Keeper of the Rise: & Other Stories

By Nathan Prince

Keeper of the Rise, a compelling new collection of short stories, is full of surprises. The form of the short story itself here is examined with enthusiasm and delight. Time is studied and contemplated. Love is held to the light and evoked. A diverse range in subject matter gives the collection depth. There is a story here for everyone, even the casual reader. Keeper of the Rise soars with possibility.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546218883

Nathan Prince

Nathan Prince has studied writing all over Illinois. He lives and works near Chicago. He finds inspiration in family, a tremendous source of strength to him, and friends. Creative work has appeared in Subtle Fiction, Permafrost, Euphony, and Eunoia Review. He was the featured poet for Contemporary American Voices in July 2012. He believes in the unfathomable possibilities of creativity. This is his first novel. Visit his website at nathamprince.com.

Book preview

KEEPER

OF THE RISE

& OTHER STORIES

Nathan Prince

49074.png

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2017 Nathan Prince. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/27/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1889-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1888-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017918153

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

For Alyssa, light of a thousand stars

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

but you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

― Robert Penn Warren,

         Audubon: A Vision

CONTENTS

1.   Keeper of the Rise

2.   Zombie Night

3.   Oleanders

4.   Inconsequential Pornographers

5.   Outlaw Notorious

6.   88 Keys

7.   Happy New Year!

8.   The Boundary Waters

9.   Au Contraire

10.   Motherfucker I

11.   The Perfect Martini

12.   The Autobiographies of Jean Lafitte

13.   Eclipse

14.   The Hamptons

15.   Schliemann, the Scoundrel

16.   Omega

17.   Motherfucker II

18.   Through India

19.   Time and Again

20.   Native American

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

About the Author

KEEPER OF THE RISE

— and the people shouted with a great

shout so that the wall fell down, and the people went up into the city, and took it.

— Book of Joshua

1

Walking around in circles, Nickel tosses a racquetball in the air and catches it with an accentuated pop in his palm. Nickel bounces the blue ball off the wood floor repeatedly, circling the room, talking to himself. He stops at the window. The apartment is Aaron Siskind’s. Most of it is an open studio called the Workshop. Nickel is using it for his own work while Aaron is away. The ceilings are exceptionally high and liberating.

Aaron’s photographs and prints were strewn about everywhere when Nickel arrived. Nickel had to clear a path through stacks, boards, partitions and frames just to get to the window overlooking State Street. He stacked the clutter neatly in the corners. Now Nickel’s photographs and notebooks are strewn about everywhere in his own ordered chaos.

The project is going nowhere. Every step in the right direction has led to a half-dozen missteps, side steps, false steps — an endless series of corollaries and scattered directions. It has become a quagmire, an optical illusion, a trap door. Ground once familiar has become strange and formative. Months have turned into years. Valuable time and energy have been invested, squandered, wasted. Nickel wants to blame Aaron, curse him. In the end, though, he knows it’s not entirely Aaron’s fault.

Why would Raeburn want a commercial photographer to provide the text, Nickel asks himself at the window, his voice clouding the pane. Explain that to me. What do I know of architecture, history or writing for that matter! Wouldn’t you want an expert? Wouldn’t that be logical?

The fifties will be over soon. A new decade will be here.

Nickel throws the ball at the wall and catches it with a loud pop. He notices for the first time that the ball leaves a faint scuff mark. Nickel cocks his head and can see a thousand tiny scuff marks all over the wall. He lines up like a pitcher — imagining Harvey Haddix — winds up and releases with all his strength. The ball fires back past his head and disappears behind a file cabinet with a clamor.

Here’s what happened.

Raeburn, an editor at Horizon Press, had written Aaron.

I want to tell you, he wrote, that your Louis Sullivan prints constitute the greatest architectural photographs I have ever seen. Nobody, in my opinion, has ever approached the beauty of this work. Besides the incomparable quality of the photos, I think the proposed book, if adequately produced, could work.

The prints were Nickel’s. Raeburn, Frank Lloyd Wright’s publisher, came across them on a visit to Chicago where the Sullivan group project was on display in 1954. He made Aaron an offer on the spot. Aaron — apt, knowledgeable, an opportunist sensing opportunity — went with it and secured an advance, inadvertently dragging Nickel along with him.

The fatal error.

A few months later Aaron and Nickel went to New York to go over the details.

