That day, now, returning to that day with the morning sky opening up and the white haze down near the edge of the river, having passed that man going into the antique store, the stoplight changing to amber, then red, with that strange slowness only I seem to notice. The police were on to me. They knew about my search and often pulled me over. There was nothing illicit in my circling route, down Broadway five or six blocks and then back around, close to the river, where the new housing developments hunched and cluttered. On some days I’d settle myself into the bench in front of the library to examine movements and gestures in a small quadrant: I’d see good things there occasionally, the passing motions and gestures of many, but rarely anything close to a pure gesture. Only once, almost, catching sight of two folks bedecked in khaki pants and matching navy polo shirts, working their way across the street with that retired stride you see up here, proud and purposeful lopes of the legs slightly bent and distorted by hidden pains and aberrations, bones brittle and weakening; these two were spry on their feet, and their gesture held me for weeks, sustained me in my search, filled my soul with bubbles of possibilities. She held him as they crossed, a light little clutch, her fine fingers curled around one of his, which one not mattering the least to me, because in a good gesture it is the gesture itself that demolishes and makes irrelevant the smaller details; the whole thing becomes a movement, a blemish, an act unto itself apart from the particulars. In the hopes of more, I thought about following them, but then I knew better. To hunt gestures you have to let them find you, blowing across the street like dead leaves: a man lingers over something in the window, his hands in his pockets in a particular way; a young child waves silently with a subdued manner to nothing at all as she passes in the back seat of a blue Chevy Nova, her eyes dogged and lonely.
That morning when the traffic light changed I made my way forward through the intersection, looking from one side to another, as is my habit. Just past the corner of Broadway and Elm, I felt that strange sensation one gets looking from a main street down a side street, a street leading down to the river, the haze of light as it bleeds from the water, the close proximity of the dusty brick walls, the loneliness that such side streets sing. Long ago, back in Illinois, I used to stop and pause at those places. It was as if the soul had lifted up from the town and left it a husk, empty and void. The breeze lifted ever so slightly the leaves of the one poplar in front of the library building, the benches empty. The police were behind me.
Did I say it was a strange day? Did I say the soul had lifted from the town, flung her wings over the confluences and diversions of the Hudson River? Did I say the dusty bones of the dead lay over the sidewalks like cleaned ash, the talc remains of chins and teeth and brows?
My search was going along fine as I passed the bookstore, where a mother pushed a stroller over the curb, working her elbows to get the front wheels up gently so as not to disturb the baby inside, a small white form floating amid blankets. Past her, at the bus stop, in front of the defunct playhouse, shredded posters quivering, two black women stood with that strange lonely anticipation I always see in those waiting for the bus to the George Washington Bridge: the hopelessness, their eyes gazing down the street with such longing. Past them, on the left-hand side, someone was hunched over, tying his laces with the slow deliberation of a child, as if learning the knot for the first time — certainly a fine gesture but over before I passed. He became a businessman in a long, lean, blue suit, straightening himself up, adjusting the fall of his pant cuffs, looking once to check his black polished oxfords.
To delineate the obvious, to consecrate that scene, the pure gesture, that before me appeared on the short narrow steps, three in all, leading into the front door of the funeral parlor, covered by the heavy shadows of the large pin oak growing out front: They were there out front of Olsen’s establishment. A man and a woman embraced by grief. Embracing. The man in a sports coat and blue jeans with that stooped expression, slightly bent beneath some gravitational weight of his own grief; the woman in a long violet dress tightening then loosening against her hips as the breeze rippled the fabric — those hips I’ll never forget, I suppose, jutting lightly against his own, as much a part of the embrace as anything. She bent and shifted with the great forces against her the way someone on the deck of a boat must adjust himself to a changing horizon — it was right there before me, the gyroscope of their pain holding the gesture, making it as pure as carved stone, petrified forever, the brass rails holding up the canopy overhead, green-and-white-striped. Suddenly a blinding purplish brilliance lit the front of the parlor afire. I was past. It was behind me. That beloved, graven gesture — near perfect — was gone, faded off into some infinite point along the lines of my life, dissolved by time and by the human movement. I felt then, acutely, and for the first time in years, the sorrow of my loss. I headed around the block, hoping the gesture would still be there when I returned. It was the kind of frail, stupid hope that can only betray. The man and the women by this time would have shifted into some other position. He’d be smoking cigarette against the brass rail; she’d have her neck bent as she studied the undersides of the leaves. Ah, the mutual sadness of loss, the dead and gone. I went around the block anyway.
By the time I returned, traffic was clogged and men and women with headset radios were guiding crowds. This time I saw the klieg lights set up on the side of the street opposite Olsen’s establishment, and the snaking electrical cables draped over the curbing, and the bored and lonely extras with their unreal eyes, chewing catered bagels from fold-up tables near the library. Down one dusty side street trailers were parked head to head. It was an impingement on my town’s soul, a final affront. The town had given itself over to the unreal. The unreal was stopping traffic, attracting gawkers. Gawkers were more concerned with the unreal than with their own lives. The work of my later life was coming to a head. Was I to be betrayed or to be a betrayer? Were there not obligations to the dead that had to be taken into consideration, punishments to be doled out? Was it not a crime to grieve, falsely grieve, and in that false bereavement to create what is essentially a perfect human gesture? What else was I to do? What choice did I have? I aimed. The wheel jittered under fingertips.
The curb offered up firm resistance, but my speed surmounted it. I struck the camera head-on. It lifted skyward, blocky and heavy. With a death, I made hallow the setting in which the perfect gesture took place.
And so you see my acts were not, as some have said, those of a madman. The police found no skid marks and drew their conclusions. The trial, as dictated by our fair Constitution, was quick and thorough. That third perfect gesture is there forever, where all gesture hunters keep these things, engraved on the rock of my eyelids like some ancient petroglyph. I can’t get rid of it no matter how false it was. For at least a few blocks it gave me back the sorrow that was rightfully mine.