never went away.
They never went away, either, but sometimes they werenât so bad. Sometimes they were bad. Sometimes very bad. November never was a good month for me.
There was this thirteen-year-old girl who hung herself. I couldnât remember her name, not even if I wanted to. I had cut her name out of my memory with a heroin needle, but I couldnât forget her face. I couldnât forget her parents, who wanted a photo of their dead daughter to print on posters, because after the funeral they were traveling to Washington to demonstrate in front of the FDA who approved the antidepressant that had driven their baby girl to suicide. I still woke up nights thinking about those people and the enormity of their grief. They had sent their daughter to the doctor to help her, they had forced her to continue taking her meds even though she told them something was wrong and begged them to let her quit. They had killed her trying to save her from being a normal, dysfunctional teenager.
With the murder victims and the car crashes, a corpse was just an object to me. There was a purpose to my work thenâto record the event, to provide evidence for the trial or the settlement. But that girl and her parents, furiously determined that her death should have some meaning, haunted me like no other. They lived on Central Avenue near the Pink Palace Museum, and I used to drive past their house on my way to Prestonâs office, where I sold most of my accident pictures. I would see her sometimes, standing in her yard beneath the elm tree where she hung herself. She wasnât looking at anything. I donât even know if she was real or just something left over from another time, like a photograph.
She wasnât the only one who still haunted me. There were others, plenty of others, some whose corpses I had photographed, others I had never seen before. And there were some I wanted to see again but never could. On bad days the bad ones would crowd around so, it got hard to tell people apart, who you could talk to and who you couldnât. I could photograph the dead all day long, because theyâre just meat, but I couldnât deal with the grief of the dead. They brought the grave near enough to see myself in it. It was too much. But without grief, you arenât human. Thatâs what separates people from monsters.
Tonight, as I was driving home, Adam was headed to Whitehaven to tell Chris Hendricksâs parents their son was dead. I didnât allow myself to imagine that scene. I didnât need to imagine it because I had lived it. Instead, I drove home to my new apartment and unlocked the door. It was a heavy, solid door with stout bolts and brass screws driven into real wood, not plywood, not some flimsy fifty-dollar piece of cardboard and glue that some crackhead could kick in. This building, old as it was, had good bones.
I unstrapped my cameras, hung up my jacket and peeled off my wet clothes. My socks were still soaked. There was an old steam radiator in one corner, no longer hooked up to steam but it made a good place to to dry my jeans. I was still hungry but what I really wanted was a fix.
I resisted. To take my mind off it, I downloaded the photos from the Orpheum and burned them to a CD. I didnât examine them except to make sure I wasnât sending crappy pictures to Chief Billet. While the CD was burning, I opened my last quart can of Tecate beer. I put the finished CD in a brown envelope, addressed it to Chief Billet and set it on the kitchen counter. It was too late to call a courier.
I plugged the Leica into my laptop and opened Photoshop to view the pictures, but the cameraâs brand-new memory card appeared empty. I unplugged the camera and checked the review feature. The photos were there. I plugged it back into my laptop and examined the memory card. The files were there, but my computer wasnât able to recognize the Leica image file format.
Luckily, I knew where I
They never went away, either, but sometimes they werenât so bad. Sometimes they were bad. Sometimes very bad. November never was a good month for me.
There was this thirteen-year-old girl who hung herself. I couldnât remember her name, not even if I wanted to. I had cut her name out of my memory with a heroin needle, but I couldnât forget her face. I couldnât forget her parents, who wanted a photo of their dead daughter to print on posters, because after the funeral they were traveling to Washington to demonstrate in front of the FDA who approved the antidepressant that had driven their baby girl to suicide. I still woke up nights thinking about those people and the enormity of their grief. They had sent their daughter to the doctor to help her, they had forced her to continue taking her meds even though she told them something was wrong and begged them to let her quit. They had killed her trying to save her from being a normal, dysfunctional teenager.
With the murder victims and the car crashes, a corpse was just an object to me. There was a purpose to my work thenâto record the event, to provide evidence for the trial or the settlement. But that girl and her parents, furiously determined that her death should have some meaning, haunted me like no other. They lived on Central Avenue near the Pink Palace Museum, and I used to drive past their house on my way to Prestonâs office, where I sold most of my accident pictures. I would see her sometimes, standing in her yard beneath the elm tree where she hung herself. She wasnât looking at anything. I donât even know if she was real or just something left over from another time, like a photograph.
She wasnât the only one who still haunted me. There were others, plenty of others, some whose corpses I had photographed, others I had never seen before. And there were some I wanted to see again but never could. On bad days the bad ones would crowd around so, it got hard to tell people apart, who you could talk to and who you couldnât. I could photograph the dead all day long, because theyâre just meat, but I couldnât deal with the grief of the dead. They brought the grave near enough to see myself in it. It was too much. But without grief, you arenât human. Thatâs what separates people from monsters.
Tonight, as I was driving home, Adam was headed to Whitehaven to tell Chris Hendricksâs parents their son was dead. I didnât allow myself to imagine that scene. I didnât need to imagine it because I had lived it. Instead, I drove home to my new apartment and unlocked the door. It was a heavy, solid door with stout bolts and brass screws driven into real wood, not plywood, not some flimsy fifty-dollar piece of cardboard and glue that some crackhead could kick in. This building, old as it was, had good bones.
I unstrapped my cameras, hung up my jacket and peeled off my wet clothes. My socks were still soaked. There was an old steam radiator in one corner, no longer hooked up to steam but it made a good place to to dry my jeans. I was still hungry but what I really wanted was a fix.
I resisted. To take my mind off it, I downloaded the photos from the Orpheum and burned them to a CD. I didnât examine them except to make sure I wasnât sending crappy pictures to Chief Billet. While the CD was burning, I opened my last quart can of Tecate beer. I put the finished CD in a brown envelope, addressed it to Chief Billet and set it on the kitchen counter. It was too late to call a courier.
I plugged the Leica into my laptop and opened Photoshop to view the pictures, but the cameraâs brand-new memory card appeared empty. I unplugged the camera and checked the review feature. The photos were there. I plugged it back into my laptop and examined the memory card. The files were there, but my computer wasnât able to recognize the Leica image file format.
Luckily, I knew where I
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