The Man with the Camera

 

Her younger brother had just recently learned to walk. 

As she held his hand down the villages’ main street, people stopped to comment on the apparent miracle. They said, Oh, I never thought the boy would start walking. One elderly man leaned down and ruffled the boy's blonde hair and said well done and stood up eye-to-eye with his sister and said, God, Cara, I was starting to think that boy had something wrong with them there legs of his.

Cara smiled and ushered the toddler along. Every now and then a blackbird would shoot across the sky overhead and little Ronan would tilt his head to follow the fleeting shadow figure as it traced straight across the powder blue sky and he’d point after it, smiling and saying, Look, Mummy, there’s a bird. Oftentimes the blackbird's ephemeral rush was too quick for the boy to keep up and he toppled backwards onto the pavement and his sister ushered him back to his feet. 

Yes, Ronan, she said. I saw the bird so I did. 

She was not his Mummy. But when they were outside of the house, she didn’t bother correcting the child. 

 

They came into the village for no particular reason at all. It had become a kind of daily ritual. She’d awaken each morning in the house in the countryside and make Ronan and herself some breakfast. Once they finished eating she’d grab her (and his) washing from the clothesline. Before leaving, she’d look into her mother’s bedroom to check on her, although the lady had recently taken to waking not until noon.

Today he wore denim dungarees, which was his favourite particular outfit. They’d walk out to the bus stop at the edge of their lane and wait. Hail, rain or shine, they stood under the cramped wooden shelter and waited on the 102 which passed through from Derry and jumped on. Oftentimes, they would be the only two people on the bus and Ronan would perch up with his hands and face pressed against the glass and point out anything that passed by. Trees, houses, cows. Yes, Ronan, I can see them. And it was easier now that she didn’t need to haul along his pram. Even the mere suggestion of bringing the pram would elicit a distasteful look from the boy. Sure I’m a big boy now, he’d say. I can walk so I can. 

 

The village main street was close and compact and the cobbled buildings on either side of the pavement were mostly disused. Floyd’s was always open. It was a rundown, dishevelled bar between the butchers and the flower shop. Outside of the mahogany main door, a group of elderly men and one elderly woman had gathered around in a circle, smoking cigarettes and cackling below a cloud of smoke like some cancerous committee. As Cara and the boy passed, the woman turned around, a half-empty glass of whiskey in her hand and a fag clasped between her cracked lips and nodded to them. 

Good afternoon, Miss O’Neill, said Cara.

Good afternoon to you too, my love. And hello Ronan you little dote. Look at you there, walking and talking now. Feels like just the other day you came along. Is your big sister looking after you?

The boy nodded.

Is she going to get you an ice cream on a fine day like this?

The boy looked up at his sister and studied her face. Ice cream, Mummy?

Miss O’Neill took the cigarette from her lips and looked at Cara. 

Cara dropped her gaze to her feet. He’s taken to calling me that, she said. Damned if I know why.

Miss O’Neill smiled, the lines and pockmarks on her chin stretching across her face revealing spaces where there had once been teeth. Your mother wouldn’t like that, she said. 

I know. 

Best to correct him when he says it, then. 

I know.

Ronan was still looking at Cara. Can we get ice cream?

Yes, Ronan. Let’s get some ice cream before we go home.

 

The store at the bottom of the street didn’t have ice cream stocked, and Ronan protested. But Cara submitted and allowed the boy free reign of the shop to pick whatever he wanted. Just one thing, she told him.

The boy returned to the desk with a plastic bubble wand and two bars of chocolate and Cara paid for them with the remaining copper shrapnel in her pocket.

 

The bus shelter stood outside of the store and under the heat of the sun the pair of them were glad of the shade it cast. 

Are we going home now, Mummy?

Ronan, she said, I am not your Mummy. 

The boy looked up at her with his hands all chocolate which had melted in the heat and said, Are we going home?

Yes, we’re going home, she said. We’re going home before Daddy and Cillian get back from work. 

The butcher’s was across the street and in the window she could see the severed carcasses of some animals hanging from the roof. Red and crimson blotches of blood on them, dried almost but not quite. She felt the tips of her fingers go numb and her head swayed as she looked out of the shelter and across at the cuts of meat and glanced away and down the street. The numb, tingling in her feelings spread along to her wrists and she could feel the cold sweat on her palms gathering on her skin. Her foot tapped wildly on the pavement below and she wouldn’t have noticed until the boy stopped munching on the chocolate and pointed at her foot, laughing, and asked, What are you doing with your feet? He slid off the bench he was sitting on so his own feet could touch the ground and began copying her, giggling. She smiled at him, his marred chocolate face and blue eyes and almost-white bob of hair merely a picture of innocence. Of unknowingness yet of curiosity. Of wanting to know everything. 

