constable Stoneburner said.

“I didn’t want him sitting back there getting drunk by himself,” she said. “I just want him home. His daddy never came home. Please don’t take my baby.”

“He’ll be okay and I’ll bring him back here in an hour or two.”

We went on out to the car and Billy got in the back seat with the few things he’d stolen over the past year or so. Mrs. Lamonte stood at the window crying.

We pulled into Henry’s service station. It seemed odd that Dad wasn’t working there. I saw Ron Davis out pumping gas. Billy brought the calendar with him and we went into the station. Henry came out of the garage to see who came in.

“Constable, how can I help you? Hello Billy. Nate,” Henry said.

“Henry, Private Lamonte got a little carried away one night and thought your old calendar was a picture of his girlfriend. He’d like to return it to you.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Henry. I just liked her so much I couldn’t help it.”

“You took my calendar?” Henry said as he looked at it. Then he shook his head. “Billy, I’ve got a perfectly good calendar hanging on the wall here. Isn’t she a beauty? She’s working on my old car in the garage. I set aside that old calendar just for you if you wanted it. I remembered how much you liked it when you worked here while you were in school. You don’t need to bring it back to me.”

“Really, Mr. Henry? You mean I can keep it?”

“Yes, indeed. Don’t you think about it again,” Henry said.

“Thank you.” Billy clutched the calendar to his chest.

“Thanks, Henry. Billy needed to hear that,” Stoneburner said. He led Billy back to the car and I climbed in again.

Next, we went to see Mrs. Wilson, and the story was repeated.

“That old radio?” she said. “I didn’t even know it was missing. I sell so much junk to Nate over there that I can never keep track of what he has and doesn’t have.”

I knew that to be a lie. One thing about Mrs. Wilson was that she kept meticulous records of what she sold and what I brought back. Which reminded me that I needed to tell Anna about the things I got here. She might need to visit here and copy down some of Mrs. Wilson’s records if she could.

“You put that radio back in your room. But I’ve got this broken window pane that needs fixed. While you’re here, could you give me a hand? I have the glass, but it’s hard for me to handle it and get the putty in place. Now don’t cut yourself on any broken glass.”

Billy went about the task of removing the shards from the broken window and tossing them in a bucket after Mrs. Wilson took off the cardboard she’d taped up. She handed him a putty knife and he scraped the dried putty out of the frame. Stoneburner helped him hold the new glass in place as I scooped putty out of the can and handed it to him. I managed to step back and take a few pictures, too, while Billy smoothed the putty, asking frequently if he was doing it right.

When he was finished, Mrs. Wilson dusted off her hands, as if she gotten them dirty while doing the work.

“Well, that’s good as new, then,” she said. “Thank you for being such a help to me, Billy. You take that radio and listen to all the music you can tune in.”

We left her store and went on to the next stop.

By a little after noon, we’d been everywhere Billy had taken something or had done damage. The entire town had come together to support Billy and see that he had whatever he needed. Several people shook their heads and said they didn’t realize how rough it was on the young man and that they should have taken better care of their town hero.

The only holdouts eventually were the Jones family, the parents of the twins who took Lori to the prom. We didn’t visit them, but Stoneburner did. He said they were all about retribution rather than restitution. It turned out, though, that Jeremy and Lyle had gone out after graduation and got drunk. They wrapped the Corvair around a tree and were lucky to escape with their lives. The Corvair was a total loss and there was nothing left to repair.

The mayor went out to their farm to talk to them and might have alluded to the idea that the two had taken an innocent girl from the prom and raped her. He said, of course, the boys would probably prevail in a trial, but their names and the names of their family would be all over the county news media. The family dropped the issue and the boys were shipped off to Michigan where they were going to study engineering.

I found out later that Constable Stoneburner and Mayor Lechleiter had been on the phone all the previous afternoon to talk to the people who had things missing and get them to agree to make gifts of the stolen items and accept restitution for damages. It had been a tense time, but the two men had succeeded in waking up the entire town to the fact that they called Billy the town hero and turned around and ignored him the rest of the time. People were pretty ashamed.

They started calling the constable Stoney after that. It was an important day for the town.

Chris and I went to the studio together Wednesday. I had six rolls of film to develop and proof from the day before. She was fascinated by the story of what had transpired. Stoneburner gave the photos back to me because he said there was no need for evidence. The mayor had agreed that the case was closed.

Chris and I spent the day in the dark room. Naked.

Well, it was another warm and humid day with rain for about an hour in the morning. We used that as our excuse. The truth was, we just wanted to touch each other as we worked together. She was a great assistant and quickly learned how to rinse a photo as I got another one ready to print.

