The next morning Mark stopped by for a visit but he appeared to be preoccupied, not his typical easygoing self. He spread out the tracking pictures on the kitchen table in the same order as they’d been taken. My first impression was they appeared to be nothing special, but Mark didn’t see them that way. He was used to spreading out a series of boring pictures then selecting the good ones. What I saw captured on film was a woman either staring at the ground or squatting down, puzzling over something she was studying. I’d warned him that tracking wouldn’t be interesting to the viewer. He pulled out nine pictures and arranged them in a three-by-three grid. The nine he’d selected had been well chosen, starting with the rescue trucks on the road with a group of searchers in conversation, then a shot of Victor, Landon and myself while on the trail, photographed from the back with our bodies leaning forward beneath heavy packs. There were several of me tracking, then another shot of the three of us again, followed by an image of the fire trucks and coroner’s van parked at the top of the drop off. The last picture showed me sitting alone. He had really zoomed in and it was obvious that he wanted the dirt, the grime, the sadness, and dedication to the job to come through this one picture. I was sitting with my back against a rock, my feet propped up, a rifle across my knees. My face was dirty. Sweat and tears streaked the dirt. My hair was windblown and my eyes spoke volumes about hard work and defeat. I took a moment to stuff away the memories it brought to mind. It may not have been a pretty picture, but it certainly was a truthful one.
“Do you really think people will buy pictures like these?”
“I think the stalking ones will go over better but I’m not sure about the ones from the search. They might be a bit too emotional for some people, especially since I think some word of explanation should accompany the pictures. Better yet, I think these pictures would make a good documentary article about search and rescue, something that really demonstrates what it’s all about. There are several publications who would buy it.”
“Strict would like that. Any plug for search and rescue helps our efforts.”
“How’s that?”
“The county supplies us with basic equipment. If we want something better, it comes out of our own pockets or from donations. It’s a tight budget and we always know what piece of equipment is next on our list because something breaks or a new technology emerges, or we just find we need something that isn’t available to us yet. Most search and rescue teams work the same way, so an article like that could help search teams nationwide.”
“What piece of equipment is your team looking at right now?”
“Strict would be the one to ask about that. There are many different teams in our organization and mine has minimal requirements. Personally, I’ve got my eye on a bulletproof vest and a rifle.”
“Why would you need a bulletproof vest?”
“Because I tend to get shot at. So far I’ve been hit twice. I was wearing a borrowed Kevlar vest the first time.”
“And the second time?”
“The second time they got me.” I shrugged it off. “It was minor compared to most of my misadventures, but it scared everyone and I don’t like scaring the team.”
“The article wouldn’t pay as much to you personally.”
“You know I’m not trying to make money off this and I’d prefer as little recognition as possible.”
“You want to buy something that could save your life but you aren’t interested in the money you could get out of this?”
“Mark, as far as I’m concerned this is your work. You should get the pay for it. A vest will turn up eventually. In the meantime… I just need to be careful.”
“I’ll have to get permission from Victor, Landon and Kelly to use their pictures.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. Victor is the one you should be the most concerned with, but he hardly shows up in these pictures. You know Landon will say ‘yes’ and Kelly is a lot like Landon except he’s more easygoing and would enjoy the idea of being in some of your work.”
“So you agree an article would be the way to go?”
“I think an article would do the most good and reach the most people. Some people don’t even know there are teams they could call on. It would be educational and would benefit the search and rescue volunteers too.”
“Okay, now, I want to show you something else, in these same pictures. Can you see it?”
“What am I looking for?”
“Some of the pictures are different.”
This was supposed to be one of my stronger suits, finding the oddity amongst the ordinary. I ruled out all the middle pictures taken of me just following the trail. It had to be at the beginning or the end of the search. And then it hit me: the morph. Oh, man. I went back to the start of the search. There I was speaking with Kelly, followed by me tracking along the road, then finally climbing over the bank where Carl had left the road. I remembered the feeling of doom as I followed Carl’s tracks down his trail further and further away from anything safe and familiar. Why don’t people stay where they know it’s safe? Following the road would have taken Carl time but he surely would have survived the walk. Leaving safety often leads to trouble for the inexperienced. Studying the pictures shot after stopping at the pine needles, I took out the three pictures taken before and then after. Then I took out two more. Mark smiled, it was almost a mischievous, Grinchy-type smile. It looked eerie on him.
I studied the pictures. Something did seem odd between the two sets. The whole mood of the picture changed. But the only thing that changed in the pictures was me. I went from cute Cassidy to Dangerous Tracker Woman but there were no visual differences, only a distinct subconscious shift which had taken place between the frames. But it was there and there’s no denying it had happened. I wasn’t alone in my assessment. Mark had seen the change or he wouldn’t have pointed it out to me.
“Has Landon seen these pictures yet?”
