Free The Tinsmith by Tim Bowling

his lips. Behind him, he heard the tarp draw back. A fresh plate! Now, of all times. Gardner looked at the camera, at the two Rebels posed fraternally on the gutted earth. Suddenly the awful reek of death washed over him, as powerful as the collodion on the plate. He swallowed deeply and almost staggered against Gibson as he rushed up.
    â€œWhat is it, Alex? You canna be woozy like I am, man. It’s a regular ether bath in that wagon. I almost passed out on this one.”
    â€œHe’s taking the corpse!” Gardner pointed, his mouth open.
    Gibson put a hand over his eyes, as if he couldn’t look at the world anymore except through some kind of lens. He shrugged.
    â€œWhat of it? You’ll never get Brady to print that one anyway. He probably won’t even print the dead Federals.”
    â€œBrady? He’s no ee the only one who can make and sell prints. You might be willing to work for him all your born days, but I dinna come to this country to be taken for a fool. What’s the point of following the army if you’re just going to let Brady make all the money off your talents? Wake up, Jim. We’ve got enough here to make a start on our own. Whatever Brady won’t print and sell, all the better for us!”
    Gibson handed Gardner the plate. “All right, captain,” he said, referring to the honorary stripes Gardner’s friendship with McClellan had earned him. “But you’d better hurry with this one before it dries.”
    At that moment Gardner knew James Gibson was with him and his fortune was made. It had taken only the saying of it.
    Gardner dove back under the cloth. The world flipped upside down again. When he later returned to the light and started counting out the exposure, he could see, across the bereaved and scavenging, across the dead and wounded, the tall, long-limbed soldier carrying a body on his back toward the woods. By the time Gardner had whispered fifteen, the soldier had vanished into the trees.
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    The stench worsened as the sun climbed. The droning of flies made a steady, sombre chorus over the fields, but it was loudest inside the enclosed space of the wagon, which sat in the heat-crinkled air like a block of black ice that melted without getting smaller. Gibson complained mightily.
    â€œI canna keep the sweat from dripping off my forehead onto the plate. And when I can manage that, the damned flies get crawling all over it. You’re just lucky, Alex, I can bring you anything worth using.”
    He liked to exaggerate, did Jim Gibson, but Gardner knew too well the delicate and frustrating problems he faced. So Gardner offered to sensitize a plate while he let his assistant take a study of some colonel’s dead horse. Gardner soon regretted his generosity. Being inside that wagon was like being on the surface of the sun itself. He’d never known such breath-smothering heat. Sweat gushed out of every pore of his body, and he’d have almost preferred the stench of the festering flesh outside than the giddying fumes of the collodion. If the fumes weren’t bad enough in themselves, they attracted so many flies it was nigh to impossible keeping them off the plates. Gardner’s respect for Gibson grew immensely as he struggled to keep his dripping head away from the plate while savagely shooing flies away with his hands. Had they reversed roles for the day, Gardner doubted they’d have managed even half of the studies that they eventually made. Of course, he wasn’t about to let Gibson know that. Fortunately, when he pushed past the tarp with the plate and walked dizzily to the camera, Gardner found his assistant in even worse shape. He had one hand over his nose and the other on a flask of whisky pressed to his lips. When he’d done drinking, he gave Gardner a ghastly, white look and said, “If it’s all the same to you, Alex, I’d prefer the wagon. I dinna know how ye can