Kathleen had been combing through her hair with her fingers, and it was almost dry by the time Erik called “uncle” and came out of the water.
“If I stay here too long, I’m going to need more vitamins,” he said as he fell onto his back. The skin on his stomach stretched taut and formed a deep cavern beneath his ribs. His chest rose and fell with heavy breathing.
She laughed. “You don’t have any trouble keeping up.” Before she could rationalize her motivation, she confessed, “I was trying to trip you up today.”
He rolled over onto his side and looked up at her with his piercing blue eyes. She refused to meet them and stared at the splashing children.
“Why?” he asked softly. He wasn’t smiling.
Shaking her damp hair, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I have an instinctive aversion to someone who follows people around with a camera as though trying to catch them in some compromising situation. I think I had you pegged as a cynic, looking for ulterior motives behind our program here. Mountain View is ecumenical and supported strictly by private donations. Edna and B. J. take very little out for their own salaries and work hard each fall and spring to book groups for sales meetings and such. The money they make off of that goes right back into the camp. They’ve assumed this summer camp for orphans as their personal mission, but they also leave themselves open for criticism. I guess I saw you as a modern-day witch-hunter.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “A few years ago, you would have been right.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was a cynic. I thought the world and everything in it stank. I knew all the answers to make it right, of course, but I wouldn’t share them with anyone. That would
put me on the same low plane with all the other idiots who tried to rectify universal injustices.” He laughed bitterly at himself and sifted several small pebbles from one hand to the other.
“What made you so bitter toward the world?” Kathleen asked. “You see, I excused myself for feeling that way. My parents had been taken from me.”
“That’s the hell of it. I had no excuse. I think I acted that way out of immaturity and boredom more than anything else. I was a perfect example of the ‘me’ generation. If the whole world was bent on destruction, then I was determined to show it that I didn’t give a damn if it went to hell in a bucket. I would look out for Number One. Me.”
“What changed you? Not that I don’t think you’re still a smart-ass,” she qualified.
He laughed at her admission, but then grew serious. “I was sent to Ethiopia on assignment. I spent six months there. I went convinced that the whole world was ugly.”
“And you found even more ugliness?”
“No,” he said gently. “I found beauty.”
She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t—”
“Let me explain. If I can. One day I was in a refugee camp. God, Kathleen, you can’t even imagine the deprivation, the misery. We have no concept of…” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “There’s just no way to describe the devastation, the… the putrefaction.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the image.
“Anyway, I was shooting tape, and in my eyepiece, I saw a young mother with her baby. Both of them were well past critical as far as starvation levels go, emaciated, really. But unaware of my seeing her, the woman squeezed the last drop of milk out of her breast and put her nipple in the baby’s mouth. She wept. The infant reached up and touched her cheek. It was as though he knew that was all she had to give and was grateful for it.”
He became quiet, staring off into space. Even the sounds the campers were making seemed to be absorbed by his intensity.
“Amid all that ugliness, I saw something beautiful. I don’t mean to get too preachy, but I think I realized that there could be something good found in everything if you look hard enough. The world just might be worth saving after all, if only for the sake of one child.”
Kathleen was strangely moved by the story. “Your camera must find all sorts of nuances that the naked eye would miss. It doesn’t discriminate, does it? It isn’t closed by prejudgment.”
“Come here,” he said suddenly, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet.
“Where?” she asked. “The children—”
“No, no. We’re just going over here. Very few people are allowed this privilege. I hope you appreciate it.”
He steered her toward the boulder where his camera was. Hands on hips, he squinted his eyes at her appraisingly and then looked at the heavy camera. “Let’s see. How are you going to do this?” he muttered. “If I put that on your shoulder, you’ll sink into the ground.”
“What—”
“Here! I know.” He flipped several switches as she had seen him do last night, turning on the machine. “Okay, you move over here.” Placing a hand at her waist, he pulled her nearer until she was facing the rock and almost eye level with the camera.
“Now, stand up on tiptoe until you can fit your right eye against the eyepiece. Can you see the monitor in there?”
She did as she was told. It was hard to concentrate on anything after the contact his hand had made with her bare midriff. But her eyes found the tiny television monitor that was about an inch square.