Gone to Green (4 page)

That's when I remembered I’d accepted the managing editor's job, and then the worst headache I’ve had in ten years hit me—the kind you get when your old boyfriend joins the Peace Corps without you or when the central air unit breaks down on the hottest day of the year. This is the kind of headache that inheriting a newspaper can bring on quickly—a small-town newspaper in the Deep South. Could I handle it for a year?

The headache pounded the words “you took the managing editor's job” over and over in my head. I dug in my purse for my cell phone and called Zach's office with a twinge of desperation.

“He's in a meeting, Lois. Is there something I can help you with?” His secretary was entirely too cheerful.

“Actually, I’m not feeling well and need to go home. Will you give him that message please?”

A million thoughts fought for my attention. “Handle a newspaper in Green, Louisiana, for a year?” “No problem.” “Yes, Zach, I’ll be your M.E.” “Ed, what have you done?” “Thank you, Ed.” “I can do this.” “I can’t do this.” I was stunned, excited, queasy, thrilled, and just a little on the edge of insanity.

Driving too fast, I cut through a side street near a local college and, at the last minute, whipped into a parking space. I slipped into the school's charming chapel, one of my favorite local buildings, and took a seat on a back pew. Fall light streaming through the stained glass windows momentarily calmed my fears. Big decisions had to be made in a short amount of time. Where to start?

My mother, who died when I was twenty-five, always said to pray when I needed guidance. In the past few years I had been too busy, too tired, and … well … too frustrated with the whole God thing to pray. My mother was a deeply spiritual woman, and her death shook me to the core. She would have known how to handle this situation. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes as I thought of how much I missed her.

Each of the chapel's stained glass windows pictured Christ in a Bible story. I focused on one where he was holding a lamb and said, “Help!” My head pounded, and I couldn’t sit still.

I sped home, grabbed a can of Diet Dr Pepper, sank down into my overstuffed armchair, and put my feet up on the scratched coffee table I had bought at a flea market. With notebook and pencil in hand, I listed every possible scenario to help me make a decision.

Three hours, four sodas, two bags of hundred-calorie popcorn, and two Tylenol later, I was as confused as ever. My head still pounded.

“Help,” I whispered again.

What would you buy if you hit the jackpot? Arlen Wilkes
of Route 2 is going to buy an iPod and load it up with
Shania Twain and Toby Keith songs, after winning
$12,000 on a gambling trip to Shreveport. He wants
everyone to know he has already deposited the money in
the bank to discourage any breaking and entering.
“It ain’t in the house,” he stressed.

—The Green News-Item

N
ot quite a week after Ed's death, I walked into Zach's office prepared to tell him again how excited I was about the M.E. job and that I needed a few days off to head to Green, Louisiana, to cancel the purchase of the paper Ed had been so excited about.

Since Zach was still in a meeting, I sat at the small table in his office and thumbed through a copy of a management book he had assigned us to read. I was supposed to lead the discussion at next Wednesday's editors’ meeting—had already placed the order for our box lunches.

Somewhere between skimming chapter three and noticing the towering, white clouds outside, the word “go” popped into my mind, as though someone had spoken to me, and then said, “I’ll help you.”

My head whipped around, wondering if anyone else might have heard this. Zach's assistant seemed engrossed in typing calendar listings. No one else was nearby. Maybe I had misheard the police radio, squawking a few feet away near the cop reporter's desk.

I looked outside again and saw a rainbow. I am not making this up. All my doubts and misgivings about letting Ed down and taking the safe way out came rushing back.

“I have some unexpected news,” I said to Zach, when he walked in a few minutes later. “I’m giving my notice.”

“Real funny,” Zach said with a laugh.

“I’m serious. I’m moving down to Louisiana and will see what happens.”

“As in run that newspaper?” Zach asked. “You must be pulling my leg. Running a newspaper is hard work and requires intense commitment.” He grew more heated with every passing moment.

“Have you forgotten I help run this newspaper twelve to fourteen hours every day? I’m fully aware of what's involved.” I was bluffing. My resignation surprised me as much as Zach.

“You’re committing career suicide, Lois. Leaving now would be a huge mistake.”

I took a deep breath, noticing it sounded shaky when I exhaled. “I might be …” My voice weakened. Then I sat up straighter. “But I have to give this a try.”

“Go, then,” Zach said, standing up. “But I expect you to stay through the holidays. You know how tough it’ll be to find a good city editor, especially one who wants to move this time of year.”

“Are you saying you want thirty days notice?”