I present to you Richard Nickel, architectural photographer extraordinaire, Aaron announced to Raeburn in phony bravado.

The pleasure, sir, is all mine, Raeburn said, extending his hand.

A consummate professional with a small, soft hand, he had a surprisingly powerful handshake. Nickel knew right away he was in over his head.

Five years have passed since that handshake. Through the window snow is falling. At the ledge Nickel picks up a copy of Aaron’s first book, Photographs, published by Horizon, and flips through its thick, slick pages. He takes in the book’s chemical fragrance of inks and thinks fondly of Aaron’s accomplishment. Then he curses him again. In a week Aaron will return from New York with a new wife and her young daughter. Nickel will be back in the suburbs with his parents. The free space, liberating ceilings and monastic existence will have evaporated like early morning lake mist.

Nickel likes it there in the south Loop. Everything is accessible. Life is all around. There are jazz clubs he can frequent anonymously, diners that stay open all night. At night he walks the streets, aloof and alone mostly, to admire the buildings. Prostitutes line Roosevelt. Hey, baby, looking for a good time? Sometimes he rides his bike. He studies the buildings and their layouts, their muscular forms all expansive and skyward.

Nickel is selective about the buildings he studies. There is a deep-rooted, prehistoric feeling he experiences among them. It is a feeling strange and profound. He thinks (and has mentioned in conversation) that it must be something like what the ancients felt about the mysteries.

10 things about Chicago winter:

All-consuming Arctic wind blasts the length of the lake to its edge.

Cold, cold, cold.

There is snow, and there is ice.

There are many different kinds of snow, and there are many different kinds of ice.

Ice and snow and wind in one.

Weather systems from around the continent converge uniquely at this point on the lake.

The lake controls the weather.

Winter eventually becomes a matter of perseverance for all things.

The story of the city is a story of the elements.

Cold, cold, cold.

From the window Nickel observes the hustle and bustle of State Street. In the window’s reflection are articles and clippings; scraps and fragments; an island of books and prints; stacks of negatives; and a reel-to-reel recorder playing for the hundredth time an interview conducted in person with William Gray Purcell. There is a mirror in the reflection repeating these images infinitely. Nickel takes comfort in the idea of strangling Aaron when he comes home.

Nickel spends the holidays working. Aaron finally returns. At a downtown diner Nickel shows Aaron photos of the Babson House. Recently demolished, it was one of the few homes designed by Sullivan himself. It was a marvel, a gem of a home. Despite the awful cold and lack of heavy machinery, Donald, Vinci, Norris and Nickel were able to extract a gigantic section from the second-floor balcony. A loggia, actually, the section is a colonnade of slender columns and arches with a series of customized windows. Norris, the only one with a backyard big enough, took the whole thing intact to his place on a flatbed truck.

You should see it, Nickel tells Aaron over coffee. It’s a wonder.

Aaron examines the photos surreptitiously, masterfully. He likes to turn the images around and sideways to study the angles. Listening to Nickel, he tilts his head here and there. An unmistakable presence, Aaron breathes heavy and moves slowly, deliberately. His hair is wild, silver-white and wispy. His gaze is profound. There is a youthfulness about him, an unwavering joy.

Scrapping old buildings, Aaron says, we’re never going to finish this project!

We, Nickel thinks to himself, you haven’t done a goddamn thing, but says nothing.

Have you made any progress, Aaron asks Nickel pointblank.

Hardly, Nickel tells him. Sometimes I wish Edgar had kept the money. Now I feel obligated.

Just when Nickel was going to give in and call it quits on a comprehensive book about the architecture of Louis Sullivan, Edgar Kauffman Jr. donated $5,000 to the endeavor so he could finish it.

Damn him, too, Nickel thinks to himself.

You were obligated before, Aaron tells Nickel.

I guess.

Did you find anything at the Victoria, Aaron asks, referring to the Victoria Hotel in Chicago Heights which had recently, and somewhat conspicuously, burned to the ground.

No, Nickel says. Unsalvageable. What wasn’t destroyed by fire was demolished and removed. They cleared out most of it before I got there.

Leave the treasures to the ashes, Aaron says.

The Victoria was one of the few buildings Adler, Sullivan and Wright — the great triumvirate — worked on together. Nickel photographed the building a few years before and methodically traced its architectural plan. The pressed brick exterior, broad horizontal façades, ornamental top story, hipped roof and wide overhanging eaves were all Wright, who left the firm, in fact, just before its completion. Sidewalk stores lined its base behind Renaissance-style arches. A five-story clock tower shot straight up from the side of the three-story structure like the tower of the Auditorium on Michigan Avenue.

