THE WEEK of midterms Stratton received a curious voicemail. It was from a man named Connor McElmurray who said he worked with the Appalachian Mountain Project, an anti–mountaintop removal nonprofit in Whitesburg, Kentucky. He said that he’d heard about the photography exhibit that was being planned for Liza’s photographs in a few months and he had some more work that the curator might want to include, some pictures Liza had taken when she was covering the work of the nonprofit shortly before she was killed. When Stratton returned the call it went unanswered. He left his own voicemail stating that he’d like to talk about the pictures, but several days passed and he heard nothing more. With the increasing busyness of the semester the issue faded from his immediate attention, but it was strange and something about it bothered him, though not terribly. It had the feel of something unfinished, something pent.
The last week of October McElmurray resurfaced, this time in the form of an email sent to Stratton’s work address. In it he said that he absolutely had to meet with him face-to-face, that he would deliver the photographs because Stratton was the only one who could decide how the images should be used. There was an air of desperation to it. But there also appeared to be a quality of resolve, an underlying concern for doing what his conscience dictated that made Stratton nervous. He had learned many times over that a man convinced he was doing the right thing was someone at his most dangerous. Still, he had to meet this man, see what he had of Liza’s.
They arranged to meet the following Saturday afternoon, the day before Halloween. There was a truck stop in Jellico, on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky, where they could sit down. It split the distance for both of them. Stratton told Rain he should be back in time for supper but not to wait for him in case she and Loyal got hungry.
He stopped at the gas station for some burned coffee, thought about tossing the stuff out but nursed it as he drove until it was all gone and his nerves were tight as piano wires. He counted Jesus signs stuck on the side of the road once he got out into the country, crosses on hillsides, some as big as water towers. The Holy Word writ large across the surface of the earth—an ancient page that didn’t care.
It was windy when he got into Jellico, enough to take a man’s ball cap. He clapped his hand over his head as he made his way to the diner’s side entrance. He passed a pair of uncoupled truck cabs that were parked near the door. One of the drivers leaned out, pointed at Stratton’s Braves hat and asked if he ever got tired of having his heart broken. Stratton said that the heart, like other muscles, could become numb, and the man laughed.
He sat at a booth near the door and asked the waitress if they had something to drink without caffeine. She brought him a Sprite.
Within a quarter of an hour a young man with a military haircut came in through the front, scanned the booths before he gave Stratton a nod and approached.
“Mister Bryant,” he said, offered his hand. Stratton took it and waved for him to sit down. When he did he picked up a menu, studied it without interest, and ordered a black coffee. While they waited they each made stumbling efforts at small talk. McElmurray had the nervous habit of brushing the short bristles at the side of his head with his palms. It seemed to get worse the longer they sat together.
“So you mentioned that you worked with Liza while she was working on the mountaintop removal series,” Stratton finally prompted.
“Yes. That’s right. She attended several rallies, took many photos. She was well-liked. Within the organization, at least. Not sure the miners cared too much for her. She didn’t really try to hold to journalistic objectivity, though.”
“No, that wasn’t much her style.”
McElmurray clearly desired to say something more, but remained incapable, stopped somewhere short of whatever reason had driven him thus far. Such boyishness in him, as if he’d just been discovered in some wrongdoing but was unable to admit it.
“You see, there’s something different about these pictures,” he continued, haltingly. “They’re not of the rallies or any of that. These are more private.”
Stratton realized then. He realized who it was that sat across from him. He put his hands under the table, tried to strangle the rising anger out of himself.
“I think I’m beginning to understand,” he said.
McElmurray only nodded.
After a couple of minutes of not saying anything, McElmurray stood up and asked if he wanted to go out and see the prints. Stratton answered by dropping a creased five-dollar bill on the table and mutely following. In his hands he felt a force that grew more tense as they crossed the wind-blasted parking lot and came to McElmurray’s Subaru. The hatch popped and opened. The pictures were framed and buffered by soft sheets of white foam. Before McElmurray could reach in, Stratton twisted his collar so that he was brought up on his toes. He did not resist, but looked at him through his pale young eyes.
“I recognize you,” Stratton hissed, though in a voice that made little sound amid so much wind. It was a foolish act in a humiliating play, and he felt these clumsy lines coming out of his mouth, knew that they were a discredit to him and the young man he said them to.
“I’ve seen the picture she took of you,” he choked out.
McElmurray would say nothing. Would not fight back at all. His weight was in Stratton’s hands with complete and maddening submission. Stratton shook him once as though it might stir some animal resistance, but McElmurray wouldn’t come to life. Stratton threw a punch at the point of his jaw. They both went sprawling into the dirt. He kneeled over him, breathed in dust and saw that his fist had whitened. Red eyes bled along his knuckles, though he felt little but the electric buzz in his muscles, his bones.
