File, Edit, View, History - J.D. Hosemann
Her husband always had his things. In the beginning it was flashlights. The garage was chock full of flashlights hanging on the pegboard or organized in drawers—flashlights of various shapes and sizes all requiring different batteries. Some were so tiny they fit into a shirt pocket. Some were enormous cannons of light you held like a gun and, by pulling a trigger, would shoot yellow beams into a night sky. Others were even more unique: those that clipped perfectly onto the curved brim of a baseball cap, those that required special bulbs, those that were also ink pens. The first gift he’d ever given her was a Maglite. It was during Christmas and an ice storm was approaching. “Keep this by your bed,” he said. “This is one of the best flashlights on the market for general use.”
When they were young, she found his affinities endearing. Over the years, though, the wife had trouble keeping up with the husband’s appetite for devices. New technologies distracted him from the simple assurance of artificial light and he became increasingly devoted to digital cameras. Not big, fancy cameras that produced crisp family portraits (they’d decided against children early on), but small, discrete cameras designed to capture footage. The first such device she noticed was the tiny camera that came with a mount, which the husband fitted to the handlebars of his bicycle. This camera captured hours of footage, mostly a blurry stream of asphalt, that the wife sometimes found displayed on the computer. Occasionally he would remove the camera from the handlebars to reveal the sunset over the reservoir or turn it around to show his face, dripping with sweat beneath his lime green helmet, his eyes hidden behind mirror-like sunglasses.
There was also the night-vision, motion-sensor camera he strapped to a tree in the woods behind their house. Some neighbors claimed they spotted coyotes moving into the area. The camera captured seventy-six images of a photogenic squirrel and four shots of her husband as he removed the SD card, but not once did a coyote stop by to have its picture made.
The newest device, the thing that spurred her envy, was the doorbell camera. She came home one day to find him installing the camera on their white door just beneath the golden knocker. He sensed her approaching but never paused his work.
“You can see live footage right on your phone. I’ll show you the app,” he explained.
“To see what?”
“If someone steals our packages we can catch them. It’s precautionary.”
“It’s going to video us too?”
“It’ll record footage onto an external hard drive in case we ever need to go back and look. Up to three hundred hours. I’ll have to clean the drive occasionally.”
That night, while the husband was away on a long ride to the reservoir, the wife wondered about having her own things. Why did she live in a house filled with flashlights and cameras? Where were her things? She didn’t lack hobbies. She was an avid runner but a minimalist when it came to accessories. She was a reader but preferred the library rather than cluttering the house with objects that become useless once completed. She looked at the Maglite he’d given her years ago still by the bed. The best for general use.
The computer illuminated her face when she moved the mouse. The cursor blinked in the search bar awaiting requests. She typed “running gear” and images filled the screen. Shoes, tights, tank tops, water bottles, watches, socks. She went back to the search bar. The cursor flashed relentlessly at her. The internet is a disappointing and unwelcoming place, she thought. Her hand moved the mouse across the toolbar. File, Edit, View, History. She clicked History and found a menu dominated by the DigiCamWorld Forum. She opened the site, recognized her husband’s username, and began reading. She read conversations about cameras on doors, cameras on bikes, cameras on drones. She read these conversations between her husband and other people on the internet—people who, like her husband, had their things and could talk endlessly about them. She noticed her husband’s voice sounded different in text. He used exclamation marks liberally, which surprised her. Who was this person? She created a fake username and posted a new discussion on the forum. Looking for advice on buying surveillance cameras for home use!
When she finally closed the browser window, she noticed the SurCam icon on the desktop. She double clicked the icon and found a fish-eye version of her own back porch. It was dark outside and a figure approached wearing white and red flashing lights that lit up the dark porch like a strobe. It was her husband returning from his bike ride to the reservoir and still donning his protective night riding vest. When he approached the door, he got down on hands and knees to search for the key beneath the pots. She watched him struggle to find the key while his vest rhythmically illuminated the porch and yard. She saw another figure too, a smaller figure in the yard. She could see it only on the beats of the husband’s pulsing vest, but when it turned its head, she saw the light reflected against its retinas. She saw its ears, its pointed snout and bushy tail. The coyote looked directly into the camera while the husband continued groping for the key.
Originally published by Kenyon Review Online
J.D. Hosemann lives in Jackson, Mississippi and teaches English at Tougaloo College. His stories have appeared in journals like The Kenyon Review Online, hex, New World Writing, Gone Lawn, and others.
