Read Online The Tinsmith by Tim Bowling - Free Book Online

prominent brow, both already besmirched with blood, took a double-edged knife from between his teeth and bent closer to his patient. Soon the surgeon’s head and that of his assistant, a very tall, long-limbed soldier in a ripped uniform, hovered so close over the anaesthetized figure that Gardner could not be sure who held the knife. Even when the sawing of the thigh began, it seemed that both men moved the implement. Gardner didn’t hear them speak at all. But when the sawing was done—a dull, disturbing sound that made Gardner grit his teeth—the surgeon and not the assistant turned with the leg in his hand and looked straight at the photographer.
    Ah, had he been beneath the cloth at that moment, with enough sun to let it stream through both lenses, Gardner knew he’d have captured a face that revealed the very meaning of warfare. True, it was an ordinary enough face in respect to the features—the nose and brow, though fine, were not exceptional, and sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes were sadly familiar in most men of the time. But the feeling behind the eyes, the sense of a barely controlled agony, made all the more remarkable because the eyes did not seem to take anything in! Oh, what a stereo he’d have made from that face. Though the surgeon looked right at him for several seconds, Gardner was convinced the man was not seeing him. He drifted like a sleepwalker to a tall pyramid of bloodied, fly-greasy limbs and rested the leg on top as if careful to maintain the balance of the whole. When he drifted back, he limped slightly, perhaps out of sympathy for the soldier whose leg he’d just removed. Gardner decided, then and there, that he’d find this surgeon again, either this day or the next, and get him to pose. But the dead had to come first.
    This thought brought the stench in even more powerfully. Over by the tents, a sound of retching, deeply drawn out, almost made Gardner ill himself. He pulled his flask from his hip pocket and took a long slug of whisky to cleanse his palate.
    He heard the drummers begin to call the troops to the day. Their rippling rhythm straightened the gravediggers up and stirred the able-bodied soldiers, who rose like spirits among the dead and wounded. Despite the preparations, Gardner heard rumours from hopeful soldiers that Lee had indeed retreated in the night. He found Gibson and said, “Let’s start here. We’ll just go back, take a few studies of dead soldiers and that unfortunate property owner, then go up to the front with the burial parties. I’m sure we can ask them to stop their work long enough to get our exposures.”
    Gibson grumbled something about wasting time, but Gardner ignored him. Maybe it was the whisky, or the rapidly improving quality of the light, but his confidence was riding high. Conditions could not have been better. No man in the country—certainly not that half-blind Brady back in New York waxing his moustache tips—was better qualified and ready for this chance. Except maybe Gibson and Timothy O’Sullivan, but they were both taking Gardner’s orders here. He knew, as well as Robert Owen himself had ever known the devilish machinations of the leisured classes, that he had enough time for everything if he just put himself in harness and set to work.
    Even so, Gardner started that ripe morning in haste. Gibson, now that he’d had his fortifying coffee, proved every bit as eager, and together the two men were like children after butterflies in a meadow, except these butterflies were already pinned and still. Gardner decided right away to use only his stereo camera. That way, the gallery would have the most options for selling prints—stereo views, cartes de visite, and the big Imperials Brady’s nobs liked so much. And Gardner didn’t intend to take more than a single exposure from each angle; there was just too much ground to cover.
    As soon as he’d settled on his first