© Шитова Л. Ф., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2018

For the peregrines

The Beginning

In late afternoon, in the autumn of 1989, I'm at my desk, looking at a blinking cursor on the computer screen before me, and the telephone rings.

On the other end of the wire is a former Iowan^[1] named Michael Johnson. He lives in Florida now. A friend from Iowa has sent him one of my books. Michael Johnson has read it; his sister, Carolyn, has read it; and they have a story in which they think I might be interested. He is careful, refusing to say anything about the story, except that he and Carolyn are willing to travel to Iowa to talk with me about it.

So I agree to meet with them in Des Moines^[2] the following week. At a Holiday Inn^[3] near the airport, the introductions are made, and the two of them sit across from me, evening coming down outside, light snow falling.

They insist on a promise: If I decide not to write the story, I must agree never to mention what happened in Madison County^[4], Iowa, in 1965 or other events that followed over the next twenty-four years. All right, that's reasonable. After all, it's their story, not mine.

So I listen. I listen hard, and I ask hard questions. And they talk. On and on they talk.^[5] Carolyn cries openly at times, Michael struggles not to. They show me documents and magazine clippings and a set of journals written by their mother, Francesca.

Room service^[6] comes and goes. Extra coffee is ordered. As they talk, I begin to see the images. First you must have the images, then come the words. And I begin to hear the words, begin to see them on pages of writing. Sometime just after midnight, I agree to write the story – or at least attempt it.

Their decision to make this information public was a difficult one for them. The circumstances are delicate, involving their mother and touching upon their father. Michael and Carolyn recognized that the story going public might result in dirty gossip and affect good memories people have of Richard and Francesca Johnson.

Yet in a world where personal commitment^[7] in all of its forms seems to be destroyed and love has become a matter of convenience, they both felt this remarkable tale was worth the telling. I believed then, and I believe even more strongly now, they were correct making this decision.

In the course of my research and writing, I asked to meet with Michael and Carolyn three more times. On each occasion, and without complaint, they traveled to Iowa. Such was their eagerness to make sure the story was told accurately. Sometimes we merely talked; sometimes we slowly drove the roads of Madison County while they pointed out places having a significant role in the story.

In addition to the help provided by Michael and Carolyn, the story as I tell it here is based on information contained in the journals of Francesca Johnson; research carried out in Madison County, Iowa; information obtained from the photographic essays of Robert Kincaid; and long discussions with several wonderful elderly people in Ohio, who remembered Kincaid from his boyhood days.

In spite of the effort, gaps remain. I have added a little of my own imagination in some instances, but only when I felt I had gained the intimate familiarity with Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid through my research. I am confident that I have come very close to what actually happened.

One major gap involves the exact details of a trip made across the northern United States by Kincaid. We knew he made this journey, based on a number of photographs published, a brief mention of it by Francesca Johnson in her journals, and handwritten notes he left with a magazine editor. Using these sources as my guide, I retraced what I believe was the path he took from Bellingham^[8] to Madison County in August of 1965. Driving toward Madison County at the end of my travels, I felt I had, in many ways, become Robert Kincaid.

Still, trying to truly understand Kincaid was the most challenging part of my research and writing. He is an elusive figure. At times he seems rather ordinary. At other times ethereal. In his work he was a consummate professional^[9]. Yet he saw himself as a peculiar kind of male animal becoming obsolete in a world given over to increasing amounts of organization^[10].

Two other intriguing questions are still unanswered. First, we have been unable to know what became of Kincaid's photographic files. Given the nature of his work^[11], there must have been thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of photographs. These never have been found. Our best guess^[12] – and this would be logical to the way he saw himself and his place in the world – is that he destroyed them before his death.

The second question deals with his life from 1975 to 1982. Very little information is available. We know he earned a sparse living^[13] as a portrait photographer in Seattle for several years and continued to photograph the Puget Sound^[14] area. Other than that, we have nothing.^[15]

Preparing and writing this book has altered my world view, transformed the way I think, and, most of all, reduced my level of cynicism about what is possible in the arena of human relationships. Coming to know Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid, I find the boundaries of such relationships can be extended farther than I previously thought^[16]. Perhaps you will have the same experience in reading this story.

That will not be easy. In an increasingly callous world^[17], I'm not sure where great passion leaves off and mawkishness begins. But our tendency to laugh at the possibility of deep feelings makes it difficult to enter the realm of gentleness^[18] to understand the story of Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid. I know I had to overcome that tendency initially before I could begin writing.

If, however, you manage to suspend your disbelief^[19], as Coleridge^[20] put it, I am confident you will experience what I have experienced. And deep in your heart, you may even find, as Francesca Johnson did, room to dance again.

