Chapter 6

I wasn't sure if I was disappointed when she stumbled downstairs in that robe the next morning and ordered gah hamaha for breakfast, but when she collapsed on the couch I briefly verified that the robe was all she was wearing. Since I was also out of gah hamaha, she had to settle for bacon and eggs, hash browns, and cinnamon toast with her orange juice.

I sent her to her room afterward with instructions to change into something suitable for crawling around on the ground. "Including a bra," I added. "Preferably something industrial strength like your mom wants you to wear. You want protection, not comfort or sex appeal."

She paused on the first step and flashed a teasing grin. "If I hurt myself, you'll massage them, too, won't you?"

"Depends," I said with a shrug. "If you're cut or stabbed by thorns, you'll want alcohol and band aids and probably a topical anesthetic, not a massage."

She blinked. Twice. "Oh!" She scurried up the stairs, still moving somewhat stiffly but better than the night before.

We made the check of the horses. She stroked Blaze and cooed to her while I discussed business with Diego and Jake for a few minutes. Then we saddled Misty and Durango. Ricky handed her his lucky coffee mug, something he'd never before entrusted to anyone else that I'm aware of, and checked her results while I took a leak. When I returned I said, "Go pee. You have no idea how long we'll be, and you can't get up and leave right in the middle of waiting."

While she was gone I fetched a couple of ground suits I'd created for my own crawling around. They were a lightweight leather combination of sleeved aprons and chaps sewn in one piece. I had six, two for me and four for others who might be working with me. The smallest of those was too small for her; the next smallest, a little too large. They were adjustable enough that she could wear the too large. I handed it to her when she returned.

"We'll dress in these here," I said. "We don't want to alarm the rabbits more than necessary by dressing on site. They're still young enough that we can get closer to them than to an adult before they run, but the movements involved in dressing near the location might scare them and make them jumpy. Your hair will probably protect your neck from sunburn, so you can get by with just a cap if you want, or you can use one of these wide-brimmed camouflage hats like I'm going to wear. Okay, let's review the hand signs one more time."

We left the horses a short distance away and crawled toward the brush where Mama Rabbit had made her nest. Surprisingly, I had no complaints from the other half of the expedition. Instead, she'd occasionally throw me an excited, eager grin. That vanished when I stopped her and pointed to a low bush. When she saw it was filled with burrs the look turned anxious.

I put my mouth next to her ear and whispered, "It's the only one between us and the nest. It's a landmark, too, because it means we low-crawl the last thirty feet from here. Move around it, then down on your stomach and crawl flat and slow like I taught you. Okay?"

She nodded. Once we were past the burrs the grin returned.

The nest was under half a fallen log that was mostly obscured by some brush. One young rabbit sat three feet from it, chomping a mouthful of grass. Mama was nowhere to be seen. Junior stopped moving except to twitch its ears toward us. I whispered a soft shushing sound, and Cheryl froze. After a minute, when an adult would have dashed away, the youngling resumed chewing, moving nothing but its eyes and jaws. Finally it dipped its head for another bite and resumed watching us. Several minutes later it turned its side to us and stepped forward for another mouthful.

Cheryl's hand moved to form a sign I'd taught her: Shoot? The rabbit's head turned and it froze again. I barely heard a soft, "Damn." Two minutes later it was again cropping grass.

No, I signed, then slowly moved forward a foot. Cheryl copied my movement with remarkable precision. I knew the chance of getting Cheryl as close as I could approach alone was very slim, but it was worth the risk if I could get her within that three-foot radius.

It was the day for slim. She restrained her eagerness and slowly moved her head to check the viewfinder. As she tripped the shutter the young rabbit spun and dashed away. She looked at me and whispered, "The noise wasn't that loud. Did I do something wrong?"

I moved a thumb to point behind us. She looked back at Misty approaching several feet behind us. "I did. I didn't hobble the horses like I knew I should. Let's see it."

"Aw," she moaned after she recalled the image to the screen. "It's out of focus."

"No," I said after examining the image on the little screen. "I think it's just motion blur, but only a tiny amount. I would keep this picture."

She gave me that look. "Uncle Randy," she said in that downsliding voice. Translation: Stop patronizing me.

"No, I'm serious. I said I would save it. Remember, I'm a professional. I take pictures to sell, but I can't sell every one. Some I can never sell, others I might be able to sell some day. I'd put this one in the 'some day' pile. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few years, maybe never, but maybe some day I'll need a close-up picture of a motion-blurred young rabbit to illustrate an article on ... whatever. Motion-sickness in rabbits."

That look didn't go away. "Motion sickness in rabbits," she said in a voice as flat as a tortilla. Translation: You think I'm five years old, don't you?