He helped McElmurray up. The younger man’s jaw was beginning to swell but he was otherwise unhurt. Once they regained their breath they began to transfer the prints from the back of the Subaru to Stratton’s vehicle. What had been between them was done.
“Is that all?” Stratton asked.
“Yes, that’s everything. You have my number then?”
There was a strange note of hope in McElmurray’s voice.
“I’ll let you know if there’s anything I need.”
McElmurray backed away a few paces but did not yet return to his car, waited to make sure that Stratton was set to travel back and had no final words for him. Then he got out of the mean wind, wedged himself under the dumb compass of his steering wheel and drove back to Kentucky.
STRATTON CHECKED in briefly with Rain and Loyal, who were building a fire in the living room, and said he’d be out to sit with them as soon as he finished putting a few things away. Rain was immediately curious, but she didn’t ask what he meant, only if he needed any help. He said that he was fine, to get the fire tall and the whiskey poured, then carried all the pictures up to his bedroom. There were twelve in total. He’d looked at only a few of them, but they appeared to be mostly color. Unusual.
He went down to find Loyal and Rain with chairs drawn close to the fire. On the mantel a jack-o’-lantern grinned. A faceted glass of bourbon was already set out on the side table. They toasted and drank.
“A good holiday homecoming,” he said.
“We thought you’d appreciate it,” she said, gave Loyal a light shoulder squeeze. “By the way, another agent called this afternoon while you were out, asked if they could show the house tomorrow afternoon.”
“Hmm? Oh, sure. I guess we’ll have to clear out for a bit then. Do you two have anywhere you might be able to kill a couple of hours?”
She and Loyal traded what was supposed to be a furtive look. An allusion to some kind of carnal mischief, no doubt. Stratton preferred not to dwell on it. When had he become such a prude, he wondered. Probably just lechery living under another name and putting on a clean suit. But goddamned if it didn’t make him feel like dry bones in a box. Worn down by his own disinterest.
A fist rapped against the front door.
“Who in the hell is that?” Stratton demanded.
“Can’t you figure it out?” Rain said, crossed to the side room on her way out front. “It’s the Saturday before Halloween.”
“I’ve never heard trick or treaters this far out.”
“Not until I signed you up on the rural Halloween route at the plant nursery, you didn’t. Your real estate agent was happy to hear about it, though.”
He leaned from where he was sitting, saw the church bus at the end of the drive, as well as a steady train of macabre children wielding scythes, fangs, and bone-crossed plastic sacks. He shook his head, grinned at the small army of gruesomes.
“You better be glad you’ve got me hanging around or you’d be headed for some bloodthirsty trick or treaters for sure,” she told him.
She opened the door and complimented the children’s costumes, rattled her hand through a plastic bowl of candies, handed them out to a thin ripple of thank-yous, then closed the door. A simple and happily domestic moment, Stratton thought. Familiar yet intimate. Perhaps this was what one remembered over the span of a full life. These small rituals that dug into the great wall of years, the common moments that gain a certain mass of significance over time.
He went into the adjoining room and settled in front of the old piano, began to play a variation on Nils Frahm. A basic but powerful piece of music that rendered the quiet truth of a life lived in solitude. When he’d first heard it played, Stratton thought it profoundly sad, but in time he had learned the slight but rich emotion beneath. The rush of associations made more powerful because of their passage through understated melody.
He loved to play, he truly did, but having it be a habit of the home had always been enough for him. This was what he had never been able to adequately explain to Liza. She had understood his music as an ambition, as an object of pursuit. Maybe she desired to be jealous of it, to have to face it down in order to retain his affection. She needed the competition. It had always driven her in her own work. But for Stratton music was a voice that spoke in a way that nothing else could. If it came from him, from whatever skills he might develop, that was fine. But the deep meaning behind it did not depend on belonging to him. There was no ownership in his passion.
He finished his drink and told Rain and Loyal goodnight, said to stay up as long as they liked. Upstairs, he closed his bedroom door and began to unstack the prints and place them against the wall so that he could view them all at once. He had been right before. They were all in color, with the single exception of the Adultery picture, the one that she’d cared so much about that she’d brought back a copy for herself. But there was another trait about them too. Something so extraordinary that it caused a physical hurt. Liza was the subject. Posed and framed but still an essential part of each composition. She danced alone on a dance floor, a Pabst Blue Ribbon in hand. She dove from rocks into a lake. She stood with arms linked with fellow protestors against a mountaintop removal dozer. That picture was the best. Unflinching and beautiful in how it arrested a specific instance of dynamic movement. He leaned closer to read the title. In the House of Wilderness.
After he had spent much of an hour studying the pictures, he put them carefully away in their original protective stack-work. He felt loneliness overtake him, as if seeing her as she had been in those photographs touched a new reserve of grief. He wanted to talk to someone, to have another person to share this immensity with him, but there was no one, no one who could hear him as he needed to be heard.