Summer 1991

The Bridges of Madison County

Robert Kincaid

On the morning ofAugust 8, 1965, Robert Kincaid locked the door to his small two-room apartment on the third floor of a house in Bellingham, Washington. He carried a knapsack full ofphotography equipment and a suitcase down wooden stairs and through a hallway to the back, where his old Chevrolet pickup truck^[21] was parked in a space reserved for residents of the building.

Another knapsack, a medium-size ice chest^[22], two tripods, cartons of Camel cigarettes^[23], a Thermos, and a bag of fruit were already inside. In the truck box was a guitar case. Kincaid arranged the knapsacks on the seat and put the cooler and tripods on the floor. He climbed into the truck box, stepped in behind the wheel, lit a Camel, and went through his mental checklist^[24]: two hundred rolls of film; tripods; cooler; three cameras and five lenses; jeans and khaki slacks; shirts. Okay. Anything else he could buy on the road if he had forgotten it.

Kincaid wore faded Levi's, well-used field boots, a khaki shirt, and orange suspenders. On his wide leather belt was fastened a Swiss Army knife^[25] in its own case.

He looked at his watch: eight-seventeen. The truck started on the second try, and he backed out, shifted gears^[26], and moved slowly down the alley under hazy sun. Through the streets of Bellingham he went, heading south on Washington 11^[27], running along the coast of Puget Sound for a few miles, then following the highway before meeting U.S. Route 20.

Turning into the sun, he began the long, winding drive^[28] through the Cascades^[29]. He liked this country and felt impressed, stopping now and then to make notes about interesting possibilities for future expeditions or to shoot what he called “memory snapshots.” The purpose of these photographs was to remind him of places he might want to visit again and approach more seriously.

He wished for the thousandth time in his life that he had a dog, a golden retriever, maybe, for travels like this and to keep him company at home. But he was frequently away, overseas much of the time, and it would not be fair to the animal. Still, he thought about it anyway. In a few years he would be getting too old for the hard fieldwork. “I might get a dog then,” he said to the coniferous green rolling by his truck window^[30].

Drives like this always put him into a taking-stock mood.^[31] The dog was part of it. Robert Kincaid was as alone as it's possible to be – an only child, parents both dead, distant relatives who had lost track of him^[32] and he of them, no close friends.

He knew the names of the man who owned the corner market in Bellingham and the proprietor of the photographic store where he bought his supplies. He also had formal, professional relationships with several magazine editors. Other than that, he knew scarcely anyone well, nor they him. Gypsies make difficult friends for ordinary people^[33], and he was something of a gypsy.

He thought about Marian. She had left him nine years ago after five years of marriage. He was fifty-two now; that would make her just under forty. Marian had dreams of becoming a musician, a folksinger. She knew all of the Weavers^[34]' songs and sang them pretty well in the coffeehouses of Seattle^[35]. When he was home in the old days, he drove her to gigs and sat in the audience while she sang.

His long absences – two or three months sometimes – were hard on the marriage. He knew that. She was aware of what he did when they decided to get married, and each of them had a vague sense that it could all be handled somehow. It couldn't. When he came home from photographing a story in Iceland, she was gone. The note read: “Robert, it didn't work out. I left you the Harmony guitar. Stay in touch.”^[36]

He didn't stay in touch. Neither did she. He signed the divorce papers when they arrived a year later and caught a plane^[37] for Australia the next day. She had asked for nothing except her freedom.

At Montana^[38], he stopped for the night, late. The Cozy Inn looked inexpensive, and was. He carried his gear into a room

containing two table lamps, one of which had a burned-out bulb. Lying in bed, he was reading The Green Hills of Africa^[39] and drinking a beer. In the morning he jogged for forty minutes, did fifty push-ups, and used his cameras as small hand weights to complete the routine.

Across the top of Montana he drove, into North Dakota^[40] and the spare, flat country he found as fascinating as the mountains or the sea. There was a kind of austere beauty to this place, and he stopped several times, set up a tripod, and shot some black-and-whites of old farm buildings. This landscape appealed to his minimalist leanings.^[41] The Indian reservations were depressing, for all of the reasons everybody knows and ignores. Those kinds of settlements were no better in northwestern Washington, though, or anywhere else he had seen them.

On the morning of August 14, he sliced^[42] northeast and took a back road up to Hibbing and the iron mines. Red dust floated in the air, and there were big machines and trains specially designed to carry the ore to Lake Superior^[43]. He spent an afternoon looking around Hibbing and found it not to his liking, even if Bob Dylan^[44] was from there originally.