Travellers

She came with her boyfriend.  They arrived in a beat up Aerovan of indistinguishable color--light blue/gray/silver?  The paint was flaking and it looked as though it had never been washed.  I greeted them like a used car salesman, big toothy smile and a wave.  Inside the van was a mess.  They must have  been living in it for awhile.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello hello."

She got out of the passenger side, perhaps 5'2", ninety pounds.  It looked like she had cut her hair herself some time ago.  It was still short, three inches long in some places.  He came around the van, shaggy hair, short and skinny.  They were both tatted up.  They looked to me like pictures I'd seen of the Manson family.  Both of them seemed nervous, eyes darting here and there.

"Come in, come in.  I'll show you what I do."

She had come to shoot with me.  She had been very pleasant about it online, had confirmed a couple times and had texted me when they were on their way.

"Your hair is short," I said.

"Yeah, I had to cut it.  Lice," she said a little shyly.

They were only in town for awhile.  They were Travelers, he said.  They had just gotten the van out in California.  They knew someone with a medical marijuana farm in Northern California and had made some money harvesting the crop.  Jesus, I thought, how much must there be to hire people to harvest it?  They made enough to buy the van.

"You drove that all the way from California?" I said surprised that the thing would make it.

"Yea, it ran great."

I opened a bottle of wine.  He couldn't drink, he said.  Bad stomach.  Later he told me he had to quit drinking.  Used to stay drunk all the time.  Got the DTs.

"No shit," I said having never known anyone who drank enough for that.

She didn't mind drinking in front of him, though.

We shot.  We talked.  She looked like a dustbowl queen from the 30's, skinny, scrawny almost.

"You're good to work with," he said.  "She shot with a guy yesterday who was all nervous, couldn't make conversation."

"He made me nervous," she said.

"Being here is like we've known you all along."

I like people, or at least their stories.  They had them.

"They took photos of us for 'The Village Voice'," she said.  "There's a photographer out there shooting homeless people in his old neighborhood.  He's pretty famous.  He takes your picture and talks to you, then writes it up for the paper."

"Her's was good.  I didn't know what to say and said just stupid shit and he wrote it that way."

She wrote down the website for the photographer, Steven Hirsch.

"I like those photos you did of the tattooed girl," she said.  "I want to cover my whole body with them.  I just want to connect all of these together."

"Tattoos are expensive, aren't they?"

"About a hundred bucks an hour."

"Go to prison.  You can get it all done for free."

They both just looked at me.

"We do some ourselves," he said pointing around his eyes to the little squiggles and signs.  They looked like he'd done them himself.

We were finished shooting, all of us standing over the raw Polaroids on the table.

"These are awesome," she said.  "You're great."

"We made some nice pictures, I think.  But they won't look anything like this when I'm finished."

"I know.  I can't wait."

They were leaving town in a couple days.  She'd get to computers from time to time, she said, so just send the jpegs to her account.

"What about the prints?  Where do you want me to send them?"

"Maybe to my mother's house.  She'll be so proud.  She didn't think I could be a model.  She'll love these."

I pursed my lips and nodded.  Hugs all around, then, as I walked them out to the van.  They were really nice kids.  I wondered how they decided to live the way they did, but I wonder about how a lot of people decided to live the way they live, too.  Still. . . .

She was waving from the van as he hunched over the steering wheel backing out.  She looked happy.

Goodbye.  Goodbye.