Chapter 41

High above the Malibu Canyon updrafts soared the raven.  His eyes gazed over the landscape below and the glistening asphalt winding inland, in the 100° late spring heat wave.  Ahead, the hills grew denser, the vegetation more prominent, the ubiquitous tiled roofs of homes flourishing and finally, a large rambling compilation of buildings and cottages.  Caw, Caw the raven called out.  Caw, Caw.

Beneath a tiled roof… Click, Click. 

Ari lowered the camera and gazed at the myriad of ancient and weathered eyes… some distant, some tearful, some smiling… all with an anticipation and an expectation he was captivated by.    For Ari, success was finally his.  All the years of looking at the world the way he wanted to look at it was paying off.  His dream filled mind was satisfied now that his ability and experience had found both a commercial home and artistic freedom.  He looked through the lens at the old and wrinkled expressions of his newest challenge.  Some of the faces were still recognizable as movie stars of his youth. 

 The privately funded Actors’ Retirement Home was tucked away in the mountains of Calabasas, California.  Unlike many places for the elderly, this not only had a surrounding of beautiful mountains, but a quietness that seemed to perfectly frame the unusual character of its tenants.

He walked outside and away from one group and approached another.  The almost silent click, click of his digital camera was a perfect kind of intruder for the mostly proud group of aging artists, performers and personalities of the big screen as they lounged about the spacious grounds.  Even for these long-retired veterans of motion pictures, their sense of the camera’s presence, silent as it was, seemed to give them renewed energy… “Or was that too a figment of my imagination?” Ari ruminated.

He paused by a small lake and sat on a bench.  His eyes fixed on the ducks and one black and one white goose lounging lazily under the spring sun.  He again thought of the course he had chosen to take since the rebirth of The Profile.  He had spent so much of his recent life looking into the faces of people and asking his camera to catch the right moment that might inspire his digital rendering.  The epiphany, that sudden manifestation of essence or meaning for something or someone’s existence, that this new experience with the old and withered seemed foreign somehow.  Always he had delved into his subject’s background, their hidden past, their protected privacy.  Always he had felt a sense of guilt along with the revelatory rush of being able to capture a moment with the camera, then many moments with his digital art.  Always there was the revealing of something about the person that had brought tears to many as well a surprising kind of laughter to others. 

Now, as he worked at a different kind of subject, he hesitated to believe what the past two weeks at the retirement home had provided him an imaginative glimpse not into the past, but view after view of the future. 

He had several days earlier contacted Harrison and tried to explain what was happening, but Harrison had learned his lesson.  “You just do what you do, Ari, and don’t ask yourself or me for explanation, God Damn it, especially from me.  I’m the one who called you crazy, remember?  Just be who you are, asshole.” 

Ari had remembered, and for the first time in his life, he wondered if it was true.  “Who was I,” he often asked himself.  “Who am it to think I have some kind of divine gift of perception beyond the norm?”  He gazed at the LCD screen of his camera and quickly reviewed the last run of seventy-eight shots he’d taken that morning.  All the old faces had one common element of expression, that “I know something you don’t know” look.  He wanted to know what they saw.

“I’m glad you let me come in here, Mr. ?”

“Ari is fine,” he answered.

The old man of 98 years slowly lowered himself onto the single chair in the room.  Like all the residents, Ari had requested the same kind of room with its single bed, its single lamp, its single mini-frig, its single chair and its single window.  Late afternoon light sheered through the curtains and crossed the lap of the man known to everyone as Scarecrow ll.  He loved the name and everyone knew him as the one who turned down the role in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“Well, Mr. Ari, I think that a gentleman like you should smile more, should get out and party more, you know?”

Ari chuckled.  “Is that what you wanted to come to my room to tell me/’

“Mr. Ari, I’ve been watching you from a fairly close proximity for the better part of your two-week sojourn here, and I’m a fairly good judge of character.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that at all… Scarecrow.”

“Scarecrow II,  Thank you.  Now, Cynthia and me, you know Cynthia, the one always smiling, always looking goofy with that smile?”

“I don’t recall,” said Ari.

“Well, she is far from goofy, but it is a goofy smile.  Anyway, we talked a bit yesterday over tea and we both agreed you needed to be told to smile more.”

“Smile more?”  Ari said awkwardly.  A bit embarrassed, he responded.  “You probably have a point.  Smiling hasn’t been my trump card for a long time, but I’m working on it.”

“You need to make it a priority, Mr. Ari.  Life is short, even though for me it’s longer than Hell itself it seems.  But, the older you get, the more you want answers to life’s big questions… what’s it all about?  What am I here for?  What am I supposed to do?   Well, Mr. Ari… just smile more because the best is yet to come.”

Scarecrow rose and pushed his walker toward the digital printouts that were tacked to the walls.  He squinted, then pushed toward the door.

Ari rose with him, a bit taken aback and not sure what to do next.  “Can I get you anything cold?  A coke?  Iced tea?”

The old man turned and grinned at Ari.  “No… no thank you.”  He reached for the doorknob and turned back, “Your pictures got all us folk grinning.  Know what we’re grinning about?”

Ari stood a moment not knowing the right way to respond.  “Well. I suppose they, you, know ‘the best is yet to come’?

Scarecrow nodded, “Yes.  You’re getting it.  You’ll get it better the more you smile, Mr. Ari.”

He opened the door and paused a moment, then “You know, most of us read The Profile.  Kind of required reading to get along during slow times on Bingo night.  You’re a good picture man, very good picture man.”

He closed the door after himself.  Ari stood a few moments, then sat down and gazed out the open window.  From a distance, the cawing of the raven sped his thoughts toward Sam, then to Max, then to the old woman in the snow.  He smiled, then chuckled, then... 

A few steps down the hall from the door, Scarecrow suddenly stopped.  From behind he too heard the distant voice from the sky and heard laughter.  His eyes fixed upward and he beamed.  “Message delivered.”

***

As the sun began to fade beyond the thin gray line separating day from night, the raven arched its wings and held as the flow of ocean air hitting the Baja coast line created a soothing mist on his tired feathers.  Caw, Caw… Caw.  

Below, Salvador threw his fishing nets from the boat in preparation for the night’s vigil.  The black spec high in the sky banked and headed further down the coast toward parts only it knew.