Gone to Green (10 page)

I was mortified. I assumed she was hired help. I knew from reporter Alex that her husband was an influential man in town, one I needed to get to know. I stammered and told Mrs. Taylor I was happy to meet her and looked forward to hearing from Mr. Taylor and practically ran backward out of the room.

“Monday week,” she said as I was leaving. “He hopes to meet with you Monday week about five o’clock. Will that work? Maybe you could stay for supper?”

I stopped. “Monday week? This coming Monday?”

“Next Monday,” she said. “The week after this coming week.”

“That's a new one for me.” I tried to stop myself from frowning.

“I believe I have bumfuzzled you,” she said with a laugh. “But I do hope you’ll come anyway. Not this Monday but the next.”

“I’d love to come. Thank you.” I accidentally spun gravel while leaving the parking lot. Bumfuzzled? Monday week? With everything else I had to keep up with, I clearly needed a lesson in talking Southern.

Downtown on a weekend was as deserted as it had been on New Year's Day, with the exception of a couple of pickups and minivans at the antique mall.
The News-Item
building was eerily empty. I roamed through each department, trying to get a better sense of the place. This reeked of snooping, but I considered it the new owner's prerogative.

In the advertising-marketing area, a huge ivy sat on a filing cabinet with a big sign that said, “Do Not Water This Plant.” I tried to imagine stealth employees coming in and secretly watering the plant. The same person who made “Flush after Using” signs for the women's bathroom probably wrote this sign. Or maybe it was the person who had changed the bathroom signs to read, “Blush after Using.”

The news area was the most interesting, of course. If journalists put the same creativity into the paper as they did into their cubicles, newspapers would be in much better shape. Horror action figures and funky postcards of oversized mailboxes and rocking chairs and a giant pickle on a train covered Alex's desk. The work area next to his was covered with stacks of books and oddities, including what looked to be the entire cast of
Star Wars
made out of Peeps, those bright colored marshmallows you get at Easter. Baffled, I sat down at the desk to study this bizarre work of art.

“Like my sculptures?” a deep voice asked close to my ear.

I gasped at a high-pitched inhuman sound. When I turned around, a frumpy old guy who needed a shave stood within six inches of me. He was wearing a green eyeshade, the kind newspaper editors wore in the old days. His clothes were wrinkled with bits of dried food on them. His sweatshirt said, “Nothing goes right when your underwear's tight.”

He held out his hand. “Tom McNutt, weekend cops reporter, copy editor, and classified advertising layout person. You must be the new owner.”

I stood up, slowly took his hand, wishing it were just a bit cleaner and feeling guilty he had caught me at his desk. “Tom? Hernia surgery, right?”

He nodded, and we exchanged the usual pleasantries about how he was feeling.

“You did this?” I asked, pointing to his desk.

“Yep. I have the entire cast of
Lord of the Rings
at home. You know Peeps are not as easy to work with as you might think, but they were ninety percent off at the Dollar Hut, so the price was right.”

“I imagine so,” I said and backed away from him a few feet. I was uneasy in the room alone with him, but surely he wasn’t a mass murderer. He worked for me, for heaven's sake.

“I just made a pot of coffee,” he said, pointing toward the break area near the composing room. “Want a cup?”

The next few minutes we dug around for a clean cup and made small talk. I have never understood how offices get the collection of coffee mugs they do and how they become so hopelessly filthy. The only thing worse than the coffee area would be the refrigerator, I was certain.

Tom had worked at the paper for an amazing thirty-nine years, starting as a copy boy back when it was a daily and doing every imaginable job since.

“See this scar,” he said, holding out his hand. “Accidentally slammed my hand onto one of those spikes where the newspaper copy used to be put. Remember those?” I winced and nodded, then decided this was better than seeing his hernia scar.

“I have diabetes. That's why I wear these,” he said, holding up a foot covered with a black boot. “And high blood pressure. I would have loved to have become a full-time reporter when I was a young’un, but I didn’t have the gumption for it.”

He briefly interrupted his life story. “What color sugar you want?” he asked. “Pink or yellow?”

I turned down his sweetener offer. I was a black coffee kind of woman. Tom, however, must like his sweet because he tore open four packets and poured them in the cup, followed by a liberal shaking of lumpy creamer. “Nectar of the gods,” he said as he took his first sip.

“Well, I was just exploring the building a little bit,” I said. “Guess I’ll head on back to my office.”

“Good luck to you,” he said. “Let me know what I can do you for.”

I walked purposefully toward my office, acting as though I had important business to take care of. Unlocking my door, I sat down in the fake leather desk chair that was way too big for me. In my mind's eye, I looked like Edith Ann—that Lily Tomlin character—little person, huge chair.

An attempt to call Marti proved fruitless. She was probably getting her nails done or out for her Saturday morning long run.

I went into the conference room to sort through some boxes the Big Boys had left, pulling out a ragged file that said “History.” Tom had surprised me when he said he had worked at the paper when it was a daily, so I settled in to read a lengthy history of
The News-Item
, on yellow, brittle paper.

The story was fascinating, written by Helen McCuller, sister to the father of the Big Boys and matriarch of the family. The narrative was more intriguing since I would be living in the author's house on Route 2.

