Ghost Town Read Free

Some of the envelopes and packages she stamped RETURN TO SENDER . But even when she took her time and tidied up after herself she was always finished before noon.
    We had a lot of time on our hands, but although we are closely related and have deep affection for each other, I'm sure, our interests have always been dissimilar. For example, she likes to watch TV.
    I can't sit still that long.
    Long before the Baldersons moved to Kansas City, getting supplies had become a problem in Paisley. The nearest supermarket was an hour's drive. The nearest town with lots of stores and a movie theater and a hospital was more than two hours distant. So trips for food and household necessities generally happened only once a week, and we were careful to prepare a detailed list.
    Chief Leopard Frog suggested that I begin a project, something that I could do with my hands.
    "Like what?" I asked.
    I'd already built a hideout, and there's very little that one boy can do to rescue a big, rocky, weedy farm.
    "Consult your talisman," he instructed.
    I reached into my pocket. The smooth, hard rabbit fit into the concave of my palm as if tailor-made for its folds and creases.
    When I made a fist, the talisman disappeared inside, yet it filled all the available space.
    This is an ingenious bit of woodcarving,
I started to tell Chief Leopard Frog.
    But when I looked up to speak to him, he was gone.
    Initially, Chief Leopard Frog appeared to be right about the power of the talisman. It directed me between that period when I was deep in sleep and that sudden moment when I was fully awake, not with spoken words, but using silent communication, broadcasting only during the divide between life's two unequal worlds, transmitting extrasensory messages from the fragile, shrouded land of drifting images and distant music, that nocturnal interlude called middle dreams.
    Take my picture,
the talisman suggested.
    After breakfast, I went out to the workshop to search through my father's things. It didn't take me long to find it. It was right there next to his rusty tackle box, a big, box-shaped bag of tan imitation leather, and both containers covered with a layer of gritty dust and dead roly-polys.
    Inside were lots of loose parts, extra lenses, a couple of rolls of unspent film, a compact, collapsable tripod, circular metal pieces with a purpose I couldn't discern—some sort of hood, perhaps?
    But there it was, floating in the middle of all these accessories, my father's old thirty-five-millimeter single-lens reflex camera.
    When I picked it up, it felt like a serious tool, not like the lightweight miniature digital cameras people use these days.
    This one had actual moving parts assembled by hand, and its lens, while maybe not as fine a lens as money could buy, was certainly as fine as my father could buy at the time.
    It was also a versatile lens. At the flip of a thumb switch, it would convert from a focus of short telephoto range to macro mode. In other words, unlike with most snapshot cameras, with this one I could make photographs both at a distance and in extreme close-up.
    Small things, like talismans and spiders and red clover flowers, were within my realm.
    Naturally, the battery was dead and the film in the bag had long since expired. And doubtlessly, the camera needed a cleaning.
    But it was a start.
    As Chief Leopard Frog might have said but, to his credit, didn't,
A collection of a thousand bug pictures starts with a single caterpillar.
    Our next trip to town was two days away. I used this time to prepare the camera and to read the soiled manual that came with it. Frankly, I found many of the operating instructions confusing. While the camera imitates the physical structure of the human eye, it sees things differently.
    Learning these differences and how to manipulate them can become a lifelong obsession.
    Like painting, sculpture, dancing, writing, and music, if it takes constant practice and the exclusion of all else to get things right, then