Chapter 22: Hold That Tiger!

THE COUNTRY WOKE UP Thursday morning to the news that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Fuck!

I called Nancy, of course.

“No, they ain’t gonna go crazy over Bobby. Folks figure one white dude is the same as another when it comes to being president. Gene’s the only one talking sense about stopping sending black kids to Vietnam,” Nancy said when she came to the phone. “You should see how many Dick Gregory dollar bills are floating around down here. You know some of them will work in a vending machine? The dude printed money for black people.”

“I’m sure the government is all over it. He’ll have a hard time running for president if he’s in jail. Daley already has it out for him after last year’s election.”

“Daley hates everybody but his little police army. What you doin’ in town, anyway?” she asked.

“I came up for my girlfriend’s prom and graduation,” I said. “I’m doing work in my studio this week. I’ve got two models scheduled today and another tomorrow.”

“You really taking pictures at that camera place you always liked to go?”

“Yeah. I’ll be moving back here to go to college at the end of August, so this will be my base of operation.”

“What about me? Can I get my picture taken again?” she asked coyly.

“Not this week, but I’ll be back in two weeks. How about Tuesday the eighteenth?”

“Seriously? You’ll take my pictures? You’re a honey!”

“I always loved taking your pictures, Nancy. I’ve got to get going now. First client is at nine this morning.”

“I’ll see you in two weeks.”

I got through the rest of my clients for the week and got proof sheets delivered. Then it was time to get ready for dinner with Elizabeth’s family. The first meeting had gone okay, so I wasn’t too nervous over it. Just a little. I packed the bus and when I got to Beth’s house, she ran out to meet me and we parked behind the house. She had me bring my bags and cameras up to her room and hung the tux bag in her closet. Then she turned to me for some serious kissing before we went downstairs to meet the family.

“It’s time, you guys,” Valerie said from Beth’s doorway. “Geez, Elizabeth! Pull your clothes together. Can’t you wait until after dinner?”

“As if you were waiting,” Beth laughed. A tall guy behind Valerie was standing with his hands around her stomach. I pulled mine out from under Beth’s shirt and she pulled herself together.

“I could have just gone on down and left you to make a spectacular entrance by yourself,” Valerie snarked.

“But then you’d have had to enter by yourself as well. I thought you were going to get us all downstairs before Mom and Dad left their room.”

“I didn’t realize it had gotten so late until I heard them leave their room. I ... um ... got here as soon as I could,” Valerie said. She leaned against her boyfriend. “Oh, Wyatt, this is my sister Elizabeth and her boyfriend Nate. You guys, this is Wyatt Drake.”

“Brave, courageous, and strong?” Elizabeth quipped. They rolled their eyes. I’m sure he’d heard that a thousand times.

We followed Valerie and Wyatt to the main stairs and went down to the sitting room where Mr. and Mrs. Marsh were waiting for us. They had cocktails and were smoking. I was kind of glad Valerie and Wyatt were breaking the ice in front of us. She had to introduce Wyatt, so apparently this was a fairly new boyfriend. Not too new for Valerie to have him in her room, though. Mr. Marsh offered him a drink, which he accepted, handing one to Valerie as well. We chatted for a few minutes, but it seemed mostly a ‘get to know Wyatt’ session for which I was thankful. He’d met Valerie on an international flight from London to New York and had joined her on the trip to Chicago.

I was a little surprised that Valerie would meet a guy on a flight and just bring him home with her. Wyatt was a few years older and told Mr. Marsh he was doing development work for a family business. That seemed to put him in good stead.

We were called to the table and feasted on Cornish game hens stuffed with wild rice. It was a bit of a challenge to eat the bird without using my fingers. I followed the cues from my hosts and managed to mutilate the bird pretty thoroughly. I wondered if it was a test. After dinner, we were all served a glass of champagne and Mr. Marsh raised a toast to Elizabeth for her graduation and for having added only a few gray hairs to his head after her sister had done such a thorough job of it before her.

