A Far Corner

By T.R. Healy

Catching himself starting to doze off, Griffin closed his right hand into a fist and stared at it for a moment in the brittle sunlight.  At once, he thought of his Uncle Roy who used to raise a fist above his head when he got angry and bellow, “If I open my hand, the world will cease to exist.”  He smiled, wishing things could happen that easily, then maybe he could finally get the shot he had been waiting to take all spring.

A sparrow hawk circled overhead, cawing sharply, but he was confident it could not see him, not under the canopy of cedar branches he had fixed for his stand.  Practically every time he came out to the woods he added more branches to the stand so that he was all but invisible when he entered it.  The only opening was a narrow space slightly larger than the lens of his camera, which was mounted on a small tripod and directed toward the deer trail some sixty yards below the rocky slope where he was stationed.  Through the lens he could see a considerable stretch of the dusty trail, but he was content to peer through the branches because his right eye quickly grew tired staring through the viewfinder.  Besides, he was sure he could hear anything that came down the trail because it was covered with so many dead branches from the strong winds the past two days.

Nibbling some raisins, he glanced at his watch.  It was nearly three o’clock.  He was surprised he had been out here that long but not surprised that he hadn’t seen anything on the trail.  Some afternoons he never saw a thing.  He never regretted coming out to the woods, though, because it was such a relief from the numbing work he did at the studio.  A portrait photographer, he just finished this morning taking the last batch of photographs of the graduating class of West Slope High School.  Tomorrow he would start with the class at Alexander Hamilton High.  Most of the students were bored when they sat for their pictures, especially the boys who seemed uncomfortable wearing neckties and jackets, but not as bored as he was he suspected.  Some days he felt he might as well be some clerk at the post office snapping passport photographs.

One student the other day, sensing his apathy, asked him why he became a photographer and he shrugged and said it was what his father did for a living so he just followed him into the business.

“And if he’d been a butcher, would you have become one too?”

“I suppose.”

“Not me.  My old man’s a mortician and you couldn’t ever pay me enough to get in that line of work.  But I think I might like to do what you do.”

He smiled.  “You figure being a photographer is a good way to meet girls, do you?”

“I don’t know about that but I like the power a photographer has.  With a camera you can stop time … you can make one moment last forever.  Years from now, when I look at the picture you took of me, I’ll always be seventeen.”

The young man was right, of course, anyone who took a picture virtually stopped time, but the longer Griffin worked in the business the more he wondered how many moments deserved to be preserved forever.

A branch suddenly snapped, startling Griffin, and he looked up and saw an eight-point buck moving warily down the trail.  Carefully he leaned forward and peered at it through the viewfinder of his camera.  It was alone, its impressive rack of antlers gleaming like a crown in the sunlight.  Its neck was bent, searching the vines for blackberries.  Griffin figured he could probably get a couple of good shots before the buck heard him and panicked and bolted back into the brush, but he wasn’t the least bit interested.  He already had a drawerful of such pictures at home and certainly didn’t need anymore.  Still, he continued to watch the buck but even more closely he watched the tangled underbrush that bordered the trail, staring at it so intensely he could feel the veins pulsing in his eyes.  Every few steps the buck paused and looked around, as if it too wondered if anything was in the brush, then proceeded down the trail until it disappeared around the bend.

His eyes remained fixed on the brush, searching, as always, for a glimpse of the mountain lion whose photograph he had come out to the forest for the past three and a half months to shoot.  He had yet to see it but he knew it was out there somewhere.  There was the article in the morning paper last spring about a hiker whose dog was chased by a lion and the sighting was later corroborated by some deer hunters in the area who said the cat came and went so quickly they did not have a chance to get off any shots.  “It was right in front of us one moment then it was gone the next,” one of the hunters claimed.  “Like a ghost.”  The presence of such a wild creature only an hour drive from his apartment sparked his interest and he started to come out to the forest on weekends in the hope of taking a picture of the ghost cat.  At first, he came only on Sunday then added Saturday, and now he came as often as he could because he was so determined to photograph the animal.  One day he was confident he would but he had no idea when that day would come.

