The Tin Can Tree

'Where is she?' he asked.

'Over there. Standing up. We wanted her to sit but she says no, she'll do it standing. Die with her boots on. She doesn't like cameras.' She came to life suddenly and disentangled herself from Janice, ignoring the other children's protests. 'She's fading,' she said. James looked over at Janice, surprised, and Mrs Hammond caught his look and shook her head. 'Aunt Hattie, I mean,' she said. 'Just fading away.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said James. He gathered up his equipment and came after her. 'She looked all right to me.'

'Well, she fades out and then in again.'

They circled a little group of women, all standing in identical positions with folded arms while they watched the children playing statues. 'I don't like doing this if she don't want me to,' James called. 'Some people just have an allergy to cameras.'

But Mrs Hammond smiled brightly at him over her shoulder and kept walking. Out here on the grass the sun was still hot, and the back of Mrs Hammond's powdered neck glistened faintly. She had the same brittle little bones as her niece Maisie, only covered now with a solid layer of flesh. James looked away from her and shifted his equipment to the other shoulder. 'Right here would be a good place,' he said. He hadn't really looked around; he just wanted to stop and not do anything any more. The heaviness inside was weighing him down. He set the camera on its tripod and then leaned on it, with his chin propped on his hand, and Mrs Hammond said, 'You all right?'

'I'm fine.' James said.

'You look kind of tired.'

He straightened up and tucked his shirt in. There was Great-Aunt Hattie, only a few yards away now, being led gingerly by Mrs Hammond. Aunt Hattie looked neither to the right nor to the left: she seemed to be pretending Mrs Hammond wasn't there. The closer they got to the camera, the farther away her eyes grew.

'Right here would be a good place,' said Mrs Hammond. 'Don't you think so, James? In front of the roses?'

'Fine,' James said. He had started adjusting his camera and wasn't really looking now. But when he raised his eyes again he saw that the old woman had been placed directly in front of a circular flower bed; she seemed to be rising from the middle of it, like an intricately sculptured garden decoration. James smiled. 'I've changed my mind,' he said. 'I don't think she should have those flowers behind her.'

'They're so pretty, though,' Mrs Hammond said sadly.

'Well. But I think she should have just grass behind her. You mind moving over, Miss Hattie?'

'I have just one thing to say,' Miss Hattie said suddenly.

'Ma'am?'

'Don't push me. You can tell me where to go, but don't push me around.'

'Oh, I won't,' said James.

'The last time I had my picture taken -'

'I think he wants you to move over," Mrs Hammond said. 'Could you step this way, dear?'

The aunt stepped stiffly, jerking her chin up. 'I was saying, Connie, 'she said, 'the last man that took my picture was in need of an anatomy lesson. I told him so. He came right up to me and pushed my face sideways but my shoulders full-front, and my knees sideways but my feet full-front, so I swear, I felt like something on an Egyptian wall. You should have seen the photograph. Well, I don't have to tell you how it looked. I said -'

'If I were you I'd let my beads show,' said Mrs Hammond. 'They're such nice ones.'

'Well, just for that I won't,' snapped Aunt Hattie. She raised her hands, heavy with old rings, and fumbled at the neck of her crepe dress until she had closed it high around her throat, hiding the beads from sight. 'Now no one can see them,' she said, and Connie Hammond sighed and turned to James with her hands spread hopelessly.

'I try and I try,' she told him, and he looked up from fiddling with his camera and smiled.

'Why don't you go on and see to the others,' he said, 'and I'll call you when I'm through. I bet you haven't even had your ice cream yet.'

'No. No, I've been so busy. Well, I might for just a minute, maybe -' She trailed off across the yard, looking relieved, and the last part of her to fade away was her voice, which still flowed on and on.

'She's putting on weight, don't you think?' Aunt Hattie asked.

James had the camera ready now, but he was waiting because he wanted the picture to be just right. He bent down and cleared away a dandelion from one of the tripod legs, and then over his shoulder he called. 'You comfortable like that? Don't want to sit down?'

'No. I'll stand.'

Connie Hammond wouldn't like that, but James was glad. To him Aunt Hattie looked just right this way -standing against a background of bare grass, holding her shoulders high to hide the beads and jutting her chin out at him. She had terrified high school students for forty years that way, back when she taught Latin I. People still told tales about her. She had declined her nouns in a deafening roar and slammed her yardstick against her desk on the ending of every verb. While students could lead other teachers off their subjects just by asking how they'd met their husbands, Miss Hattie had only strayed from Latin once a year, at Christmastime, when she read aloud from a condensed version of Ben Hur. James could picture that. He wished he had her in a classroom right now, to photograph her the way she stood in his mind. But all he had was this wide lawn, and he would have to make do with that. He stood there, pressing a dandelion between his fingers and squinting across at her. 'That's right,' he told her. 'That's what I want.'

She shifted her feet a little. 'How many prints you plan to make of this?' she asked.

'Ma'am?'

'How many copies.'

'Oh. As many as you want.'

'Well, I want none,' she said. 'I'd like to request that you make the one picture asked of you and have that be that.'

'Oh, now.'

'Connie can have one, if she wants it so much. But that's because I don't like her. Nothing she could do would make me like her; I just constitutionally don't. Danny can't have one.'

'Danny who?' he asked. 'Raise your chin a little, please.'

'Danny Hammond. Is there anyone in this world whose last name isn't Hammond?' She raised her chin but went on talking; James leaned his elbow on his camera and waited. 'Danny I put up with,' she said. 'How long will they hide him away from me?'

'Danny Hammond? Why, I saw him only last -'

'You saw him. You saw him. But do you think I do? They rush him away the moment I come around; he looks back over his shoulder all bewildered. He's only seven.'

'Could you turn more toward me?' asked James.

'They think he insulted me last Valentine's Day.'

'Oh, I don't think Danny would -'

'Made me a present. None of these easy-breaking things from the gift shop. Made me a ceramic saltshaker in school, and it was the exact shape of my head, with even the wrinkles painted in.'

'That's nice,' said James.

'Do you know where the salt came out?'

'Well, no.'

'My nose. Ho, out of my nose. Two little holes punched for nostrils, and out came the salt. Can you picture Connie's face?'

James laughed. 'I sure can,' he said.

'Well, of course she hadn't seen the thing, prior to my unwrapping it. She thought it was a bobby-pin holder or something. She said, "Danny Hammond!" and made a grab for it, but I was too quick for her. I meant to keep it; it's not often I get such a personal present. But Connie rushed him off like I would eat him and there I sat, all alone with my saltshaker. No one to thank.'

'Maybe you could -'

'I still use it, though.'

'Ma'am?'

"The saltshaker. I use it daily.'

'Well, I would too,' said James.