After dinner, Wyatt and Valerie were going out dancing. They asked if we wanted to go, but Elizabeth waved them on. I was pretty sure they’d be going to a club that we would be turned away from as too young. Besides, I had a feeling the elder Marshes wanted some time with Elizabeth and me.

“As you can see, I’m not only collecting your photographs. I worry that truly fine film photography is a dying art. The newspapers kept it alive for a long time, but George Eastman wanted to put photography within reach of every human being who desired to preserve a record of what he sees. He said, ‘You push the button, we do the rest.’ I don’t think he realized that he was planning the end of an artform. You keep your Hasselblad in the studio most of the time. You lug around a Nikon that weighs almost as much as you do with that motor drive. Valerie has recorded all the places she has flown on a little Instamatic. What next? Photos from our cigarette lighters?”

I looked around the room and could see photos from some really famous photographers: Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Dorothy Lange, and the infamous picture of Sophia Loren by Alfred Eisenstaedt that appeared on the cover of Life magazine two years before. And in this collection on his study walls were some of my best work. A signed copy of Avery under the streetlamp. A copy of Lori’s dramatic photo that started me on the road to the Attic Allure style. The picture of a street walker he claimed I turned into a work of art. And a picture of his daughter as a clown. My uncle had brokered the sales and I seldom knew who the purchaser was. But to see my photos among such august company was humbling at best.

“Wow! Some of my idols,” I breathed as I walked close to examine each print.

“You’re the youngest. You’re my hope that the artform will continue at least through the second half of this century. And my prayer that you aren’t the last.”

“Thank you for your faith and your patronage.”

“Patronage? I think you have me confused with others. I’m a collector. I admit that I have promoted your work to some others who might have become patrons, but not me. And Nadia is a collector as well. Some of the more erotic works are on the walls of our bedroom where she is the curator. But she wants me to deal with the artists.”

“You still have my gratitude for seeing value in my photos.”

“I expect that in ten years, the value of those signed prints will have doubled three times over,” he said. “Of course, you’ll never see that money. Funny thing about art. You sell a fine photograph for $50. In ten years, a collector buys that photo from your original customer for $500. But all you’ll ever see of that is the $50 you sold it for originally. Consider raising your prices.”

That was sobering. Presumably, if I ever got that famous, new photos that I took would also be worth the $500 price tag. It was beyond my range of imagination to think of my pictures being worth so much.

Photos were not the only thing in his study. I paused at an old shotgun hung on a rack. There were no hunting trophies around, though. Mr. Marsh stepped up beside me.

“Legend has it that my grandfather, back in the early thirties, held off a gang of rival thugs, intent on the destroying the family. The way he told the story, he single-handedly defended the house and saved his family, assisted only by fifteen or so bodyguards. It was the end of the family’s involvement in bootleg liquor, though. He turned state’s evidence and cooperated with the famous Eliot Ness to bring down Al Capone. Some of his other operations, however, may have been overlooked by Ness in return for his cooperation. At the end of prohibition, the family distillery which had been idle since the arrival of Ness in Chicago, suddenly found its products in demand and a back stock of fine liquor was gradually released into the market,” he laughed.

I chuckled at the story. So, the family fortune apparently came from bootleg liquor, converted to a legitimate business at the end of prohibition.

“Your uncle is a fine and dependable employee,” Mr. Marsh continued. “A contractor who is always there when special services are needed to protect a client or transport a sensitive shipment. And he’s a little scary. He warned me not to attempt to recruit you into any family business. Which was fine by me. I like you as a photographer. But you should know that if you ever harm my daughter, you will find yourself looking down the wrong end of that shotgun.”

I took a deep breath. I’d been half expecting some fatherly threat for the protection of his daughter.

“I wondered about that,” I said.

“You wondered what would happen if you hurt Elizabeth?”

“No. I never plan to hurt her, though I’m sorry if you expect us to be married and giving you grandchildren. Elizabeth and I know that isn’t going to happen. I’m in a situation in which choosing any one woman would seriously hurt others. I love them too much to do that. No. What I was wondering was whether Elizabeth’s and Valerie’s boyfriends really left because they’d become obsessed with their wealth, or if you’d merely scared them away,” I said.

