THAT NIGHT’S READING was “Local Boy Snaps Shots,” the thirteenth episode of Dead Air.
THE HEADLINE in the Babbington Reporter read, “Saucers Swarm over Babbington, Local Boy Snaps Shots of Mysterious Craft.” Below the headline was the picture that I had snapped. Apparently, Porky White’s attempt to demonstrate that common objects thrown into the air would not resemble flying saucers had been a failure. Judging from the headline, a viewer who was not aware of the circumstances under which the photograph was taken — and that would be every viewer but Porky and me — might assume that the objects in the sky were much larger than clams and, therefore, higher in the sky and farther away than the clams had actually been. Such a viewer might even mistake the clams for flying saucers.
When I first saw the picture, I felt the thrill you would expect a boy to feel if the local newspaper published a picture he had taken, but very quickly I began to feel cheated. I hadn’t intended to have this picture published in the Reporter; I hadn’t given permission for it to be published; no one had even asked my permission; my name was misspelled; and no one had paid me.
I called Porky.
“Did you see the paper today?” I asked.
“I sure did!” said Porky. “Hold on a minute.” Away from the mouthpiece he called out, “Pour some coffee for those guys and apologize for the delay. Make ’em feel good.” Into the mouthpiece he said, “Great picture, wasn’t it?”
“Do you think I should have him arrested?” I asked.
“Who? What for?”
“Mr. Himmelfarb, for sending the picture to the paper.”
“Are you nuts? Himmelfarb did us a favor.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Listen to this.” He stopped talking, and from the background I heard the sound of animated conversation, clinking china, glasses, laughter, and, some voices raised in dispute. Porky came back on the line. “Amazing, isn’t it? The place is packed!”
“Curiosity seekers,” I said, the way my father did whenever we were stuck in a traffic jam caused by the rubbernecking curious slowing down to get a good look at an accident.
“Yeah!” said Porky with enthusiasm.
“What a pain.”
“Are you kidding?” asked Porky. “I’m not screening people at the door here, you know. All are welcome at Kap’n Klam, including curiosity seekers. You understand?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, speaking as an investor in the enterprise, “but,” I added, quoting my father, “what is it about these people that makes them think nothing has really happened until they’ve witnessed it?”
“Just a damn minute there,” said Porky. “We are all curiosity seekers, Peter. It’s one of the things that make us human. Don’t ever disparage curiosity. I think it’s the noblest of human traits, if you ask me, and it’s honest, not like generosity, for example. You scratch generosity, and very often you’ll find self-interest lying underneath it, but curiosity, scratch that, and you’re going to find nothing but one-hundred-per-cent curiosity through and through. It’s a genuine human trait, unadulterated by other motives. We may be generous to salve a guilty conscience or curry favor, but we want to know because we want to know, and we have a right to know, because we are the only creatures capable of knowing. We are life’s witnesses. If we don’t witness a thing, if we don’t know about a thing, it is, in a way that I don’t have time to explain right now, not real.”
“Porky!” called a voice from the background. “I need three clam salad sandwiches!”
“Coming right up!” he shouted, and then asked, “Can you give me a hand?”
“I’ll be right there,” I said, and a moment later I was on my way, and I was pedaling hard, because I wanted to get down there and see for myself, with my own eyes, what was going on.
[to be continued]
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