Double Image by David Morrell

Coltrane said.
    “You want something?”
    “I’d like to take your picture.”
    “Why?” The woman tensed.
    “Somebody once took a picture of me and my mother exactly where you’re standing. I’d like to feel what the photographer felt. I’d like to try to take the same picture.”
    The woman looked baffled.
    “Go back to what you were doing. I won’t bother you. I’ll just take one picture and leave.”
    The woman’s gaze faltered as she struggled with her suspicion. At last, after another shrug, she returned her attention to the boy and started pushing him again.
    Coltrane selected a fast shutter speed to avoid blur, then peered through his viewfinder. Knowing that Packard’s camera was too awkward for this situation, he was using his Nikon. Through the viewfinder, in miniature but somehow intensified, the woman pushed. The boy went up in the air, then swung back down. The woman gave another push, her body leaning into the motion. The boy looked up, as if his goal were the sky. As he veered back down, Coltrane adjusted the focus. He readied his finger on the shutter button. There wasn’t any question about the position he wanted them to be in. He had studied that position thousands of times in the photograph that had made him want to be a photographer.
    In
Sightings
, a book that Packard had written about photography, the master had devoted a chapter to his theory of anticipation.
Once you see the elements of the image you want, it’s too late to release the camera’s shutter. By the time you do, those elements will have changed. In that instant, clouds will have shifted, smiles will have weakened, branches will have been nudged by a breeze. It is the nature of life for things to be in motion, even if they do not appear to be, and the only way to capture the precise positioning of your subject as you desire it is to study your subject until you understand its dynamic — and then to anticipate what your subject will do. The photographer’s task is to project into the future in order to make the present timeless.
    Do it now, Coltrane thought. He pressed the shutter button, and in the ensuing millisecond, as the camera clicked, the woman and the boy achieved perfect balance. Through the viewfinder, time seemed suspended. Coltrane sighed and lowered the camera. The boy reached the limit of his upward glide, hovered, and began to descend. Time began again.
    “Thanks,” Coltrane said. “What’s your name and address? I’ll send you a couple of prints.”
    “Do I look that stupid? You think I’m gonna tell you my name and address?”
    Coltrane’s spirit sank.
    He turned from the playground and studied the trailer behind him. The three concrete steps to its entrance were cracked. The screen had been torn from the bent aluminum door. One of the windows had cardboard in it.
    He crossed the gravel lane. The bent door creaked when he opened it. The metal door behind it shuddered when he knocked. He waited, not hearing any sound. He knocked a second time but still didn’t get a response. When he knocked a third time, he started to worry, only to see the door open and a stooped, wrinkled black woman with short silver hair frown out at him.
    “You.” The woman clutched a tattered housecoat to her chest. “Where you been? Ain’t seen you in a couple of months.”
    “I was away on several business trips — out of the country.”
    “Got to thinkin’ somethin’ had happened to you.”
    “Well, as a matter of fact, it did. Is this a convenient time?”
    “The same as before?”
    “Yes.”
    “Get it over with.”
    Entering, Coltrane smelled ancient cooking odors. He faced an oblong living room filled with tattered furniture. To the left, a fold-down card table had a jigsaw puzzle on it. Farther to the left, a counter separated the living room from the murky kitchen.
    It seemed barely yesterday that he and his mother had stood where he now stood, the door open behind him, sunlight gleaming in, when his