Thwonk by Joan Bauer Read Free Book Online Page B

remembered my father’s words: “Let the camera know what you’re feeling.”
    I took a deep breath. I was feeling strangely in control. I moved in close (amateurs forget this), caught the rock in stark detail at an angle that made it look like a gravestone, and blurred the surrounding elements by going to a wide aperture setting. A pigeon landed on the rock.
    “Perfect,” I whispered, “keep it steady, steady…”
    The pigeon posed standing, pecking. I watched for small moments when he would reveal himself. He squawked. I caught it. He scratched. I got that too.
    “Fly,” I told him.
    He fluttered like a butterfly and I jiggled the camera on purpose to get an impressionistic blur that would no doubt get me a four-year photography scholarship at NYU. I was perspiring despite the cold and focused in close for the Ultimate Rock Shot, capturing the consummate confusion of my generation. My finger lowered the shutter, light streaked against the film.
    “You’ve got it,” the cupid said, fluttering down.
    “I want another roll.” I plopped new film into the camera.
    He shook his head. “Another roll is not necessary.”
    “I’m the photographer,” I reminded him. “You’re—”
    “Jonathan,” the cupid said, extending his hand.
    I took it gently. It was the size of a fingernail, weird and marvelous. “Jonathan,” I said softly.
    Suddenly the sunbeam brilliance disappeared; clouds covered the sky. Without that light we had nothing. You can’t trust a natural phenomenon.
    “There is very little time, my friend!” The cupid whistled to Stieglitz, who bounded over. “We must press on!”
    I unzippered my jacket. The cupid fluttered his wings impatiently.
    “What kind of cupid are you?” I whispered.
    Jonathan smiled and motioned me toward home.

    Jonathan was zooming around my darkroom like a euphoric bee while I was in the critical stage of developing high-contrast film, when the image must be brought out without losing the detail. This stage made the difference between a nice photograph you put in an album and one that sold for cold cash. I was agitating the film-developer tank assertively like I always do for the first thirty seconds. I was then going to agitate it in twenty-second intervals, going a full four minutes to bring out the light, when Jonathan said I would lose the textures if I agitated that long. That’s when I said that I could do this in my sleep, thank you,
I
didn’t need advice from a dinky Ansel Adams. Jonathan fluttered his wings, which caused me to lose count, which left me no choice except to fix and rinse the film early rather than risk overdevelopment. The prints were stellar: the early light beamed across the DONNA IS CONFUSED like a laser.
    “You’re welcome,” said Jonathan.
    “All right,” I sighed, “I was wrong.” I hung the wet shot on my clothesline to dry and sat back, supremely satisfied. “They’re great, Jonathan. Thank you.”
    Jonathan took out his arrow, fixed it expertly in his bow…
    “What do you do with that thing?” I asked.
    Jonathan pulled his muscled right arm back, pulled the string tighter, tighter; his eyes squinted at the minuscule root-beer stain on my wall, hardly visible through the glow of my red safelight. He concentrated on his target, pulled the arrow back to cheek level, never losing control. He let the arrow fly; it shot through the air sure and true and landed dead center in the small brown blob.
    Thwonk.
    Jonathan stayed in shoot position until his breathing returned to normal.
    “I bring truth,” he said quietly, and flew to retrieve the arrow.

    I pulled the Volvo into Pearly’s steep driveway. Her two-story front window was framed with cupid posters proclaiming, IT’S COMING SOON . I got out of the Volvo and smirked. “I’ve got news for you, Pearly.
It’s here!
”
    Jonathan glared at the cupid posters in Pearly’s window. “Positively boorish!” he declared.
    Pearly’s house was a flashy, modern concoction of