We took the roll to the camera place in New Hartford on Thursday after school, the one on Commercial Drive with the faded Kodak sign that my father didn't know was still open, and the man behind the counter said a week, maybe eight days, they send the color out to a lab in Buffalo now. My father paid for it. He paid for it before Niva could get her wallet out and he said, "This one's mine. I owe the camera," and Niva let him.
On the way out to the car he stopped on the sidewalk and told us that the print shop was cutting his Saturday hours starting in November, and that it was going to be tight through Christmas, and that he didn't know yet exactly how tight, but he'd tell us when he did. He said it fast, looking at the parking meter instead of at us, like he was ripping off a bandage. Then he looked at us to see what we'd do.
Niva said, "Okay." I said, "Okay. Thanks for telling us." And then we all got in the car, and that was it, and it was the strangest, best ordinary conversation I have ever had.
He didn't tell us everything. I know that. I'm not stupid. But he told us one thing, on purpose, out loud, and I'm counting it.
The tag is pinned to the corkboard above my bed now, next to the window, under the bird book. It never did lie completely flat. It still wants to curl up along the line where he twisted it, so I pinned it at two corners and let the middle bow out a little, and when the heat comes on the air from the radiator makes it tremble. On the front, under Niva's block capitals, I added a line of my own in pencil, in my own handwriting, which is small and leans a little to the right, like his.
FIFTEEN AT THE MARSH. NINE AT HOME. NONE WASTED. NONE SAVED.
On the back, my father's old cursive is still walking into its wind, missing the first letters of every line. I thought about writing them back in. I decided not to. Everybody in this house knows what they say now. That turned out to be the point.
The prints come back next Friday. Niva's early decision results come in December. My mother might call in an hour, or tonight, or in March. I don't know if the heron is in focus or if the geese are a blur or if my father's hands came out the way Niva saw them. I don't know whether Syracuse will want her, or how tight Christmas is going to be, or whether my father will keep his promise to try, or how many times I'll have to remind him.
But I know the film went through. I watched the rewind knob turn. It caught. Whatever we pointed it at is in there, all twenty-four of it, waiting in the dark in Buffalo to come back to us.
On Monday I'm going to ask Mr. Pinkney if he has another roll.