I’m so proud of you, Ronan. You’re a big boy now, you know? You can walk so you’re a big boy.

They boy smiled and licked the chocolate bar. I know I am, he said.

 

The bus rattled to a stop beside them and they stepped on. She smiled at the bus driver as she passed and sat on the back row of seats. Ronan climbed up beside her. The bus was almost empty, save for a handful of stragglers making their way to the city from the south.

The bus hissed and pulled out onto the road before jerking to a stop. The doors flapped open again. Cara, looking out the window, saw a man waving the driver down from outside of a store called M.L Printers. The trim of the storefront was a peeling yellow and the paint on one side of the door had begun to blister and crack. The man ran across the street with a folder under his arm and stepped onto the bus, thanking the driver. 

So tall was the man that he had to bend his head over to avoid colliding with the roof. He moved along the aisle, panting. He was old, but not yet elderly. The lines of his face were deep and apparent and his thick moustache began to grey.

He stooped low as he passed the other passengers and nodded at them. What a lovely day, he said. Hi, isn’t it just wicked hot?

He kept approaching the back row of seats, passing the empty spaces as he came. 

Cara watched on as the man approached.

The bus pulled out before he found a seat, although choices were plentiful. 

Look, Ronan said, pulling Cara’s gaze away from the man. Look, what’s that? The boy pointed across to the butcher’s again and Cara scanned the meat hanging from the window and how the blood gathered around the bases of the quartered slabs and dripped into rusted buckets beneath them. She craned her head away again, her pulse swelling in her throat and now a coolness across her forehead from the sweat on her hairline. As she turned to face forward, the man was in front of her.

Hi, he said, wicked hot, ain’t it? He slouched down and dipped his head further to avoid the overhead storage units and crashed into the seat beside her.

Yes, she said, it’s a hot one. She reached and found Ronan’s hand. 

Can’t complain, though, can we? He asked.

Nope. 

Well, the man continued, and let out an exhale as he relaxed into the seat.

He set the folder on his lap and licked his fingers and pulled the cardboard open.

I was just getting pictures printed from the camera, he said.

She nodded. 

I still find it amazing, he went on, that we can capture something right in front of us, and keep it forever, with this! He pulled out a small, plastic disposable camera. I mean, with this little thing. A little lump of plastic with some film inside of it and we can snap a moment in time. 

She nodded again. Ronan was watching the man intently. 

He pushed the camera back into his pocket and flicked through the folder of printed photographs on his lap. For example, he said, look at this. He held up a blurry photo of a distant tree on a hill. Behind it, the sun left trails of red across the sky. 

Never can this tree die, he said, so long as this photo exists. I mean, it’s right here! He flapped the photo in front of her. 

He licked his fingers again and pried through the photos. Ah! And this one. I mean, your ninth birthday was what, ten years ago? Yet although you may not remember, I have it right here.

He held up a photo of her own family huddled in their living room. It was foggy and hard to distinguish, as it was taken through a pane of glass from outside of the house. 

She felt a coolness run along her spine, which quickly turned to ice. 

And this, he said. He held up another photo. It showed her standing under a harsh spotlight of a pub stage, with a guitar in her hand. This, he said, is you singing my favourite song of yours. I mean it’s not your song, but you know what I mean. You sing it with such, what’s the word, with such poise. Does that make sense? Poise?

She turned to look at him, but he didn’t look back. He was fixated on flicking through the bundle of photographs. 

And this, oh, I love this one, he said. He held up a photograph of her and her older brother Cillian. It showed them thumbing a lift on a main road in the darkness, their silhouettes only made visible by the moons’ glow. 

Her face was a picture of fear, and confusion.

The man turned to look at her, and saw her expression. Oh, goodness, he said. Forgive me, that one hasn’t happened yet, has it? Oh, Jesus, forgive me. He slotted the picture back into the folder, closed it and stood up.

She gripped her brother’s hand so hard that the boy let out a yelp.

The man placed the folder back under his arm and stumbled forward onto the aisle. The bus chugged to a stop. Before he left, he turned, waved the folder before her and said, I’ll see you soon.