And sometimes I know, your heart is full of little arrows.

Monday:

We took our seats; I adjusted the camera. His eyes looked through it, obviously uncomfortable. He came from a different time, where lives were recorded by typewriters and highly developed imaginations. The irony of our conceptual contrasts was one of the focuses of this documentary: he was a stranger to the nuances of moving photography, I was unable to focus on a line of dialogue. I asked about his first love:

"Ha. Don't ever let an old man tell you he's forgotten his first girl. [He cocks his head to the side and strokes his chin.] Helen Johnson. She was beautiful... long brown hair, the curly type. [His eyes receded into themselves; he's looking through the camera.] She would lie on her back in the grass, and I laid on my side, just running my fingers through her hair and looking at her eyes. She always pretended to not see. [He laughs and looks down at his wringing fingers.] They were so wide. You know, everyone says peoples' eyes are "bottomless" or "deep" or that sort of thing, like they'd drown in them. Hers were... far. Like if I went into them, I'd just leave. Does that make any sense? Anyway, neither of our families were very wealthy, so every dance, she wore the same red plaid dress with red ribbons in her hair. I think she was a little embarrassed, but it never mattered to me. [He smiles wistfully.] Last I heard, she married some businessman and moved to Chicago."

Tuesday:

He's becoming more comfortable with the quiet, third participant in our conversation. I wonder if he has come to terms with his mortality, if he has realized that like those Appalachian projects during the Great Depression, I'm simply culling him for the stories to preserve. Some day, the sum of his existence will be these video tapes, and that's why I want his strongest memories. Our emotions should always live longer than our achievements, and though he has achieved so much, what we want remembered is the mist behind his eyes. I ask him about The War:

"You know, I never told my children about it. [He bites his lower lip and looks down at his hands.] They asked; even Ethel asked. I never had the heart to tell them any more than they could read in books or see in old news reels. They were always raised in times of peace, my kids, so I waited for Vietnam. Their friends began coming home in body bags, and they wanted to know what it was like for them. Their friends, I mean; what it was like for them to experience that. They didn't like my response: "It's better you don't know. Let them rest." [He smiles unconvincingly.] I was never really good with words; there was no way for them to hear someone dying slowly, and even then... How do you put it? The slow death was more of a metaphor. One time, I had to execute a Jap; he had been shot in the gut, and there was no chance of him dying quickly. I couldn't take it any longer; my buddy Cabrera tried to stop me leaving the foxhole, but it didn't matter. I shot the Jap in the forehead. Couldn't sleep that night. [He bites his lip and rubs his forehead.]"

Wednesday:

He tries to not let me see the effects of his osteoarthritis. Sometimes I wonder if his frequent wincing is the grinding of his joints, or the weight of secrets. This project is one of the most difficult I've faced to date: he's not very talkative normally, but perhaps it's more a matter that people around him aren't very receptive to listening. He was rather closed our first session, but as the weeks progressed, smiles appeared. His lips became slightly more loose, and the clouds broke for a laugh. I asked about his first house:

"Ahh... [He laughs.] You could barely call it a house. Two bedrooms for Ethel, I, and the first two children. [His lips form one of a grin of no regret.] It was a constant struggle; the kids would tear it up, and I'd fix it up again. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a room and a half that doubled as a living room and dining room. One winter, when Matthew was nine and John was seven, we went out hunting and shot a bear. I had it stuffed and put into one corner of the living room, next to my chair. The boys played on it, and I used its arms for an end-table. [He laughs and slaps his knee. I can't help but smile at that.] After Ethel gave birth to Sarah, we sold the house and moved to the suburbs. Sometimes I kind of miss the place, you know? It was a real fixer, but it had personality. Ethel and I were newlyweds when we bought it, so there were no problems with it, really, never mind the cracks in the walls. [He grins and sits back in his chair.] You know, there's no point trying to relieve all that, but sometimes it's nice to remember where you come from. [He looks as though he's about to say something, but stops short, cocking his head and eyeing me.]"

Thursday:

Ethel answers the door with the same demure smile with which she always manages to disarm all visitors. He often comments, "off the record" (this he says with a sly grin), that he was cursed with the inability to fall out of love with her. I can see why: despite the outset of age, one can still see the ravishing young woman from the photographs he brings out when she leaves the room. (He checks behind her to make sure he's gone before bringing them out and showing off "his girl".) Even still, she manages the household with a quiet dignity that belies the rough years they spent being young, poor, and desperately in love. When she comes back with a glass of Sprite and some cookies, I ask about him:

"Oh, he's in bed, dear. He's had an awful cough since you left yesterday. The stubborn fool says he's okay, but he obviously has a little bit of a fever. After you live with someone for 68 years, you can practically read their aura. [She smiles in a way that throws caution of crow's feet to the wind. I smile at her uncharacteristically New Age outlook.] He's always been too stubborn for his own good; he told you about our first house, didn't he? I had to pull the hammer out of his hand each night, otherwise he never would have slept. No, no chance of waking him now, dear; I'm sorry. He simply needs to sleep. I'll tell him you came by."

Friday:

I wanted to catch up. An entire day lost in the shooting schedule was serious business. Over the past week, his luster had slowly diminished; not so much dulled, but more like the patina on platinum. The more time I spent with him, the less credence I gave the adage about silver and gold, and believed more in platinum. The arthritis had never reached behind his eyes, and though his forearm was chipped from a glancing gunfire wound, it had not warped his lucidity. Regardless, I had been thinking on him quite a bit today, and had finally worked the courage to ask him the last question, the summation of existence from his own vantage point, the distillation of years of pleasure, pain, and other arguments in between.

Ethel answered the door without her smile and leaned against the door jamb. Her eyes were far: far from the door, far from me, far from the porch and the driveway and the city and the world. She looked up at me and shook her head:

"I'm sorry, dear."

I hugged her, turned around, and walked away. My car went just out of sight before I parked and rested my head against the steering wheel.