He was not a hunter, had not even fired a rifle on a target range, but he had met some deer hunters at the watering hole down the block from the studio where he worked.  One of them claimed to have wounded a mountain lion many years ago, though others in the bar were skeptical because he was known to exaggerate many of his anecdotes.  A retired firefighter, Seth Holmgren did seem to know quite a lot about the big cats.

“From what I’ve been told, a lion kills a deer every couple of weeks, maybe oftener,” he told Griffin one night at the bar.  “And they do it very fast.”

 “Like cheetahs?”

He shook his jaw.  “They don’t have the lungs to go on long runs, you see.  Rather they catch their prey by surprise and strike before whatever they’re after can get away.  Typically they’ll come crashing down on the back of a deer and bite its throat or break its neck with its large paws.  They’re as ferocious as anything you’d find in Africa.  Sometimes I’ve heard they strike with such force they snap their own necks and jaws.”

“I gather they’re not the brightest creatures in the world.”

Holmgren disagreed.  “They’re hunters, Griff, and when they find what they’re looking for they react instinctively.  Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t.  But, believe me, they’re damn good at what they do and they succeed more often than they fail.”

“So I guess anything with some meat on its bones is a potential source of food for them, including you and me?”

“They’ll attack humans.  No question about it.  Every couple of years you’ll hear about some hiker or hunter getting attacked.  But it’s pretty rare.  I figure we spook them as much as they spook us.”

Griffin took another sip of beer.  “So what do you think my chances are of getting a picture of one of these creatures?”

“Slim, I am afraid.  But if I were you I’d go where deer are most likely to be because they are the lions’ primary prey.  Find yourself a salt lick or a deer trail and set up your camera there and maybe you’ll get lucky and get the shot you want.”

“But you think the odds are against it?”

He shrugged.  “You never know, Griff, maybe you’ll be lucky, but it’s definitely a longshot.  Mountain lions are big cats.  They weigh more than either of us do, and they stretch six feet or more from their noses to their backsides and their tails can get as long as three feet.  But they are very cunning and secretive and manage to keep out of sight while stalking their prey.  That’s why they are such good hunters.”

“I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled then.”

“By all means,” he said, smiling tautly.  “You never know when they might appear.  I was out elk hunting a few years back and I started across this old logging road and all of a sudden I saw this enormous tail disappear into the brush.”

“You think it was a lion?”

“I know it was,” he said confidently.  “As sure as I know anything.  I tracked it but I never saw it again.  That’s pretty much the experience of others I know who’ve seen mountain lions.  They’re there, maybe right in front of you, then they’re gone.”

***

What the retired firefighter told him was absolutely correct.  He had to stay alert at all times when he was out in the woods or else he might not get the shot of the lion when it appeared.  He could not afford to nod off, as he almost did a few minutes ago, not if he wanted to succeed.  Again, he looked at his watch.  He had been at the stand nearly three hours and realized it was time to pack it in otherwise he was afraid he might fall asleep.  The longest he had spent there was three hours and forty minutes and he was so worn out he could barely make it back to his truck.  Three hours, he decided, was his limit for now anyway.  Some day he hoped to develop the endurance of a real wildlife photographer so that he could spend the whole day at the stand.

Trudging back to his truck, again without seeing a mountain lion, he didn’t feel entirely disappointed because it was always refreshing to get out of the stale air of the studio and come out to the forest and breathe the crisp, clean mountain air.  The time he spent out here was easily the most gratifying part of the week for him, especially since his wife asked him to leave their boathouse.  She had fallen in love with the manager of the bank branch where she worked as a loan officer.  She had supposedly fallen in love with some others in their nine year marriage but this was the first time she asked him to leave.  He was stunned, not having any inkling she was seeing someone again.  He suspected this romance would pass as the others had but he was not as confident this time because Gloria indicated she was going to consult a divorce lawyer.  The thought of not being with her ever again was not something he looked forward to certainly but he knew as well as she did that they had not been in love with one another for a very long time.  He felt no animosity toward her because of her decision, he just hated coming home at night to a place without anyone there.

T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and recent stories of his have appeared in the “San Antonio Journal” and “Sortes.”