Trust the Focus Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Can you put it in the tree over there? Wedged on top of the big branch?”
    Landry paused, the urn held firmly in his hands. He pressed his lips together.
    “What?”
    “Him.”
    “Huh?”
    Landry shifted his weight. “Him. This is him.”
    I squinted my eyes at the canister. “Uh, actually, no it’s not. It’s a pile of ashes.”
    “Jus—”
    “Fine. Him. I’ll say it for you, now go put him in the fucking tree.”
    Landry walked in a huff to the tree, and it made me smile. He had loved my dad and the feeling was mutual. Dad always said he was glad I had Landry.
That boy would walk through fire for you, asking nothing in return.
    I never told Dad I’d do the same.
    Landry situated the urn where I had gestured, jiggling it to make sure it was stuck firm and wouldn’t fall. It would kind of ruin our whole plan if all the ashes spilled at our first stop.
    He turned to me and I nodded. He smiled and walked toward me, standing close enough that our elbows touched. I raised the camera, focused on the urn, and with the majestic, snow-covered rise of Mount St. Helens in the background, pressed the shutter.
    Click.
    I repositioned the zoom.
    Click.
    Click. Click. Click.
    Again and again. I must have taken twenty-five shots of a fucking urn in a tree. But I couldn’t stop. It was like I needed this moment to last forever, the click of the shutter, the feel of the grip in my hands matching the worn spots from my father’s fingers, Landry’s silent and comforting presence at my side—it blanked my mind until all I felt was peace. I even turned and took a couple of Landry in profile, until he laughed and shoved the lens aside.
    I had minored in photography in college, and I felt close to my dad every time the camera strap tightened on the back of my neck. In class, I used a 35mm SLR camera with black-and-white film. I shut myself in the darkroom on sunny afternoons, learning how to use the enlarger to transfer the film to paper, while the smell of developer chemicals burned the inside of my nose.
    I loved using film. It was taken for granted now to see a photograph right after it was taken. But there was something about snapping that shutter with no certainty of the image until it appeared in a chemical bath under red-tinted lights.
    I used a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera on a regular basis because it was faster and easier. But if I was taking photos for fun, I never looked at the LCD screen on the back. I forced myself to trust my eye and knowledge of lighting and composition.
Trust your focus
, my dad would always say.
    And in photography, I could control every aspect. The rest of my life was on the auto-focus setting as designated by my mother or my coach. But when my camera was in my hand, I could set the focus to manual and control everything—the aperture, shutter speed, ISO—to make that photograph look how I wanted it to look. I controlled the camera and I owned that photo. No one but me.
    As my shutter fell silent, nothing symbolic happened. No elk with golden antlers arrived to peer at us majestically and no bushes rustled mysteriously.
    A hawk screeched overhead and Landry jerked to face me, eyes wide, like that meant something. And I just shrugged with a small smile, because Dad wasn’t a hawk in the sky or a breeze in my hair. He was in a canister nestled on a tree branch, a pile of ash I didn’t want to believe represented the man who meant everything to me.
    If his soul was anywhere, it was in my Saint Christopher’s medallion around my neck, or hanging out in Sally, laughing as Lan and I fought over directions.
    I was the product of a high school graduation party, an excess of wine coolers, and an expired condom. My dad spent his life proving to me that I wasn’t a mistake. My mom spent her life proving to herself she hadn’t made one. Their young marriage lasted three years while my dad was the manager at a mall photography studio. But the strain of a little kid and a bad match caused