The Gloves of Virtue

It was a big, ugly, turbid room after the peace and distance of Bill’s office. Emil went off with Virgil looking wistful because he was having to leave Caroline. She pretended not to notice, and we talked to the two folks who remained: Sally Jensen, a part-time reporter looking earnest troubled and a hesitant smile; and George Rawlins, the paper’s photographer. Sally right away off back to work, but George wanted something.

“Your damn computers can write the copy,” said he to me, very belligerent, “but they can’t take the pictures. Copy is easy, just one letter after another. Pictures is the whole thing at once, at a glance.” A slight man he was, a two-pack-a-day man, with worry lines and dents in his forehead and no one to go home to at night.

Caroline tried to fend him off. “Oh please, George….” She began, but I interrupted.

“Computers can’t even write the copy,” said I. “They don’t have enough pity and humor and sympathy and indignation and charity, and maybe you don’t have enough of those things to take good pictures so show me some, and I’ll see.”

He looked surprised. “You’ve got a nerve,“ said he. “Uppity and bad-tempered, just like every dame I’ve ever known. But come on. I’ll show you.” He led me to a file cabinet at one end of the room. Caroline followed, distressed she was, but he pulled out a folio and handed it to me, then leaned against the wall, arms folded, smirking a little, and watched.

I spread the pictures out on a table and saw right away: George knew how to do it. A small boy looking up wondering fiercely if someone was going to give him something he had to have. A view of a lost, lonesome, weary La Aldea from the hills behind town. A pretty woman, her shoulders hitched, hands in her coat pockets, staring worried into the distance or the future. An old house in the country, in the rain, hoping the next year would be better. A young girl maybe twelve, her hand on her father’s arm adoring him with eyes that would see faults and failures in another two or three years but which now knew he was wise and good. A fence holding back the world from a house behind.

I looked up from the pictures. “Could I have one, George?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Help yourself.”

I picked out a Main Street in the summer sun full of ice cream cones and cotton dresses and barefoot kids and cars with the tops down, seeming cheerful until you saw the tired and anxious old man almost hidden in the crowd. “Thank you,” said I. There’ll never be a computer that touches the likes of you. What’re you taking today?”