Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“No, not at all. The kill was always thrilling and there were no negative feelings accompanying it. But in the past year, maybe even the past two years, it’s all been changing. What used to be a thrill is hollow now.” The smaller man reached for his own glass. “I’m sorry I mentioned this,” he said. “Sorry as hell. Here you had a good day and I have to bring you down with all this nonsense.”

“Not at all, Mr. Krull. Not at all, sir. Eddie, fill these up again, will you? That’s a good fellow.” Dandridge planted a large hand on the top of the bar. “Don’t regret what you’ve said, Mr. Krull. Be glad of it. I’m glad you spoke up and I’m glad I was here to hear you.”

“You are?”

“Absolutely.” Dandridge ran a hand through his wiry gray hair. “Mr. Krull — or if I may call you Roger?”

“By all means, Homer.”

“Roger, I daresay I’ve been hunting more years than you have. Believe me, the feelings you’ve just expressed so eloquently are not foreign to me. I went through precisely what you’re going through now. I came very close to giving it up, all of it.”

“And then the feelings passed?”

“No,” Dandridge said. “No, Roger. They did not.”

“Then—”

Dandridge smiled hugely. “I’ll tell you what I did,” he said. “I didn’t give it up. I thought of doing that because I grew to hate killing, but the idea of missing the woods and the mountains galled me. Oh, you can go walking in the woods without hunting, but that’s not the same thing. The pleasure of the stalk, the pursuit, the matching of human wit and intelligence against the instincts and cunning of game — that’s what makes hunting what it is for me, Roger.”

“Yes,” Krull murmured. “Certainly.”

“So what I did,” Dandridge said, “was change my style. No more bang-bang.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No more bang-bang,” Dandridge said, gesturing. “Now it’s click-click instead.” And when Krull frowned uncomprehendingly, the big man put his hands in front of his face and mimed the operation of a camera. “Click!” he said.

Light dawned. “Oh,” said Krull.

“Exactly.”

“Not with a bang but a click.”

“Nicely put.”

“Photography.”

“Let’s not say photography,” Dandridge demurred. “Let us say hunting with a camera.”

“Hunting with a camera.”

Dandridge nodded. “So you see now why I said I was a hunter in a manner of speaking. Many people would not call me a hunter. They would say I was a photographer of animals in the wild, while I consider myself a hunter who simply employs a camera instead of a gun.”

Krull took his time digesting this. “I understand the distinction,” he said.

“I felt that you would.”

“The act of taking the picture is equivalent to making the kill. It’s how you take the trophy, but you don’t go out because you want a picture of an elk any more than a man hunts because he wants to put meat on the table.”

“You do understand, Mr. Krull.” The glasses, it was noticed, were once more empty. “Eddie!”

“My turn this time, Eddie,” said Roger Krull. He waited until the drinks were poured and tasted. Then he said, “Do you get the same thrill, Homer?”

“Roger, I get twice the thrill. Another old hunter name of Hemingway said a moral act is one that makes you feel good afterward. Well, if that’s the case, then hunting with a gun became immoral for me a couple of years back. Hunting with a camera has all the thrills and excitement of gun hunting without the letdown that comes when you realize you’ve caused pain and death to an innocent creature. If I want meat on the table I’ll buy it, Roger. I don’t have to kill a deer to prove to myself I’m a man.”

“I’ll certainly go along with that, Homer.”

“Here, let me show you something.” Dandridge produced his wallet, drew out a sheaf of color snapshots. “I don’t normally do this,” he confided. “I could wind up being every bit as much of a bore as those pests who show you pictures of their grandchildren. But I get the feeling you’re interested.”

“You’re damned right I’m interested, Homer.”

“Well, now,” Dandridge said. “All right, we’ll lead off with something big. This here is a Kodiak bear. I went up to Alaska to get him, hired a guide, tracked the son of a bitch halfway across the state until I got close enough for this one. That’s not taken with a telephoto lens, incidentally. I actually got in close and took that one.”

“You hire guides and backpack and everything.”

“Oh, the whole works, Roger. I’m telling you, it’s the same sport right up to the moment of truth. Then I take a picture instead of a life. I take more risks now than I did when I carried a gun through the woods. I never would have stood that close to the bear in order to shoot him. Hell, you can drop them from a quarter of a mile if you want, but I got right in close to take his picture. If he’d have charged—”

They reached for their drinks.

“I’ll just show you a few more of these,” Dandridge said. “You’ll notice some of them aren’t game animals, strictly speaking. Of course when you hunt with a camera you’re not limited to what the law says is game, and the seasons don’t apply. An endangered species doesn’t shrink because I take its photograph. I can shoot does, I can photograph in or out of season, anything I want. The fact of the matter is that I prefer to go after trophy animals in season because that makes more of a game out of it, but sometimes it’s as much of a challenge to try for a particular songbird that’s hard to get up close to. That’s a scarlet tanager there, it’s a bird that lives in deep woods and spooks easy. Of course I had to use a telephoto lens to get anything worth looking at but it’s still considered something of an accomplishment. I got a thrill out of that shot, Roger. Now no one would shoot a little bird like that, nobody would want to, but when you hunt with a camera it’s another story entirely, and I don’t mind telling you I got a thrill out of that shot.”

“I can believe it.”

“Now here’s a couple of mountain goats, that was quite a trip I had after them, and this antelope, oh, there’s a heck of a story goes with this one—”

It was a good hour later when Homer Dandridge returned the photographs to his wallet. “Here I went and talked your ear off,” he said apologetically, but Roger Krull insisted quite sincerely that he had been fascinated throughout.

“I wonder,” he said. “I just wonder.”

“If it would work for you or not?”

Krull nodded. “Of course I had a camera years ago,” he said, “but I never had much interest in it. I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I took a photograph of anything.”

“Never had the slightest interest in it myself,” Dandridge said. “Until I substituted click for bang, that is.”

“No more bang-bang. Click-click instead. I don’t know, Homer. I suppose you’ve got all sorts of elaborate equipment, fancy cameras, all the rest. It’d take me a year and a day to learn how to load one of those things.”

“They’re easier than you think,” Dandridge said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got some reasonably fancy gear. Hell, you wouldn’t believe the money I used to spend on guns. Or I guess you would if you’re a hunter yourself. Well, it’s not surprising that I spend money the same way on cameras. I’ve got a new Japanese model that I’m just getting the hang of, and I’ve got my eyes on a lens for it that’s going to cost me more than a whole camera ought to cost, and the next step’s developing my own pictures and I don’t suppose that’s very far off. Just around the corner, I suspect. In another few months I’ll likely have my own darkroom in the basement and be up to my elbows in chemicals.”