The Camera by J. C. Laird (book recommendations for young adults .txt) 📕

and even managed a short walk down to the road so he could get a better view of the mountains. The autumn air was cool and crisp, the scent of pines sharp and fresh and the silence complete, except for the occasional falling pine cones, dislodged by the fluffy tailed, furry grey and white squirrels that frequented the forest. By the time he returned to the cabin he was exhausted and slept well into the afternoon.

He managed to keep down some vegetable soup that evening before he sat back down in the chair to again travel his and Megan’s memory lane. “Well, Princess, where shall we revisit tonight? Maybe the Grand Canyon? How about the white water rafting trip on the Animas River in Colorado?”

While he was reminiscing he had absently turned on the little silver camera, scanning through the four pictures. “Well, Megan, I vote for the…” He stopped in mid-sentence, staring at the fourth picture on the camera. Something was different.

He scanned back, figuring he had missed it the night before—there must have been a fifth one. But no, there were only four. He stared at it again. He remembered that she had been in the crowd, smiling and waving at the camera. He was sure of it. But in the picture he was now looking at she was detached from the crowd, no longer smiling, running towards him, towards the camera.

Maybe he was taking too much morphine. Maybe the cancer had leeched into his brain. He shuddered, shut off the camera, closed his eyes and laid his head back. “I don’t think it will be long now. Please be there.”

Then he let his mind drift…they were hiking down into the Grand Canyon; they’d be spending the night on the floor of the Canyon in each other’s arms, looking at the stars, listening to the sounds of the Colorado River, musing on the ageless carving of the Canyon’s walls…

#

It was almost afternoon before he managed to get out of bed. He sat on the porch for a while, but was too weak to make the trek down to the road. He tried a sandwich for lunch, but threw it back up. He limped into the living room, looked at the photo albums, the cardboard box and the camera sitting on the table.

Finally, licking his lips in trepidation, he picked it up and turned it on. He scanned through to the fourth picture. He gasped, a choking sound escaping his throat, and dropped the camera. He staggered back and fell to the floor and sat there, his breath rasping in his chest, his heart racing dangerously.

Justin crawled back, picked it up with trembling hands and looked again at the image. In the picture Megan was no longer outside the theater—she wasn’t even on the University campus anymore—but he recognized where she was.

The pine strewn land to the front of the cabin sloped down for about a hundred yards to the dirt road, Horseshoe Loop. Across the road was an open, grassy field that stretched approximately a half mile before the trees started again, sloping upward into the forested foothills of the mountains.

In the picture Megan was on the far side of the field running towards the cabin. She was still wearing her red dress, although she had lost her white shawl somewhere.

He groaned and pulled himself up on the arm of the couch. He looked out the picture window towards the open field; he had a clear view from this vantage point. It was near sundown, but he could see that there was no one in the field.

He looked back at the camera image of the running Megan. He knew he was hallucinating. “Megan, I’m sorry. I wanted to spend my last days and hours with you just remembering everything. Now I can’t even seem to do that.”

He took several more of the morphine pills, and sobbing quietly, fell asleep on the couch.

#

Justin awoke late in the afternoon of the next day. He was too weak to get off the sofa, or to try to eat. He stared at the little silver camera on the table until it was almost dark. Then he picked it up and turned it on.

He focused his eyes and stared at the small screen without emotion. Megan had made it to the road near the dirt driveway. Her hair, which she had worn pulled back and tied with a pearl clasp that last night, had come undone and was flying loose around her head. Her red dress was flowing out behind her. It appeared she was crying.

He didn’t bother trying to look out the window; he knew she wasn’t there, she had been dead for ten years, had died in his arms. He knew his mind, his sanity—what was left of it—was slipping away. Justin knew he wasn’t going to make it through the night. The pain had become very bad, in both body and mind.

He took several more of the morphine pills, rolled off the couch onto his hands and knees, crawled to the bedroom and made it onto the bed. One last time. “Please be there, Princess…please be there…”

Justin dreamed his last dreams. A kaleidoscope of memories slowly unreeled through his mind. Somewhere he imagined he heard a door shut. He tried to rouse himself to consciousness, but couldn’t. He slowly began to fade.

He could smell Megan’s perfume, the warmth of her body against his, the faint sensation of her breath on his neck—like the caress of a subtle breeze on the leaves of a tree. And her voice in his ear, the fading, faintest of sighs. “I’m here. I’ve always been here. I’ve always been waiting for you. It’s time to come home now.”

#

“Hey, Jodi, wait up.” Where his girlfriend got all her energy, Mark had no idea. They must have trudged over a mile up Horseshow Loop, a dirt road that lead higher into the mountains. Now she was running across an open field whooping and yelling like some young kid. Mark had to admit the reds and yellows of the turning autumn leaves were beautiful in the brilliant afternoon sunshine and crisp mountain air. Still, he would rather have been back at their cabin with Paul and Maryanne having a beer on the front porch, firing up the barbeque, readying themselves for an evening of party time.

They had rented the cabin for the weekend; a final charging of their collegiate batteries before the fall semester at the University got into full swing. He and Paul were juniors, both Jodi and Maryanne sophomores. It had been hard enough for them to coordinate their schedules, and now Jodi was running around the countryside like some eighteenth century explorer. He would have much preferred being back at the cabin “spooning”, a quaint term he remembered his grandmother using, a forerunner of the “necking” terminology of his parents.

Mark picked up his pace to a slow trot in the brown, mid-shin high grass. Thirty feet ahead of him Jodi had stopped and was looking down at something on the ground. He finally huffed up next to her. “What’d you find this time, babe?”

“It’s beautiful,” she replied, more to herself than Mark, “it almost glows.”

The dazzling, white lace shawl was lying in the grass of the field like a delicate spray of snow. A gentle breeze wafted across the field, ruffling the fabric and sending wavelike ripples through it.

Jodi knelt and picked it up cautiously as if she thought it might disintegrate in her hands. When it didn’t, she shook it slightly to dislodge several stray pieces of grass stuck to it. “I wonder what something this nice is doing out in the middle of nowhere?” she said.

“Especially since I’ve only seen a few cabins this far up Horseshoe Loop.” Mark added.

Jodi swung the shawl out and around like a wave, draping it lightly over her shoulders and back. “How do I look?”

She was wearing an old red sweatshirt with the slogan ‘Women Who Behave Rarely Make History’ emblazoned across the front. Even so, Mark thought the elegant wrap somehow made her look even more beautiful. He just shook his head. “Jodi, you could wear a sack and you’d still look gorgeous to me.”

Jodi took his hand, stood on her toes and gave him a kiss. “That’s my Sir Galahad.” Hand in hand, they started back across the meadow. “No more exploring, this has made my day. There’s no telling where it came from or who it belongs to, so I’ll just call it a ‘gift from heaven.’”

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Imprint

Text: John C. Laird
Images: istockphoto.com
Editing: Alexandra Laird
Publication Date: 04-14-2012

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