Chapter 18.
At the drug store, Judd's girlfriend Jana spun a pinwheel with her finger near the one-hour photo counter. She watched the employee, a teenager, operating the printing machine.
"Don't be lookin' at my pictures now," Jana said to the teenager, a porcelain-faced girl wearing a blue and white pinstriped uniform.
The girl said, "We're supposed to screen them."
"Screen them? What's that mean?"
"It's store policy. We remove inappropriate photos."
"Inappropriate. Well, nothing inappropriate in my photos."
The machine began to push out the first picture, a grainy matte photo, the first on the roll, where the poor lighting in the Opera House failed to capture the actors, Josh and Shannon, embracing on the stage.
"Not screening these pictures, you ain't."
"I have to."
Jana stepped up to the counter. "Then you stop that machine right now. These are my pictures and I'm not having anyone pick through them like a basket of oranges."
The girl nervously backed away from the machine. The second picture printed and dropped onto the tray. Keeping her stare upon the girl, Jana leaned and put her hands on the counter, getting as near the machine as she could without jumping the barrier.
The employee said, "I'll have to talk to my manager."
"Wait," said Jana. "Aren't you a Riley? I was friends with your cousin Karen in high school. You look like her a bit." The girl nodded. "Listen," said Jana. "I'll give you an extra ten dollars if you just let the pictures be. You could go relax in the break room. It's personal. Personal reasons."
The girl said, "I don't know."
"Twenty. Honey, it's personal photos. Something I'm doing for a friend. He's a private person." From her purse, Jana produced a crinkled twenty-dollar bill and flattened Andrew Jackson on the counter.
"I can't take that," said the girl.
"Oh, please, sweetheart. I know it's your job and I don't want to do you wrong by it."
"I just won't look at the pictures, if that's all right. But I can't take a bribe."
"Oh, it's not a bribe, but that would be fine," said Jana, eyeing the tray as another picture dropped from the printer, the resolution improving with each picture. "It would be just fine if you walked away for a bit and came back and put them photos in the sleeve and handed them to me like this was deli meat and not pictures."
The girl moved away and exited the swinging door. Still holding the pinwheel, Jana spun it with her finger. In her mind, she and Judd already owned the Boskie farm, which was for sale. Jane could see herself sitting on the open porch that faced the road, could see her garden to the east, her future children on the rope swing under the oak tree. On both sides of the barn, she imagined lush crops: soybeans, corn, alfalfa. Clean cattle bedded down in fresh straw. Chickens too, free-range in the yard.
This scene had been planted in Jana's dreams by Judd, when he whispered his plans to Jana before sleep, weaving gold from yarn.
Another picture fell out and she greedily leaned forward to see the flesh tones in the photo. Another picture, open mouths, a neck exposed, the guilty hand of the purse-keeper caught in the hair of mistress Hoffman. Judd would have two tractors and a bucket loader. A freezer in the garage full of steaks. Judd and Jana would have the full plenty of the Boskie acres. All the things she never had growing up, she would have with Judd on their farm. All the things the Boskie's had today, the meticulous Boskie couple, who never had children of their own – Jana and Judd would inherit their careful stewardship of the land.
In her apartment on main street, above the Catholic youth center, Jana spread out the photos on her small kitchen table and relived the experience of taking the pictures. She impatiently waited for Judd to arrive, so that she could announce Josh's fall and what it meant for their future. She called the Marak farm asking for her boyfriend but Renee said he already left. Shortly after she hung up the phone, Judd opened the door, entering with a downcast brow. Jana rushed to jump on him, straddling him with her legs and nearly toppling him into the shoe rack.
"I have something for you," she said.
"Not in the mood."
"Oh yes you are," she said, rubbing his hair. "Why don't you go to the table and see what I mean."
"All right then. I will, if you'll get off me."
Without hurrying, he unlaced his boots and set them on the rug, not sharing Jana's enthusiasm until he put his palms on the table and scrutinized the images. Beside him Jana bit her lip and tried not to scream her delight.
Judd said, "Did you put the negatives in a safe place?"
"I'll do it right now, baby. I'll put them in the cookie jar."
"No, don't foul our kitchen with this man," said Judd. "Give them to me. I'll keep them in my car." His hands carefully stacked the photos and put them into the sleeve again. "I'll leave a few here, in case Josh reacts and starts tearing them up."
"I did good, didn't I?"
"Yes you did," said Judd, putting the photo sleeve into the center pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. "I'll treat you right for it, too, right after I go find Mr. Werther and discuss the new terms of our banking matters. Things go right today, we'll be sleeping in Boskie's house by next month."
"We'll have a new bedroom set."
"Keep your pants on, Jana," he said, tugging her belt toward him. "Don't talk of furniture until the realtor pulls that sign and Boskie drives off to Arizona."