Helen told how the paper had been a fiery daily, with a reputation for getting wrongs righted. “Governors and senators and important businessmen came to call on the newspaper, needing its support for their causes,” she wrote. “
The News-Item
was one of the first voices to suggest that cotton would not always be king and that Blacks had the right to vote.” Both stances had gotten the front windows broken and the presses sabotaged.

Slowly the area changed. Agriculture lost much of its sway. The parish was heavily integrated. Many people moved to Shreveport or Dallas, looking for better jobs and more money. Television and air-conditioning came along and sent people indoors. The interstate bypassed the town, cutting down on the little commerce that flowed through the area. The community shrank, and
The News-Item
shrank right along with it.

What had Ed been thinking? How was I going to keep us going for a year and find a buyer?

I retreated to the to-do list in my notebook, determined to set up an appointment with the bank on Monday and to find a pest guy to get rid of the rats at the house. I fished around for an index card with some phone numbers that Iris Jo had given me. She laughingly called it my new Blackberry.

“Iris Jo, this is Lois Barker,” I said on the phone. “Am I calling at a bad time?”

“Heavens no.” She sounded pleased to hear my voice. “I was just vacuuming. How's your first Saturday in Green?”

“Oh, it's going fine,” I said. “I’m up at the office getting organized. I wondered if you could recommend someone to exterminate rats?”

“Sure. Terry Bradshaw,” she said.

“Terry Bradshaw? Like the quarterback?”

“No relation,” she said, “but he's your man. Might want him to spray for roaches while he's out there. He goes to my church, good advertiser, too. Let me see if I can run him down for you.”

This was my lesson in how business was done at the newspaper in Green. Somebody knew somebody, usually through church or a relative. That somebody often was a good advertiser or might become an advertiser. I seldom made my own calls for any kind of service work.

Tackling another set of files, I dug out an ancient calculator, the kind that made a sort of grinding noise when you hit the equal button. Profits had definitely spiraled downward after Ed bought the paper. I had a challenge ahead of me, but I wasn’t up to it today.

I stuck my head in the news area and waved goodbye to Tom, who saluted me and went back to a game of solitaire on his computer. The police radio blared as usual, but things were quiet otherwise.

As I walked out of the building, I noticed the death notices had been updated—painted by Tom, I supposed—and the smoking teenager sat on the steps over by the dock, where she had been the day I pulled into town. Doing a slight turn, I walked over and said “hello,” in a voice that sounded a little snippy, even to me.

“I’m Lois Barker, the new owner of
The News-Item.
I noticed you out here the other day. Can I help you with something? Are you waiting for someone?”

The girl was about sixteen and very cute, in a funky sort of way. Her red hair was longer in the front, with interesting blondish layering in the back. I knew from water-cooler discussions in Dayton that those lowlights were not easy to pull off. She had on tight jeans, a pink velvet coat with fake fur trim and some boots I had seen on an actress in
People
magazine recently.

She stared at me for about thirty seconds, with that go-away-and-leave-me-alone look. Then she stood up and walked slowly away. “Nope. Don’t need anything. Not waiting for anyone.”

She stopped briefly, as if to say something. Instead, she tossed down her cigarette, ground it out, dug around in a big hobo style purse, pulled out a bright green lighter, lit another cigarette, and kept on walking.

I got in my car and took a drive out to Route 2, homesick for Dayton and my life there. Halfway to the new place, I did a U-turn and spent the next two hours walking up and down every aisle in Wal-Mart, buying a few things I needed and a bunch of things I didn’t.

As I drove back to the motel, I saw the girl in the pink coat walking through the run-down neighborhood across the street, smoking yet another cigarette.

Green Middle School student Suzanne Seal will be lunching
with the governor in November. Suzanne, 13, daughter
of Jack and Cindy Seal, Route 2, won the Northwest
Louisiana Art in the Schools Award with a watercolor of
her nine-year-old sister, Gracie.

—The Green News-Item

P
erhaps Green residents could have chosen a more central location to build a tribute to the boll weevil.

Winding around back roads for more than an hour, I searched for the local landmark, a monument to the insect that destroyed cotton crops. The jaunt seemed like a good way to kill a Sunday morning—until I became hopelessly lost.

Heading out of town on an unfamiliar highway, I turned right here, left there, and was soon on a gravel road. Completely lost, I noticed a man working around some ponds and headed toward him, walking carefully across a muddy path so as to avoid any snakes and ruining my new shoes. Three barking dogs charged at me, but the man called them back, and they calmed down.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I think I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get back to Green?”

He brushed his muddy hands off on his jeans, ran one hand through his hair and said, “You are turned around, aren’t you?” By now the hounds were running back up to me, and he called them again. “Mannix. Markey. Kramer. Get back over here … now!”

Before I could ponder the names of the barking trio, Mr. Pond Man walked up and gestured as he talked. “Turn right here and head back up the main highway. You’ll pass a little crossroads with a store. There’ll be a handful of houses, more catfish ponds and then a church on your right. Go right, and you’ll head straight into town.”

“Oh, so these are catfish ponds,” I said, almost to myself.

“Yes, ma’am, they sure are.” I was talking to my first ever catfish farmer. “I’m Chris Craig. Are you visiting someone in Green?”

“No, I just moved here. I’m Lois Barker. Good to meet you.” Feeling ridiculously out of place, I turned back toward my car. “Thanks for the directions. Good luck with your fish.”