Unless these were homeless persons simply sitting amid shopping bags, boxes, laundry baskets heaped with possessions.
Solitary figures in the “city center” motionless as statues in a tableau of blight. Though this part of Muskegee Falls had undergone an ambitious urban renewal (evidently) it did not appear renewed but rather enervated, eviscerated. The camera eye dwelled upon open, near-empty “plazas” with fountains sparkling giddily in the sun, and no one to see, as in a painting of de Chirico. Patches of burnt-out grass. Spindling trees seemingly abandoned to die in the dry sunny heat of autumn.
At the edge of the sandstone square a smart, new-looking building where there was a flurry of activity—Broome County Public Library.
Her hands were less shaky now, gripping the camera. She was feeling a delayed rush of fear, anger, dismay—how helpless she’d have been, if the deputy had confiscated her camera, or smashed it . . . Was it an exaggeration, to imagine this happening? Had she misread the man’s hostility to her, that had seemed to come on so swiftly? She didn’t want to think that, if he’d known her identity, not Dunphy but Voorhees the daughter of the murdered abortion provider, he might have been even more hostile to her.
With her camera she drifted like a ghost. Strangers glanced at her, some of them with quizzical smiles. Do I know you, miss? Do you know me?
She did not know these strangers. She did not know any of them. She could not bring herself to ask if anyone had known, or had even heard of, her father Gus Voorhees.
And why here, why these scattered and random sights recorded in her camera, she could not have said. Except that he had been here in 1999, or in the vicinity. And she was recording what she could of Muskegee Falls in the (desperate, quixotic) hope that out of these scattered and random sights at some future time she could extract a meaning that eluded her now.
The Israeli filmmaker Yael Ravel whom she’d so admired had said you must accumulate hours, days, weeks of video material to extract from it just a few precious minutes to preserve—if you are lucky.
She wanted to believe this. She had no option.
IN THE LOBBY of the Muskegee Falls Inn, est. 1894. Handsome old “historic” hotel, faded Tudor facade. Lobby very quiet at this hour of mid-afternoon. Dimly lighted, wood-paneled walls, staid leather couches, chairs. Fireplace piled with (unlit) birch logs. Ornate chandelier with tall slender white faux candles.
Through a doorway a large room, banquet room, with myriad round tables, empty.
Through another doorway, an entrance to the dim-lit Sign of the Ram Pub.
He’d stayed in this hotel sometimes, she had reason to think. Before he’d rented a place of his own in town.
Or had he stayed with friends, initially? Newly acquired friends here in Muskegee Falls. Colleagues in public health work. Planned Parenthood, abortion providers.
The comaraderie of the beleaguered. The threatened, despised.
Baby killers. Your souls will burn in Hell.
She knew that Jenna had stayed in the Muskegee Falls Inn for the duration of the first trial.
Alone, as Jenna had preferred.
Newly widowed, and in dread of sympathy. The swarm of sympathy-bearers with their plaintive cries—Oh Jenna I feel so sad about Gus, just terrible about Gus . . . Terrible, terrible!
They’d laughed wildly together. Jenna, Darren, Naomi. A kind of drunken revelry. The stress of so much (well-intentioned) sympathy. For a long time fearful of going outside (Jenna had said) without wearing a veil or a mask or a paper bag over your head, so that no one could recognize you and clamp you in an embrace.
“Miss? May I be of assistance?”
The big-haired woman behind the check-in counter cast her voice across the lobby at Naomi, with a thin slice of a smile.
Skilled in assessing strangers, seeing that the young woman who’d entered the lobby in rumpled khakis, sneakers, baseball cap pulled low over her forehead was carrying just a shoulder bag and a camera and did not have a suitcase with her.
Politely Naomi asked if there was a room available for the night.
The thin-sliced smile turned to a frown. “A single room?”
“Yes. A single room.”
It was perceived to be just slightly strange, was it—that Naomi was alone? Obviously a traveler, a stranger to Muskegee Falls, wanting a single room.
“For how many nights, miss?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe two, or three.”
The big-haired woman smiled at Naomi with an expression of frank curiosity. “D’you have family here?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Here on business?”
“No.”
“Friends?”
“No.”
“Just traveling then? Passing through?”
“Not really.”
Confounded, the desk clerk could think of no further inquiry. With a deeper frown she checked her computer, yes there was a room. Non-smoking, double bed, river view, fourth floor.