And now it’s gone, Nickel complains, and only a few photographs and some floor plans remain.

What a shame, Aaron says, shaking his head.

An awful shame.

Have you heard the news?

Aaron, I’ve been working around the clock, six weeks straight, no sleep, how much …

They’re going to knock down the Garrick.

They’re going to knock down the Garrick?

I read it in the paper this morning. They’re going to knock down the Garrick. Replace it with a parking lot. The owners are losing money on it every day. The area isn’t what it used to be. It’s kind of isolated up there on Randolph, no?

Nickel sits back in his seat.

Who owns the building, Nickel asks Aaron.

A firm of some kind, I imagine. If they’re going to knock it down, I was thinking, Richard, maybe we can …

I can’t believe it, Nickel says. This is too much. Every time I turn around they’re knocking another goddamn Sullivan down. We’re going to lose half the buildings before I finish the book!

Aaron studies another photograph for a while and rubs his lips with his forefinger, a nervous tendency with him. Then he looks directly at Nickel, in Nickel, through him. Like half-hearted judo, Nickel tries to redirect Aaron’s gaze. He looks out the black window next to the table only to see his own image mirrored. Slightly bearded, he is casually handsome. Terribly short-sighted, he wears glasses with thick black frames. With glasses Nickel appears scholarly, brainy, harmless. Without them he could be dangerous. Women call him baby-faced, but he’s lost that quality over the past year. The project is taking its toll. He appears worn and haggard. Rings have formed under his eyes from working day and night with text, photos, a thousand concentrated ideas, and ten thousand paralyzing questions.

Thirty-years-old.

Hardly anything to show for it.

Years ago, Nickel photographed the Garrick’s exterior for the project. Examining the photographs at his parents’ home in Park Ridge, he now conceives of something more comprehensive, more permanent. Aaron was thinking the same thing when he arranged for Nickel to meet with David Wallerstein, president of the Marbro Corporation, the entity that managed the Garrick. With permission from the owners, Balaban and Katz, Wallerstein agrees to let Nickel document the building. Through floor plans, schematics and photographs, Nickel sets about to complete the most detailed record of the building to date.

Nickel had been a photographer in the Army during the Korean War, the result of a few college courses. His outfit, the 434th Engineering Construction Battalion, was a company of builders, makers and movers. He photographed bridges and buildings to document in the event they were destroyed. Nickel’s photographs were stark and straightforward. Beside the rushing, dragon-colored waters of the Hantan, Imjin and Bukhan Rivers, Nickel contemplated angles, positions and the various qualities of light. He had a purpose, a mission. Capture the most detailed shot possible with concise, mechanical precision.

That’s what impressed Aaron about Nickel’s photographs in the first place. That’s why Aaron wanted Nickel to document the Garrick.

The very first assignment for Aaron’s Sullivan project threw Nickel.

I want you to go out and photograph Sullivan’s buildings, Aaron told the class. I want to see what you see. I want to see your perspective. Don’t show and tell. Be bold. Blow me away.

Easy, Nickel thought, but soon discovered firsthand the complexity of the assignment. Buildings, Nickel knew, could be challenging, their permanence, immobility and static life difficult to capture. Dissatisfied with every shot, he kept going. There were so many aspects to a Sullivan building. Inside and out, one could focus on the ornamentation alone. One could step back a few blocks and concentrate on the structure itself. One could sit across the street to get the facade, the base, an arcade, a cornice ... Nickel spent days studying unusual viewpoints, playing with light and aperture. Days turned into weeks.

Aaron was impressed.

Keep going, he urged Nickel.

This was seven years ago.

The running joke between Nickel and Aaron, You started it!

With his small-format 35mm Rolliflex E2 and medium-format 2 ¼-inch Hasselblad, Nickel went to the Garrick on Randolph. He had a tripod, a few select lenses and powerful floodlights.

A vacant building is a curious thing. From it all life has been extracted. Here is the closest thing to the ringing mind of the architect. A blueprint of the womb. Eerie and exceptional. To Nickel the space is hallow. He walks around the interior to get a sense of the layout, how space is created and defined.

The theater, vacant and exposed, is stunning. Nickel is overwhelmed by the proscenium arches above the stage. He’s never seen anything