"Judd, do you think…"
"Quiet," he said, "I need to think for a bit." He considered what the pictures meant, what they could do for him. These images could reset his chances in life and make living tolerable. He did not want to be an employee, he wanted to be an owner. Going to the Marak farm each morning to help made him want his own place all the more. Milking Ray's hundred-head, raking and sowing the hundreds of acres, eating at Renee's table each day at lunch with her plentiful whole milk and butter and homemade desserts, the seeming largesse of the Marak farm gradually increased the want of Judd Blanks. He dreamed of having his own well-run household, thinking of how easy the Marak's made it look. Calves being born, grain bins plump, another helping of garden mashed potatoes and sweet corn - this Judd wanted for his own. Passing the age of thirty, Judd became regretfully aware of squandered years and time spent escaping opportunity. The chances had slipped away before he knew the value of what had disappeared. As a younger man, he had walked away when the threat of added responsibility loomed, trading potential futures for a weekend of fun on the lake or the sandbar, for a fishing or hunting trip, for a rock concert in another state, and mostly he ran to the bottle when faced with the difficulty of mature risk. He had been living for the day, believing in the shortness of life, only to find out carpe diem was a false idol. Recently, he became sick with understanding of the rock wall he faced. In August, he spent an afternoon babysitting his nephews. Watching TV with the kids, a children's show held up a mirror to him. The kids repeatedly watched a recorded VHS tape of an old Muppet Show. His five year old nephew leaned on his elbows, feet in the air behind him, engrossed by the short moral tales of public television, while Judd dozed, prone on the couch, only getting up every half hour to rewind the tape. The Muppets performed the fable of The Grasshopper and The Ant. He ignored the show during the first viewing, but by the third time he rewound it, he noticed the ant working, stocking for winter. The grasshopper was at play, all summer long, eating and playing, not preparing, and later when the weather changed the grasshopper begged to borrow from the ant, and was ultimately left out in the cold to face a cruel end.
When the show ended the fourth time, the nephews ran off to play in another room, but Judd remained on the couch, pondering the fable, a children's story, with a growing disquiet, as it articulated the core insight he needed, but with a terrible, insulting simplicity.
This cartoonish lesson came after Judd had spe
nt the previous year investigating his opportunities, seeking an exit from his current seasonal loop, from farming to plowing snow. He queried his friends for employment, starting with the insurance business. He knew insurance men. They were no wiser than he was. He could sell insurance. But he could not type, he had no office skills. No formal education to speak of. Much of his youth he spent alone, since his parents lounged and lazed, not directing Judd at all. Thus he found company among other kids who had the same freedom to wander the town, without curfew, riding his bikes under the moon and learning unsavories much earlier than other boys and girls. When he bought his first car, on a whim he drove to Missouri and never returned to class, and no one much cared. But becoming older and filling out job applications, the checkbox for "High School Graduate" pained him to pass his pen over. Plus his criminal record, offenses that he laughed at when they happened, finding rebellion of various formats a kind of freedom, turned into chains. Two drunk driving tickets, an assault charge, twice he laid thirty days in jail – these events were imprinted on the Immaculate conscience through the publication of his offenses in the county newspaper. Bounded by decisions of his youth, friends in the insurance business shook their head. "Not now," they said, "maybe next year."
Later, Judd sought to become a real estate agent. He could learn the business, but the local established realtors showed no interest in taking him on as their understudy – they had kids of their own, and better friends with the same interests. George Yaren, the leading realtor, even told Judd that he lacked people skills – "too combative," he said. George Yaren, of all people, when half the town held a grudge against him after his fifty years of negotiating on property.
For several months afterward he became enamored with a career in law enforcement. He sent for information on how to become a deputy, or a dispatcher, or a jailer. To have a state or federal job, this meant security – a pension in twenty years, and more than just a Social Security check to live on in old age. His application to the county for a dispatcher job came back to him in the mail, with an attached note saying he had filled out the form incorrectly. The rejection demoralized him enough that he abandoned a fantasy of becoming an officer, throwing out the mailings he had requested from the school where men became police. Worse still, the Navy recruiter rejected him for his age, and doubly for his lack of education and crimes – not even the armed forces needed him.
The closest he came to finding indoor work came in tractor sales and service, for an Allis-Chalmers dealer, but before he started the job the business folded, leaving him, once again, out in the cold – out in the fields, on roofs, climbing silos, spreading manure, digging trench, driving snowplow – back to the same odd jobs. In the spring, he was back eating Renee's breakfasts and dinners. He had a breadth of skill – he could build houses, plant and harvest, plumb and wire bathrooms and basements. But without depth in any specific skill, with no training, with no certification, he had nothing that the world wanted. A Jack-of-all-trades was useful but replaceable. Farming, then, seemed his trade, where a man and wife needed to know a little about everything, as he saw in the Maraks, even admiring the obstinate manner of Ray, the uncompromising scarred face, and the gentleness of his still beautiful wife. He needed money to get out of the rut, and a good sum, since entering the farming business seemed as impossible as becoming a doctor or lawyer. No clear path to self-sufficiency, no impetus to break from his static place into a forward motion. No chance of inheritance, since his parents' divorce led to an erratic aftermath that exhausted any money they had saved. And as his parents pursued finding another person to love, each of them finding and failing again, the assets divided and dwindled a second time. Just yesterday, in the bar, Judd overheard a story of a girl named Jill Hawking, who came into money, simply by being the daughter of her father, and the unfairness of the world bashed him over the head. To have some land, be his own master. To have service men and seed salesmen drive into his yard to walk the parlor and the shed, chewing the fat. But Judd's role seemed solely to aid the others in society who had property, businesses, careers. To perform their unwanted work, that was his only usage. A convenient servant. Set aside when not needed, like a tool on the bench. With each job completed, the season changed, old habits returned, a period of dwelling in his apartment, drinking, dabbling in drugs, spending his money when he felt the powerlessness of his position, only to have the purchased item double his frustration when he received his monthly checking and savings account statement. Currently, the car stereo, with its beautiful sound, irritated him when not playing music.
Finally, he held collateral in his hand, leverage, through the miracle of Jana's pictures, and these he would use to pry his hand into a corrupt world that favored the privileged.