“My medium … is LIGHT!”, Frank declared, his face glowing with the kind of euphoria generally reserved for psychotics and fanatics. His brother, Todd, was unimpressed.
“Of course it’s light. You’re a friggin’ photographer. No light, no photo, Idiot. ‘Course you’re not really even that ’cause your camera doesn’t work.”
“Yes, it does!!”, shouted Frank. “It does work! It does!”
“Fine,” Todd sighed, “Show me a photo.”
Frank grunted once or twice and growled, “channeling the Indian bear spirit”, as he called it. Finally, his shoulders dropped. “It does work. I heard it click before. It just stores a bunch of them all at once. A whole life of them if it needs to. That’s how it works. It does work.”
Frank rubbed his thumb on the particularly worn patch of the camera’s ancient leather case. He’d found it in the attic with grampa’s stuff. The worn patch made things feel better.
Through the camera, he could see things he’d never seen before. People had smiles and frowns. They were still there when he couldn’t see them except through the camera’s magnification. It occurred to him that there might be others like Todd – who didn’t just come and go. Once, he’d even seen a real bear in the camera. Of course, Todd had ruined everything. Todd said the bear would eat him. That’s stupid, though. What Indian would channel a spirit that would eat people. “Next time,” he thought, “I’ll just go talk to the bear. He’ll understand me when I channel the Indian bear spirit. We’ll make sandwiches. No crust.”
He looked back through the camera’s eye and saw Todd’s face. It looked different than usual, but wasn’t an expression he recognized. Just wet and squinty. He was also breathing funny.
”Good night, Todd.” … “Good night, Todd.” … “Good ni”
“OK! Yes! Good night, Frank. Good night. Sleep well.”
”OK”. Frank practiced his happy face to tell Todd he was happy. Todd said a word he didn’t know. But he’d put some more pictures in his camera, which made him a good photographer.
And that made him happy.