The Carnival Papers

Sunset Limited

With his camera bag slung over one shoulder and the tripod under one arm, Frank Hemsky left the relative safety of the hiking trail, sinking up to his ankles in the spongy soil.  He scanned the sawgrass for signs of alligators or any of the dozens of indigenous species to roam Everglades National Park and then splashed ahead to find a suitable location.  Pausing to look at the lighted dial of his watch, he calculated he had three hours before sunrise.

The horizon was still a solid void of navy blue, but Frank knew where to go from his six previous expeditions into the Everglades over his twelve-year career.  He counted the steps from the trail and padded deeper through the sawgrass of the marl prairie.  At two hundred twenty-six, he stopped and took the tripod from under his arm.  After extending the legs into the muck, he opened the camera bag and took out the Nikon 35mm he’d carried for the last ten years.  With the efficiency of a trained assassin, Frank screwed on the 80-200mm zoom lens to capture a stand of trees when the sun peeked over the horizon. 

The last weather report he’d listened to on the radio before leaving the campground had promised clear skies until mid-afternoon, when a storm system would roll in from the Gulf of Mexico.  Frank lit a cigarette and blew out a line of smoke along with a sigh into the darkness.  The storm would spoil a half-day of shooting, leaving him with nothing to do but wait in his tent and think of Tracy.

He’d called from a Burger King in Homestead, dropping the proper change into the slot to call Los Angeles.  “Frank?  Where are you?” she said, her voice cold, as though talking to a wrong number.

“I’m in Florida.”

“Florida?  For how long?”

He cradled the receiver on his shoulder and patted his pockets to find a cigarette.  As he collapsed against a poster of a Whopper, he saw the No Smoking sign and tossed the cigarette into the trash.  “A couple days.  I’ll be back next week.”

“I went to see Tom this afternoon.  He says all you have to do is sign the papers and we can go forward.”

“Right.  I’ll do it as soon as I get back.”

“Please, Frank, I don’t want to drag this out.  Let’s just get it over with.”

“I will.”  He hung up the telephone and, after staring at the pictures of oversized hamburgers above the counter for a minute, went outside to light a cigarette.  He leaned against the brick wall of the restaurant until a teenage couple brushed past, clinging to each other as though conjoined.  Frank shook his head and walked back to his rental car for the last leg of the journey.

The sound of splashing water brought him back to reality and he scanned the area with his flashlight to find the source of the noise.  Alligators were known to roam through the marl prairies, but they rarely attacked humans unless provoked.  Seeing nothing, Frank bent down to put out his cigarette and then dropped it into a Ziploc bag to discard once he got back to camp.

Still squatting, he examined the gold wedding band on his left hand Tracy had given him over five years ago.  He thought of her then, unspoiled, with her dark hair pulled back into an unfashionable ponytail beneath her peaked tour guide’s hat.  Like any of the wildlife at Yellowstone, taking her out of her natural habitat had led to disaster.  The old instincts of kindness and humor had given way to the new ones of avarice and sullenness when it became clear he couldn’t afford the lifestyle of her new friends.  It came as no surprise when she found someone who could.

He searched for an island among the standing water and plunged his hand into the mushy soil to scoop out a hole.  Before he could twist the ring off his finger, he heard another splash and then fell backwards into the water as the lightning flash of a camera blinded him.  When his vision cleared, he saw a woman standing next to his tripod, a disposable camera—the cardboard model they sold at the gift shop—in her long-fingered hands.  “What are you doing?” he said.