Double Exposure Read Online Free Page B

sockin’ some of that money away?
    —Costs a lot to live down here, but I manage to put a little away.
    —Good.
    —You and Heather worked things out yet?
    —I’m not sure we will.
    —You will.
    —I don’t know.
    —You will.
    —Too early to tell.
    —I’m proud of you, son.
    Surprised by the unexpected words, he stammers in search of a reply.
    —Ah … well … thanks.
    The shocking admission was the first of its kind since childhood and the last words he’d ever hear his dad speak.
    Y eah, he knows what he should do, what Cole would do, but it’s time to start being true to himself. Cole’s gone. Life’s short. He’s continuing on. If he doesn’t start living differently, more deliberately, he’s going to regret it.
    Did Cole die with regrets? Unlike Remington, he seemed so settled, so content with his simple life. Had he been? Really? Or did he hide regret and disappointment from his son the way men do skin magazines in a bottom dresser drawer and a bottle of vodka in the work shed?
    Didn’t know you very well. Not well enough to say whether your short, unfinished life was as fulfilling to you as it seemed, or if you repressed an enmity at the hand you were dealt: the full house of three low cards—claustrophobic, small-town life, sick wife, alien only child—and a pair of bad body parts.
    N octurnal noises.
    Crickets.
    Frogs.
    Chirps. Hums. Buzzes.
    Loud.
    Forging on, he ventures deeper and deeper into darkness and density. Black leaves crunching beneath boots as he follows a ridge line into a stand of hardwoods over five hundred years old.
    Chill.
    Stalking.
    Frightened.
    The feeling that he is being followed persists. Stopping, he listens carefully and shines his small penlight in all directions, but hears and sees only nature.
    This deep, this dark, the woods seem haunted, as if alive with an ancient menacing force predating humanity.
    N earing it now.
    Almost there.
    As he closes in on the spot of his deepest camera trap, the cold and fear and weariness begin to fade, floating up like smoke from a night fire, breaking apart as if bits of ash and rising into invisibility.
    Walking faster now. Excited. Energized. Renewed.
    D ry.
    Following a spring and summer of record low rainfall, autumn had continued the arid trend, the rivers’ flood plains receding, the swamps shrinking.
    Of course, it’s not just lack of rain that causes the forest to crackle and evaporate, but overdevelopment in Atlanta and the overuse of water in Georgia and Alabama—people downstream are always at the mercy of the people upstream, and the dredging of the river by the Corps of Engineers and the way the sand they dredge up blocks tributaries and keeps water from reaching the flood plain.
    This makes him think of the lady known as Mother Earth again, her love of the river and her tireless fight against the Corps.
    The only water in the area is a small spring-fed slough, which is normally just part of a tributary system that flows inland from offshoots of the river to small lakes and streams, but is now cut off, forming a single standing body.
    The sole source of hydration for miles, this small, black, leaf-covered pool is the perfect place for a camera trap. Every animal in the area must come here eventually.
    Remington had set up his inmost camera trap in the hollowed-out base of a cypress tree across from the mouth of the slough. Equipped with an ultra wide-angle lens, the camera frames nearly the entire width of the water, but on the opposite side so it captures the faces of the creatures as they dip in for a drink.
    The camera traps he traded his 401k for were developed to photograph animals that he couldn’t get within picture-taking proximity of.
    The idea was nothing new. Wildlife photographers had been using them all around the world for years. The first ones, designed to photograph tigers, used wires to trigger flash powder on trails, and were intended merely to make a record, just an attempt to get the animals on