We did a lot of touching and fondling and kissing while the sheet was being exposed, while it was in the developer, while it was in the rinse, and while it was in the fixative. Then she’d take it to the bathroom to rinse under running water while I set up the next print. When she put that one on a drying glass and came back into the darkroom, I switched to red light, and turned on the enlarger lamp. Then we started kissing again.

It was a very nice and comfortable way to spend a morning with the girl I loved.

At noon, we dressed and went to my house to get a sandwich for lunch. We sat and talked to Mom about how the whole thing with Billy went. There were a couple of things that he had to work off, and it would take him a while to clean up all the graffiti, but it was a good solution.

“I’m glad you came to us and we prayed,” Mom said. “I believe in prayer. It doesn’t always turn out the way we think it should, but we asked God to show you the right course of action and to protect each of His children affected by it. It seems that was exactly what He did do. In fact, I believe he’s led me to an interesting sermon topic. Well, it’s interesting to me. I doubt it will change summer attendance. But that will be next week. I have to leave for Annual Conference tomorrow. Please be sure to keep an eye on Kat. I don’t mean you need to watch over her all the time, but make sure she doesn’t feel alone when Dad’s at work and you’re in the studio,” she said.

Chris and I went back to the studio and started to work putting together the settings for my second shoot with Sarah Fox on Thursday. Anna showed up and we talked about the additional information she needed. I told her about the things I’d been buying and selling to Mrs. Wilson. She rolled her eyes.

“This makes it a little more complicated, but buying and selling props should be fairly straight forward the way she’s structured your deal. But from now on, you need to make a copy of the information from each purchase and sale and not depend on her to keep the records. I’ll go work out an arrangement with Mrs. Wilson to go over your transactions,” she said.

“Thank you, Anna. I really don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t told me about needing to file taxes and volunteered to do my accounting,” I said.

“You’d have made up a lot of gibberish on April fourteenth and paid a check that you thought would cover whatever you might owe. With luck, you’d overpay and the IRS would look at your age and just stamp it paid in full,” she laughed. “Now, we still have a couple of open issues. You didn’t pay anything for the camera you acquired and list it as a zero dollar asset. That won’t work because you wisely have it insured for $2,000. But we’re going to ignore that because you acquired it in 1966. What we need to do, however, is get a fair value for it so it can be listed as your starting asset base for the year. I want the phone number of your contact at Camera Warehouse who knows what’s going on so I can explain the situation and get a fair market value. If he says the camera is on loan, then we’ll need to get a date on which it must be returned. It would be better to have it an existing family asset transferred by your uncle. But it still needs a value attached to it.”

“Anna, you’re a tiger,” Chris exclaimed. “They did not teach us all this in our accounting class!”

“My dad’s a tax accountant and I don’t need to report the extra chores I’ve picked up to get information from him as income or expenses,” she laughed. “We’ve got the problem of the backdrops and props you got from Chicago without paying for them. We can report them as salvage, but we’ll still need to fix a value and you need to make sure they are covered under your insurance policy. Now, let me finish writing down your sales information so far. That, at least, you kept a good record of.”

She shooed Chris and me away from the desk and we got started pulling together the plan for tomorrow’s shoot. I came up with an idea for a cool shot on the sawhorse table, backed up by the windows. I got Chris to lie on the table, propped up on one arm, while I sighted what I wanted. We had to move the table a little closer to the windows and set a light off to the left to give a more defined shape to her silhouette. Then I had to balance lights around the front. As I looked at it, I decided to grab a mirror and put it at an angle so from one shooting position I could see her back in the mirror.

I found Anna standing next to me, observing what I was doing.

“I want to see, too,” Chris said. “Anna, hop up here on the table and take the pose I was in. That’s it. Prop up on one arm. Raise your right heel a little so your leg is lifted. You do this so well. You should become a model for Nate.”

Anna almost jumped off the table, but stayed there just long enough for Chris to get around front and look at what I was seeing.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think Anna’s really beautiful,” Chris said, blinking her eyes.

That did it for Anna and she jumped off the table and showed me the slip of paper she wanted clarification on.

“If the client is paying for the sitting, I own the negative, but I can only sell prints to the client. That’s what made the senior portraits so profitable. The client paid for the sitting and got two free pictures from it. Any others they wanted, they paid the full rate of $3.00 for a 5x7 and $5.00 for an 8x10. Most of the senior retakes paid more for additional prints than they did for the sitting in the first place. If the client signs a model release, I own both the negative and the right to sell or distribute the prints in any way I want to. They still get two prints from any sitting, but any others they want, they can purchase for half the full rate.”