Marsh looked at me, feigning innocence.

“I don’t interfere in my daughters’ relationships,” he chuckled. “Not beyond letting them know where I stand. Oh, I might have referred to one as ‘more worthless than tits on a boar hog.’ And I confess to having investigated one or two when they seemed to become interested too quickly. But I don’t actively chase the boys away. Mostly. I’m not trying to chase you away.”

“You should know then, that I will leave whenever Elizabeth wants me to. Not until.”

“Well said. She takes after her mother. I did not stand a chance when that woman looked straight at me and just said, ‘You.’ I was a goner. When Lisbet told me she wanted a photo session with you for her eighteenth birthday present, I had a feeling it was already too late to do anything about it. But when I saw you work with that girl Sylvester brought in off the street and watched what you do, I absolutely knew what would happen when Lisbet came for her sitting. Her mother and I sat down and talked to her about it the night before. I’m afraid we contributed to her conviction that she wanted you, rather than dissuading her.”

“She took me by surprise,” I said. “That being said, I was a willing victim of her charms.”

“Well, Nate, let’s go join our women for dessert and coffee. I’m not much older than your own parents, but I don’t last as late into the evening these days as I once did.”

We sat in the school stadium with about 5,000 others as Elizabeth and members of her class of 1968 were called forward for their diplomas. There wasn’t much of a speech given. It took two hours just to call the grads forward. I took a few photos as I was seated with Beth’s parents and sister. Wyatt had disappeared after breakfast in the morning.

After the ceremony, we met in front of the school and I took photos of Elizabeth with her family. She proudly wore her cap and gown, and then Deke drove all of us back to the house.

“Are you sure you have everything you need?” Mrs. Marsh asked as we were preparing to leave.

“Got it, Moms!” Elizabeth answered. “And don’t worry. We’ll be back for breakfast because Nate needs to get back to Tenbrook first thing tomorrow. I’ve had him for all the time I get him for now. I have to share.”

Beth and I got in the van and headed out. There was a state park beach about forty miles north of Beth’s house and we could camp practically on the beach. Maybe not legally, but we tried to stay out of sight. I parked the bus and we set up the tent. Then we got naked and ran down to the edge of the water, stuck our toes in, and ran back to the tent. Lake Michigan just isn’t warm enough for occasional swimmers to decide they’ll take a little dip. Not at this time of year.

We got the sand wiped off our feet and settled in to make love.

“Am I going to see you on the next trip to Chicago?” she asked as we cuddled together. Even in mid-June, the wind coming off Lake Michigan wasn’t that warm.

“I’ll be back in just over a week. I have photos scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I want to drive back on Friday. It’s kind of a ritual for me to be with Chris on that Friday night. I guess there is nothing stopping me from being with you on any of those nights. I’m coming into town on Monday.”

“Okay, I’ll check it out with Mama. Maybe she wouldn’t mind too much if you just moved in with me that week. You won’t be back again forever.”

“It will only be three weeks, lover. But if you think telling your mother I won’t be back will help, then go right ahead. Coming the second week of July is a little tenuous. If Patricia goes into labor, I won’t be coming out.”

“Oh, I wish I could be there for her baby’s birth, too,” Elizabeth asked. “Would I be welcome with the other girls?”

“I don’t see why not. But you know the routine there. Since I don’t control where you stay or anything like that, you need to coordinate it...”

“ ... with Anna. You really need to keep that girl near you. She’s more vital to your success than all of the rest of us combined. It never even occurred to me to study accounting and business management.”

“Chris is headed to business school, too,” I defended.

“Her heart is set on ‘doing good for humanity,’ I think is the way she put it. I think she intends to go into charitable work of some sort. I have to say, she’s good at studio work. And I know how much you love her. But she’s not going to be a big help in your career unless she just can’t find anything else. And I’ll bet Chris finds what she’s looking for. She just has that kind of drive.”

“You like her, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s hard not to like one of your lovers. You’ve chosen some pretty spectacular girls. Now, make love to me here in our lakeside retreat and remind me why I want Mom and Dad to approve you staying with us when you come back in two weeks.”