"Look, I don't know what I'd need it for. As I said, maybe I never will. I have drawers full of film shots that I may never sell, but among them are maybe a dozen that some day I will. All have been transferred to digital for indexing and searching. And then I have a hard drive or three filled with electronic pictures that also may never sell. But if I find myself needing a focused picture of a motion-blurred rabbit, it would be a lot easier to dig this out of a file than to try to shoot another one."

That look softened. "Maybe."

"Cheryl, I didn't say I'd keep it for the mantel or offer it for sale tomorrow. Actually, I might keep it on the mantel as an example of modern art." I should have quit when the look softened because it was returning to its original hardness. "But my point is that you're thinking like a weekend vacation photographer. I'm thinking like a pro who gets calls like, "Do you have any pictures of a lime green flamingo standing on one leg with the sun centered behind it just above the horizon?"

"Sure." Her eyes said she couldn't believe I'd be stupid enough to think she'd buy that excuse. "And how often do you get a call like that?"

"Just the one two weeks ago from a rum distiller."

"Really?"

"Really."

"And what did you say?"

"PhotoShop."

She frowned for a couple of seconds before it occurred to her. "Fake it?"

"I've never even heard of a green flamingo, other than the cocktail recipe they'd invented and wanted to use in an advertisement, illustrated by that picture."

"Oh. Well, couldn't you fake the rabbit picture?"

"Yes, but it would look like a fake to a professional. There's a big difference in what's good enough out there," I pointed to the world at large, "and what's good enough in here." I pointed at my chest.

She frowned in concentration and chewed that pouty lower lip. "I hadn't thought about that."

"But you're thinking about it now, and not just agreeing and moving on to some other topic. That's why you're special. Remind me to ask Marek and Mandy if I can adopt you. Meanwhile, come on. We could have shot the rabbit with a telephoto lens from a distance. The real reason we're doing macro is to shoot the nest."

"The nest?"

I grinned. "Nature photographers shoot more than just fuzzy animals and scaly snakes. Suppose Doctors Hoppalott and Whatzupdok are writing an article for The Journal of the American Rabbit Association that talks about how wild rabbits live. Could you write about how humans live without talking about houses? Well, they'd have to mention rabbit nests at some point. Isn't it easier to show a picture of a house than to draw it in words? Same holds true for rabbit nests.

"Now assume you have a beautiful talented niece who you want to teach nature photography because she's shown an interest in it. Wouldn't it be easier to get her to crawl across open ground and around burrs by telling her that it was to shoot pictures of baby rabbits than by telling her it was to shoot pictures of their nest?"

She looked like I'd slapped her. "Do you really think that little of me?"

"Are you looking through the right end of the camera? Maybe I think that much of you."

She blinked. Twice. "Oh."

"Come on. This is good practice, because a few weeks ago we'd have done this to get pictures of the babies and Mama in the nest. And you never know what you might meet while you're down here doing this. I'll have to show you some serendipitous pictures that I never planned on getting because I was crawling toward another objective. Remind me to show you the thousand dollar butterfly while I'm doing that. Let's go."

I had to explain that it was a picture of a butterfly thought extinct in North America. Some lepidopterist saw it while looking through my butterfly collection, asked about it, and immediately offered a grand for the photo and my location notes and maps. Who knew guys with literal butterfly nets had that much money to spend?

After the nest we spent most of our time on the ground crawling around the stream banks, where we shot plants, bugs, other invertebrates, and a bewildered-looking lizard that Cheryl named "Larry." She refused to explain the reason for that name.

Some pictures weren't so hot, most were what I call vacation-quality, and one or two were excellent. In other words, it was much like my usual day crawling around on my belly. For a beginner like Cheryl I felt like putting up a sign, "Genius at work," even though the law of averages would have predicted that outcome for the day. After all, there's talent involved in being a good photographer, but there's a hell of a lot more luck.

The session was eventually halted by emergency signals from Bladder Operations Central. She insisted on riding back to the facilities, even though I promised not to look and even though every bounce in the saddle was a cause for alarm for each of us. I told myself, "If she can do it, I can do it." But if the facilities had been another ten feet farther away, I might not have made it.

She agreed to delay lunch until we reached town. That delay may have contributed to completion of her personal hygiene process in record short time, even though it included her shower. Or, perhaps she merely turned on the water and spun around twice in the steam escaping through the open shower door.

I took her to Bobbi Jo's Buckskin Diner and showed her the difference between a restaurant chain's mass-produced-by-the-billions output, complete with stringy frozen fries, and a genuine hand-made cheeseburger with the spices mixed into the meat and topped with aged cheddar, accompanied by thick, hand-sliced, unpeeled fries. I thought she was going to lick the plate when she finished. Bobbi Jo said that lots of tourists had the same reaction as Cheryl. I'd never noticed. Maybe on all my other visits I'd been too busy concentrating on the food because none of the tourists had been as beautiful as my dining guest.