“Thirty days with a few stipulations, Lois,” he said in his manager's voice. “Your departure will put us in a bind. I insist you pick up the slack over the holidays, and that means no extra time off.” He glanced at a folder on his desk. “You’ll be due a year-end bonus, and I’ll help you get it, but only if you agree to my terms. No time off.”

He was clearly annoyed I had backed out on the new job. Feeling a bit guilty about it, I agreed.

It was that simple. The course of my life changed in twenty minutes, without writing one word in a notebook or bouncing it off Marti or talking to my CPA. I thought I had heard the word “go,” and I was going to Green to figure out how to run a little newspaper and change my life.

My plans to move to Green, a place I had never set foot in, took shape via FedEx and long distance calls. I put off the McCuller family until after the New Year, but not without some strain. My contact with them was limited mostly to Iris Jo, a distant cousin who was the bookkeeper and apparently not part of the rich side of the family. She sent me financial statements, a market profile, and copies of the newspaper.

“They want you to know this is all highly irregular,” she said, sounding a bit apologetic. “The paperwork has been redone for you to take ownership on January 1. They would have preferred you to come down for a face-to-face and sign the documents.” She hesitated. “The McCullers asked me to tell you they’re ready to get on with the deal. Call me anytime. I’ll be glad to help you anyway I can. Chuck and Dub McCuller will meet with you at four o’clock on the first day of the New Year, January 1,” Iris Jo said. “They wanted me to tell you to please be prompt.”

“Am I crazy?” I asked Marti at lunch that day.

“I don’t think so,” she said, not quite the reassurance I had hoped for.

“Gone to Green,” I wrote on a sheet of paper with a black marker, giving my cell phone number and e-mail address. “Stay in touch.” I taped it to the newsroom mailboxes and walked out of the Dayton newspaper, wanting to laugh and cry.

I pulled out of my garage at 10:45 a.m. on New Year's Eve, my car loaded down with everything I hadn’t entrusted to the movers. My belongings had been put into a big load with two other families’ precious things, to be dropped off at some undetermined time. I hoped I would see my stuff again and that my green pottery collection wouldn’t be unloaded at the Smith family home in Peoria. I also hoped I wasn’t making the worst mistake of my life.

An odd, fast-motion account of my adult life unwound in my mind as I drove out of Dayton. I wondered yet again what Ed had been thinking when he wrote my name in his will on the same line as the
The Green News-Item.

Pulling into Green in the middle of the next afternoon, with the official newspaper meeting fast approaching, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

“The quaint lakeside town I had pictured does not exist,” I said to Marti, during an SOS call from the car. “Obviously, whoever did the Chamber's Web site is a master at good lighting and interesting angles and hyperbole.”

“Maybe you can hire them for the paper,” she said, trying to sound supportive. I could hear the sounds of a football game in the background and remembered she had invited a few of our friends over.

“The outskirts of town look like an ad for fast-food franchises and stores where everything costs a dollar. It's horrible. What have I done? I want to go home.”

“Lois Barker, you’ll be fine. You always are. Now, pull yourself together. Call me back later when you know more. I’m having a terrible time hearing you.”

Desperate to find a real neighborhood, I turned down a small side street with potholes big enough to suck up my car. Several overturned garbage cans spilled out a week's worth of trash on the sidewalks, and candy wrappers and soft drink cans littered the front yards of the small, shabby houses.

I had imagined driving into a sweet town with children dressed in colorful sweaters riding their bikes. Instead, junk cars rusted in front yards, and upholstered furniture decorated more than one porch. The area looked like something out of a Third-World country. Only a few houses were halfway neat and adorned with old tires, cut and painted white to make flowerbeds.

People stared at me, and I stared back. I resisted the urge to roll down my window and explain that I was the new owner of the paper. My urgent need to get out of that place surpassed the desire to interact.

After a couple of wrong turns, I did a stealth drive-by of the newspaper building. It had a sort of noble, forlorn look, with one battered pickup parked in the lot. I squinted and saw that it had “News-Item, No. 1” painted on it.

Downtown was deserted except for a teen-age girl who lounged on a bench outside the paper, smoking a cigarette. The small surge of pride I had felt at surveying my domain was sullied by worries about how to deal with stray people who hung around the loading dock.

The area near the paper included a barbershop with a sign that read “Jesus Saves”; a Ford dealership, proudly proclaiming itself the smallest in the South; an antique mall, advertising booths for rent; and a small local department store. I already knew the store and car dealership were important in my life. Iris Jo had told me over the phone that they were among the biggest advertisers in the paper, and both were owned by one of the richest families in town.