The Senior Pictures on the Courthouse Square

She slid the print out and held it up to the window light. She did not say a word for a long time. I watched her look at it the way I had taught her to look at a picture, corners first, then the middle, then the face.

“Emmett,” she said finally, “what is this for?”

So I told her. I told her about the supper table, and the $180, and money thrown away on a girl going to work at the plant anyway.

I did not tell it mean. I told her about Kirby’s mother and the motel rooms, too, and the school picture he never had. I wanted to be fair.

Arden set the print down on her desk very gently, the way you set down something that belongs to someone else.

“Homecoming is next week,” she said.

“I know.”

“We run the senior class list every homecoming week,” she said. “All the seniors at the high school, every name. It’s on page three, usually. It’s usually a picture of the football team.”

She picked up the phone on her desk and dialed the back, where her one other full-time person lays out the pages.

“Hold the front,” she said. “I’ve got something.”

What it cost

I asked her what I owed her. I had brought my checkbook. I know what a front page photo is worth to a paper, because I sold enough of them.

Arden looked at me like I had said something backwards.

“Emmett,” she said, “you taught me everything I know about this job, and you never charged me a dime for one minute of it. Put your checkbook away.”

“I don’t want it to look like charity,” I said. “For the girl.”

“It isn’t charity,” Arden said. “It’s the best picture anybody’s handed me in ten years. I’m running it because it’s good. Photo by Emmett Rourke. You’ll have to live with that.”

I drove home with the radio off.

Thursday

Thursday morning I was at the gas station out on the highway by a quarter till eight, getting coffee. I go most mornings. It is where the retired men in this town go to complain about the weather and the Chiefs.

The bundle of papers came in at ten till. Clement, who has run the counter there since before his hair went white, cut the twine with his pocketknife and started filling the rack by the door.

I did not look. Not yet. I stood by the coffee machine and fixed mine the way I always do, with too much sugar, and I listened.

“Well, would you look at that,” Clement said, to nobody.

Two of the old boys at the table by the window got up and went over to the rack. One of them whistled.

“That’s Lacey Doss’s girl,” one of them said. “Isn’t it? On the steps there?”

“That’s Emmett’s granddaughter,” Clement said, and he looked over at me, and I nodded.

“Photo by Emmett Rourke,” the other one read off the page. “Well, I’ll be. You haven’t lost it, Emmett.”

I said thank you. I did not say anything else. I did not want to make it about me, and I was not sure I could have said much anyway.

Then the door opened and Kirby came in.