The first photos I took with Aunt Jeannie’s old German camera were of my cousin Jacko the year that I turned ten. Jacko was two years older than me, but it felt like more. He was always doing freaky things like sticking his head through holes in walls and climbing up on bridges. The photos didn’t look like they were posed. Jacko was a natural. He had a way of looking like he was in his own galaxy and the camera wasn’t there. There’s not many people who can look like that.
Later on, when we were teens, I saw him less and less. He was still around, but mostly by himself, looking slightly worrisome to those who didn’t know him. He let his hair grow long and thick and he got a tattoo on his hand like they’d peeled away his skin, showing all the veins and bones. I kept away from him at school, but after school I’d get my camera and watch him in the streets. I’d shoot him with his feral friends and he’d never catch on I was there. Those photos were the ones that worked the best.
* * *
I’m not at home the evening Jacko leaves. He takes a backpack he’s half filled up with food and cans of Coke and walks out of home, out of town, without an explanation. I’m taking shots along the train tracks, and I see him walking through the railway yard, so I follow him a way. When I take a photo from behind, he hears the click but doesn’t look my way. He walks down the slope to the old stationmaster’s house, doors and windows boarded up and barbed wire strung tight across the porch. He climbs down through a broken basement window and a minute later he’s kicking the boards loose on a door around the side. He flicks a match and lights a candle. I see his shadow through the clouded-over window pane. Long and looming like a bogeyman in a kids’ cartoon.
And that’s how he starts living in that old place. Just like that he makes himself at home. He doesn’t come back to Aunt Jeannie’s to pick up clothes or other things and no one hears from him at all. It’s like he’s gone to live in another country, even though he’s only half a mile away. Aunt Jeannie’s folded tight with bitterness, though she never lets it show. She tells my mum she knew this type of thing was on the cards.
The next Monday after school I come past the stationmaster’s place. Jacko’s place now, I guess. Already it feels like his. I walk towards the porch and two stray dogs with pricked ears turn their heads. I’ve taken photos of them in the past, hanging out in the rail yards, hopping round on out-of-order legs. I call out … Jacko … Jacko … and it doesn’t sound like his name anymore. It sounds more like I’m calling to the dogs. In the shadows on the porch there’s hundreds of bugs, big crawling ones that I don’t know the name of. I push the front door open. It’s loose on its hinges and marked with gouged-out holes. I hear Jacko’s footsteps in a room off to the side. A small snivelling dog I’ve never seen before walks round and round in circles in the hall. I give him a wide berth. I put my mouth up to the slit between the door and the frame and say Jacko’s name through it. The footsteps stop and he talks back to me.
‘Go away!’ he says, but not with anger, more like he’s feeling sorry for himself.
Through the gap there’s light and shadows; that’s all I can see, but there’s a smell of gone-off food, and something sharp, like piss. I go back out onto the porch and take some photos of the bugs. I wait a while with the dogs looking on and then I head back home.
* * *
I’m riding my bike back from school the next Monday when I see smoke rising thick from the bottom of the slope. When I’m halfway down I see that the stationmaster’s house is part aflame. I ride down like a madman and when I pull up my bike skids out from under me. Through a window I see Jacko still inside. The smoke is so thick that he holds his fists up near his face and paws away in front of him, like a tired boxer keeping his guard up, trying to land a punch. He falls against the front door and I have to push with all my weight to shove it open and drag him out. By that time there’s a car that’s turned up and then a fire truck comes with its siren on and lights flashing red. An ambulance comes a few minutes later and takes me with Jacko to the hospital. The doctors treat his burnt arms. They’re pretty bad. His skin is black and red where it’s gone and it smells like barbecued ribs. Aunt Jeannie cries when she sees him and asks him to please come home, but he won’t be talked around no matter what.
* * *
Two days later when I come by the house to see how Jacko’s going, the bugs have moved inside. On the wooden kitchen floor I step on them with my school shoes. Their bodies sound like popcorn when they’re squashed. On the table, next to an empty plate, bugs feed on crumbs from a chunk of stale bread. That’s all the food I see. The cupboard doors are open and there’s nothing at all inside. I take a photo of the rolled-up edges of the contact paper on the shelves. It looks like tiny scrolls with tiny messages inside, waiting to be read.
There’s no more dogs around and the house feels even quieter than before. The lounge and hall are black from the fire and some of the ceiling’s gone. There’s a door like a bridge across the burnt-through floorboards. Jacko’s lying on the bed. There’s no sheets or anything. Just the bare mattress and a flat-as-a-pancake pillow. He’s wearing only boxer shorts and the room is full of bugs. There’s a blanket nailed up over the window, so it’s dark in there for the middle of the afternoon, but I see them all the same. They’re thick in the corners and walk in messy lines on the ceiling. Some are swept off by big drifts of air that lift the blanket now and then, and they fall onto the bed. The mattress is patterned with yellow flowers and the bugs must think they’re real because they crawl along the stems and the faded cotton petals. Through the bandage on Jacko’s arm I see a seep of blood-stained pus, and some of the bugs are crawling towards the smell. His eyes are closed, but I know from his breathing that he’s not asleep. I take a photo of his skin-tight face and he opens his eyes just for a second, then closes them again. I’ve got a pack of chips in my bag, so leave it on the bed and tell him I’ll come back sometime soon.
When I get home I take out my photos of Jacko when we were kids and those from later on and pin them up along the wall like photographs of the missing. I look close at them, one by one, trying to see what he was feeling when I took them, or what he’s maybe feeling now. I don’t know who to tell about the bugs and food and how his bandages might need changing. I won’t tell Aunt Jeannie. It would cause her too much grief. Probably Jacko would have said if he wanted outside help. I think it’s probably best not to intrude where you’re not wanted. Sometimes, like when I’m out looking for something weird to photograph, I think that there’s nothing you can do but keep your distance and wait for things to happen.