Ghost, Exit Zero, Anthony, Texas, May 18, 2023
Text and Photograph by Bruce Berman
This is the first photograph I’ve taken in a long time that actually means anything to me.
I’ve been a photographer for fifty-five years. So that’s kind of a sad statement, eh?
I’ve been teaching photography at New Mexico State University for the past seventeen years. It takes its toll.
All the energy I ever put into my own work and the work of the work that allowed me to live off of it gradually but inevitably goes into inspiring others to do what I used to do.
Anyone that teaches can tell you there are some great students that make it all worth it. They’ll probably also tell you there are a plethora of others that didn’t treasure the gift you gave. It’s part of “the biz.” You roll with it.
I do think there comes a time, a rubicon, where your own creative desires become endangered. It’s not just the endless repetition about the mechanics, and the history and the nuances of doing photography, it’s also the endless drivel of academia, the business of being in a university, the committees that mean nothing to me personally, seemingly a bubble of detachment from reality, the occasional obscenity of human behavior, acting so massively vicious because, the stakes are so low. Politics are vicious and low. The feeling of irrelevance can be very high.
I was coming home last night, from my absolute last obligation of the academic year (finishing a very fine book that has the photographs of my students who did a documentary project, The Small Village New Mexico project: https://amzn.to/3WmEqaJ). I stopped for tomatoes at the Food King that is at Exit Zero along I-10, that exit being the transition line between southern New Mexico and Texas (and El Paso, where I live).
While I was in the cashier line, a little man, sunburned, with a wild beard and an American flag bandana came in the front door, rushed into the store, disappeared for a moment or two, then came up to the line and asked, urgently, “Does anyone know where there’s a liquor store?”
I shrugged. So did everyone else. Some looked alarmed. But, no one did know.
Jonesing. I remember. It’s been 35 years.
He rushed out of the store, definitely a man on a mission. I was a little amused. I appreciate anyone that’s that focused and intent. I’ve been there, long ago.
When I got to my car in the parking lot and started to pull out to return to the Interstate, I saw this guy sitting on a bench, 20 yards from the store. He looked stranded, isolated, surrounded by a an enormous blacktop parking lot, a tragic figure, alone in the fading light as evening approached. The light was getting low, red, evening was coming, and there he was, the old limping guy, obviously short of his need for his booze.
There was just something purely human about him. Sad. Sweet. Vulnerable. He needed help.
I rolled past him and offered, “I think there’s probably a liquor store in town (pointing west to Anthony, New Mexico).”
“How far?” he asked.
“About eight blocks.”
I saw him deflate. That said it all. I had noticed he didn’t walk well, shuffling, little sliding steps, seemingly neither foot ever leaving the ground. His face showed that he knew he couldn’t make eight blocks and back. I appreciate that. I have a mobility issue of my own. Can’t go more than a half block.
He was a small guy. Maybe 5’4,” and he looked even smaller after that exchange.
“Any chance you could give me a ride,” he asked? There was something nice in his voice. Decent. He didn’t seem like a wild guy at all, just a guy who needed something. He shared he needed some alcohol so he ” … could sleep, tonight. It’s hard and cold on the ground,” he said.
Sure. Why not. And, I kind of knew there was an unseen hand in this encounter.
He got in. He had one backpack and a sleeping bag. He smelled of the road and too many days away from the amenities. But not too bad. It was OK. We went into town. He was quiet, he kept saying “thank you.” Thankful. Who knows how we really communicate with another person, but somehow I knew this meeting was supposed to happen and I was meant to meet him. This was a script unfolding and I was going with it. There was a reason for this meet up, somehow.
Right away, not a half block away, we saw a Walgreen’s. His eyes lit up. I was thinking, “Phew, this is gonna be easy, I need to get back on the highway.
He went in and came out within a few minutes. Turned out, they didn’t sell liquor, but had told him there were, indeed, a some liquor stores in town that did sold liquor.
Off we went.
We got into town and after a few blocks we passed a sign on a storefront that said “beverages.” I cracked a U and pulled up and he went in.
Nope. But they told him there was a Circle K, “just up the road.”