Making love to Beth with the waves lapping at the beach and the wind in the trees was a delight. But I think making love with Beth anytime in any place would be a delight.

I got back to Tenbrook in time to take Patricia’s week 32 photo and then have ice cream with the family Sunday evening. Mom got home from Annual Conference in the middle of the afternoon and told us she had a new assignment. I was afraid she was telling us we were moving, which would have been a catastrophe for everyone. Instead, she said that she was being put on a ‘circuit,’ which meant she would be preaching at both the Methodist Church in Tenbrook and the EUB church in Huffington. That would be interesting as she’d have one service at ten and one at eleven-fifteen. She’d have to hop in the car and drive the five miles between services during the last hymn. She said it was all part of having officially become one denomination at the uniting conference in April.

That was a significant event, I guess, but what impressed me more was that the Central Conference of the African American Methodist Church was dissolved and the church was officially integrated as a single denomination. It took long enough, but at least they moved forward.

I scrambled like heck to get everything done the next week that I needed to. I had orders for prints I needed to take care of from all the work I’d done the past week. Then I had models from Chicago who preferred to come to Tenbrook for their photo shoot on Wednesday and Thursday. Of course, what I was most interested in was my session with Miss Sullivan, scheduled for Saturday.

She arrived at 7:30, dressed as I expected in a baggy hoodie and sweats. She carried a bag like most of the models who arrived, and kicked off her shoes inside the door. I didn’t think it made much difference in this weather. It was dry and already sixty degrees. I was still blown away, though when she pulled back her hoodie and shook out her long hair. She didn’t waste time in taking the hoodie off and revealing a tight tank top encasing breasts that were pressing nipples against the fabric.

“Do you have something in mind for this morning’s pictures?” I asked, while appreciating the shape of my teacher. ‘Former teacher,’ I reminded myself. I no longer had to sit in her bookkeeping class trying to not imagine her naked. I didn’t think any of my classmates had that problem as she always dressed professionally and looked a little dowdy. Not so the vision in front of me. It was obvious that she’d taken a great deal of care in applying makeup this morning, and the shape that was revealed beneath that tank top was nothing short of enticing.

“Well, yes and no. I do have a kind of theme in mind.”

“Please tell me. We’ll get together any props you might need and get started.”

“It sounds a little hippie-like, but I’m actually into yoga.”

“Really? I thought that was kind of the Beatles’ thing in India with that guru fellow ... um ... Maharishi something,” I said.

“He has certainly been influential in the teachings of transcendental meditation. I was a student at the University of San Diego, studying business accounting and practices when I came across a local teacher named Beulah Smith. I told you I was a bit of a wild child in college. Actually, a lot wild. But Beulah taught TM and yoga from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who actually came to California while I was in college. Regardless, I’m not here to give a history lesson or to teach you transcendental meditation, but I thought that the poses would be interesting studies in the human form and that one day, I might even be interested in publishing a book of poses.”

“That sounds very interesting,” I said. “I know nothing about it, so you’ll need to tell me what the poses are.”

“Yes. Nate, I will tell you about the poses and demonstrate them, but you are the artist behind the camera. The pose is simply my little part. For everything else, I place myself in your hands.” She looked at me and then took my hands and pulled them to her breasts. “Literally, Nate. Make me look like a vision in your mind. I’m in your hands.”

“I’m pleased to find you there,” I said, squeezing her boobs. I felt her nipples coming erect beneath my fingers. “Why don’t we start with a few poses dressed as you are, unless you have something more comfortable. When I’m more familiar with what we want, we’ll start focusing on the ... um ... human form.”

She smiled and I gave her nipples a little tweak before I moved to the camera.

“Let’s just start with the white background for now and you can show me the poses. If you need any props, we’ll get them as we go.”

Yvonne moved to the center of the drop and stretched, raising her hands above her head, and standing on tiptoes. I wasn’t sure if that was a pose, but I took a picture of it, anyway. Her tight top was stretched across her very obviously erect nipples and rode up away from her sweats to expose a flat stomach and the indent of her navel.