The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,55
switches all wispy with the tender shoots. “I’m going to take some pictures,” I said to Zed.
In a moment he was out of the car too, and as I pointed the camera up into the golden-green heart of the tree, he settled in the crook of the trunk where it had split in two.
“What kind of camera is it?” he asked.
When I told him the make and model, he said he had seen some great reviews for it online.
“What kind do you have?”
When he didn’t answer, I lowered the camera and turned toward him. I asked again.
He shrugged. “I don’t. But if I did, I think I’d go with an EVF rather than a pentaprism. No offense.”
I stifled a smile, thinking it was hard to be offended when I didn’t even know what he was talking about.
“Does your mom have a camera?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t get it. Mennonites take pictures.”
“We don’t.”
I snapped his photo. He smiled, his brown eyes barely showing under his bangs. He was a natural, putting his hands in his pockets and turning his head toward me with a slight hint of a smile. I took another photo.
“Can I try it?” He hopped down.
“Sure.” I handed it to him and looped the strap over his neck. He took a couple of shots of the underside of the tree canopy and then a couple of me. I hammed it up, leaning against the trunk as if posing for a portrait.
“How do I look at what I’ve taken?” he asked, and I realized that for all of his big words, he possessed mere knowledge, not practical experience.
I clicked the view button and showed him how to flip through the photos. He kept going past his and on to the ones I’d taken of Lancaster County. “Wow.”
I looked over his shoulder. He’d landed on a photo of the back of an Amish man plowing his field, the hooves and backs of his four mules partially blurred with the movement. I’d taken it with my zoom a good hundred yards away.
I couldn’t fathom living life without a camera. “How about when you went to Ethiopia? Didn’t you have a camera then?”
He shook his head. “But I remember everything and I wrote it all down. All about the people, the little kids, the food, the cities, the countryside, the colors, the textures. I won’t ever forget it.”
Was that why I took photos? Because I didn’t want to forget? Did I feel forgotten because there weren’t any photos of me as a baby?
“What do you want to do when you grow up?”
He shrugged and handed the camera back to me.
“Come on, Zed.” I draped the strap around my neck. “I bet you’re the kind of kid who knows.”
He smiled.
“Out with it,” I teased.
He looked down at his shoes. “Well, I kind of want to make movies.”
“Movies?” I tried not to sound surprised, certain if cameras were on Marta’s list of “the forbidden” that movies would be too. “Have you ever seen a movie?”
He blushed. “I’ve seen clips online. And I saw Shrek at a friend’s house when I was little.”
I kept myself from smiling. “What kind of movies do you want to make?”
“Movies about people. I have an idea for one set in Ethiopia, about a kid in a camp—”
My cell began to vibrate in my pocket. I remembered I hadn’t read the one from Sean. I dug out my phone. The immediate one was from Ella: Come get me!
“Let’s go.” I clicked to the text I’d missed from Sean as I hurried to the car. Dinner tonight? My heart jumped. I’d have to deal with that one later.
I thanked Zed for coming along as we waited for Ella. He smiled but didn’t say anything. She was coming up the lane, practically running. Behind her a woman operated the pulley that the wash line was attached to. Dresses and pants lurched forward and then back, like puppets in a show. I wondered if the woman could see us because we could see her, but she appeared to be focused exclusively on the laundry in front of her and didn’t turn her face in our direction.
Ella did run the last hundred feet to the car, glancing over her shoulder one last time as she opened the door.
She was barely out of breath. I backed out of the lane.
“It’s the same mansion as the one on the box,” she said. “It’s an illustration with the date 1873 in the corner.”