“No, Mom and Dad looked at them but they couldn’t see it, couldn’t see why I had wanted to take pictures of you tracking. Couldn’t see why you would wander around in the woods staring at the ground. They are just tuned differently. They are jolly old people and I love them like that, but they will never understand the life you lead. They liked the stalking pictures. They asked who has tame deer around here. They thought it was nice that you got to pet them. They had no idea how much trouble you went to just to touch that doe.”
“So you, your parents and I are the only ones who have seen them?”
“Yeah, now that I think about it Mom did comment about one picture.” He looked through the photos spread across the table and chose one that had been taken after the search was over. It was the one of me with Victor’s rifle across my knees, tears running down my cheeks through the grime from the trail, a lost and lonely expression on my face. “She said, ‘How could they do that to her? It breaks my heart to see Cassidy like that.’ I told her, ‘Mom, they don’t do that to her. She chooses to do it so others won’t feel like that.’”
“Maybe that’s the picture you should use if you write an article. If your mom understood it, maybe that’s what the average person will respond to as well.”
“It depends on the publication that prints it. Print that picture in a family magazine and the anti-gun people will hit the roof.”
“Yeah, okay, I can see that. Can you figure out what changes the mood in these pictures? I can’t see anything different. Same me, same trees, same trail but it’s totally different.”
“I know. I’d like to see what Landon and Rusty see in them.”
“Hello?” Landon asked.
“Hey! Mark has some pictures he’d like to ask you about. Barbecue at seven?”
“Barbecue?”
“Mark is tired of his mom’s casseroles so we are having anti-casserole.”
“Ah, I see.”
“In this case barbecue doesn’t mean drowned in barbecue sauce. It means cooked on the grill.”
“Okay.”
Before dinner Mark showed Landon the tracking shots he wanted to use and asked him to sign a release form granting permission to use his picture. They discussed various angles the article could cover, while I was in and out of the conversation, getting dinner ready.
“What do you call this dish?” Landon asked.
“Well, on the trail I call it mayo-jar steak, but when I’m at home and it hasn’t been packed in a mayonnaise jar I guess it’s just plain teriyaki steak. It’s a lot better after being packed around in the mountains and cooked over a campfire. I’d bring it on a search but I usually have to grab my pack and run when Strict calls.”
Landon pushed back in his chair with a contented sigh. “Can I see the rest of the pictures?” he asked Mark.
“Yeah, when we have room to spread them out. I want you and Rusty to both look at them.”
I got up to clear away dishes. “Wait for me, I’m dying of curiosity, too,” I said.
After rinsing the dinnerware and putting it in the dishwasher, I left the pots and pans in the sink to wash later.
Mark placed the pictures on the table in the order they had been taken. Rusty and Landon bent over them. Landon was immediately drawn to the beginning of the search.
“Whoa, that is so weird,” he said softly.
“What is?” asked Rusty.
“Look, cute Cassidy, cute Cassidy, cute Cassidy, dangerous Cassidy.”
“What makes them different though? Mark and I can’t figure it out. One set is cheery and adventurous while the other is almost gloomy but nothing in the picture has changed.”
“How far apart were they taken?” Rusty asked.
“Only seconds. You’re only looking at maybe thirty seconds total in these six pictures,” Mark replied.
“That is weird,” said Rusty. “You’re sure a cloud didn’t block the sun or something?”
“The lighting looks the same, it’s just the mood that changes,” Mark said.
“But I can’t see any mood change. Everything looks the same, it only feels different,” Landon added.
“That’s what’s weird about it,” Mark said.
“Something’s got to be different. Cassidy, where’s your magnifying glass?” Landon asked.
“In my pack,” I answered. I left the table to go to the garage and retrieve it.
The guys pondered over the pictures, and theories were tossed about, but we couldn’t decide exactly what the difference was between the cute me and Dangerous Tracker Woman.
“Do you think you got some ill vibes off the trail?” Landon asked. “You piece things together as you track. Did you have some idea even at that point that Cranston wasn’t going to make it?”
“No, it wasn’t until he bedded down for the night that I began to lose hope. I was still very positive at this point.”
“I mean subconsciously,” Landon said. “Maybe your mind knew something even though you weren’t actually thinking it on purpose.”
“I don’t think so. Is that even possible?”
“Just as possible as you morphing from cute Cassidy to Dangerous Tracker Woman,” Rusty suggested.
“But look at this,” I said, picking out the photo that Hazel had noticed. “Two days of grime, rifle in hand, totally miserable but it’s back to normal old me.”
“Let me see that,” Rusty said. “What were you doing?”
“Guarding the body.”
“Wilson, I ought to wring your neck.”
“No, Rusty, I went up to fill my post, and he offered to stay, but I needed to do my share. I would have felt the same no matter where I was.”
We examined the pictures through the whole search. Dangerous Cassidy faded when I wasn’t tracking, but the more intense the search, the more it appeared that a cloud hung over me. When I was tracking, though, I hadn’t felt gloomy. I felt comfortable. Tracking was what I did best and it came most naturally. So the cloud of doom felt rather odd when I studied the pictures.
We never solved the mystery. We just agreed that there was something visible in the pictures, yet not one of us were able to identify the source.