About three miles later we got there. He went in, took some time. For some reason I felt celebratory. Happy for him. For booze? No, not really, but for him finding what he needed. The light was beautiful, pure New Mexico “sweet light,” low and golden, melding into the dark fields and the coming night. It was now sundown, and darkness was settling in.
He came shuffling back to the car and I could see a pint bottle sticking out of his coat pocket. He leaned over to get in the car and the bottle started slipping out of his front pocket. I reacted, slapped his chest to hold the bottle in his pocket, to stop the slide. For a moment I saw fear, just for a second, then gratitude. I’d saved the day!
I liked this guy.
We drove around, the sunset nice and kind, our conversation turned personal, he talked about the Bible and God and Jesus and what we had both done and not done in life, pondered what we needed to do now. He said he keeps asking God what to do and he could never get an answer. I said I understood and have asked the same thing. I shared that I had heard you should ask Him what would please Him for you to do. I looked over at my passenger. He had tears in his eyes.
“Did I say something wrong,” I asked.
“NO!” He slapped his knee. “You said something I never thought to say. That’s the key! I’ll never forget this. Thank you.”
He meant it.
Do you believe in magic? Destiny? A Plan?
How can you not?
We drove back to the highway. He asked to be dropped off at the Pilot store/gas station.
“I need to find a place to sleep tonight,” he said and I could see he was surveying the land behind the Pilot. “I know I’ll sleep better tonight,” he offered, “thanks to you.”
I smiled. Hey, glad to help.
We’d become friends and I knew, like any parting with a friend, it was going to be a bittersweet moment.
I always have a camera. Always. It’s a habit that all photographers acquire. Can’t grab moments if you don’t have your tools. I don’t use it much these days. I talk for a living. I encourage for a living. Every week I talk about f-stops and light and commitment and photographers and on and on. I have had a long career. I have lots of photographs and, now books of my photographs. But somehow it’s become hard to make more images. Just being alive is precious now and the need to keep gathering photographs doesn’t make me any less grateful for the moments I encounter. I find myself, in a world where everyone is a photographer and particularly in my world of “everyone is a photographer,” i.e., students of mine. I search for the meaning of why to do it anymore. It feels like I’ve given it away. It’s not really my profession anymore, right? I’m no famous guy. I’ve passed the torch to a few generations now, right?
However, this moment was different. I knew, at this moment, the logjam had to end. I needed to make a photograph of this man. We’d shared hearts and I knew I’d never see him again. I guess that basic instinct is what everyone has and every person with a cellphone has galleries full of photographs of those they love, those they know, moments they’ve experienced.
Maybe, just maybe, that primal reason for using photography is what’s been missing for me. That reason to remember, to note, to save, to be able to remember, to even leave behind your memory. I’m thinking, that’s why I started in this way back n the 1960s.
I had helped him get his hooch. He helped me get back my soul.
Deal!
His name is Bob but he said he hadn’t been called that in years.
“They call me “Ghost,’ ever since ‘Nam.”
He’d been in the Army, 101st Airborne, in 1965. He started drinking hard, then. He’s quit a few times and says he won’t give up on that idea. “I’ll try again.”
As we parted, he insisted, “I’m not homeless! I have a house back home, in Fort Collins (Colorado). I’m trying to get back there,” he said with some vigor, establishing something important to him.
He was trying to get there, but something happened with his ticket and he had to get off the bus in El Paso (50 miles to the south). “They dumped me off the Greyhound in El Paso. Stole my $279.” “
For the first time in a very long time, I needed the act -interact?- of making a photograph and I wanted it to be good. My best have been. Lately I’ve been shooting nothing like that, nothing that was important, things, places, but not humans. I knew this was my moment; never make photos again or make photos that matter (at least to me).
It’s not the first time I’ve come to that crossroad. In fact, it is a road well traveled, a commitment that has been continually renewed.
I asked to take his picture.
It’s been a long time since I asked anyone that. I remember the first time, in an alley in Chicago, in the rain, 55 years ago. Full circle.
I dug my camera out of the back seat. It was nighttime now. We walked (shuffled) over to the side of the Pilot store.
“Bad light,” he observed, as we stood in the night, the only light source from an overhead mercury vapor coming off the overhang of the Pilot building.
“Doesn’t matter,’ I replied, “I just need to have this memory.”
“Oh, like a snapshot,” he observed.
Exactly.
