Gone to Green (6 page)

The staffers laughed. I scanned the room in search of a friendly face.

Chuck jumped in. “After much thought, the McCuller family has decided to sell
The Green News-Item
, and we are happy to introduce you to the new owner—Miss Lois Barker. This pretty lady is an editor from a big newspaper up north and is ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. She comes highly recommended.”

I stared at him, wondering if he had actually checked me out and bemused by his use of the world “pretty.”

The announcement seemed to be a surprise … and not the good kind of surprise. The young woman from the front desk groaned softly. The pressman, easily identified by his stained jumpsuit, gave Iris Jo a questioning look. The one person wearing a tie kept glancing over at the McCullers and then down at the floor.

The only newsroom person who had made the meeting raised his hand immediately. “Do you expect to make any staff changes?”

Before I could answer, he threw two more questions at me. “Have you ever been to Green before? Will you consider increasing the amount the staff gets paid for mileage?”

“Now wait a minute, son, before you start interrogating her,” Chuck said. “First we want to tell you that things are not going to change. Our
News-Item
will continue to uphold the fine traditions it always has. Everyone's job is safe. Isn’t that right, Miss Lois?” He winked when he turned to me and then looked back at the staff. “And if she gets too frisky, y’all just give me and Dub a call, and we’ll come right over and make everything right.”

Uneasiness ran through me at the joking threat. I wondered if the McCullers might remain a bit more involved than expected.

“I’m so happy to be here,” I said in the world's shortest acceptance speech. “I look forward to working with each of you. Thank you, Dub and Chuck and the rest of your family, for your years of stewardship of this paper and this community. We wish you all the best and hope you’ll keep your subscription to the paper and that LSU always wins.”

People laughed nervously. Iris Jo and the woman from the lobby applauded.

I slowly walked around the group, shaking hands, chatting, trying to remember names, and avoid sticky doughnut crumbs.

The man in the tie introduced himself as Lee Roy Hicks. “I handle advertising and circulation,” he said, “and I look forward to going over the numbers with you.” His tone didn’t quite match his words, though, and his handshake was one of those half handshakes that I learned Southern businessmen gave women.

The “Big Boys” did not stick around long and handed me off to Iris Jo but stressed that Lee Roy was “my go-to guy.” I suspected Iris Jo ran the place, and I’d be going to her a lot more than to Lee Roy.

Walking into my rather ornate, if somewhat outdated, office did feel good. I sat at the desk and prepared to check my e-mail—until I realized I didn’t have a computer. I began a to-do list.

A timid knock sounded at the door, and the front-lobby warrior walked in—Tammy, I now knew her name to be. She had already apologized for not being more helpful that morning, but it was fairly clear she thought I should have told her who I was and what I was doing there.

“Miss Lois,” she said, “can I ask you a quick question?”

Among the things I learned that day was that despite all my best efforts, I would be “Miss Lois” to seventy-five percent of the people I encountered, and Tammy was the master of the “quick question.” She walked into my office and stood before a chair, not speaking for the moment.

“It's Tammy, right?” I motioned for her to sit down. “What's on your mind?”

“I was wondering,” she hesitated, fiddling with her chunky necklace. “Would it be okay if I buy a new stapler for the front counter?”

A new stapler? I signed off on staplers? “Of course, Tammy. Get whatever you need.”

“Just one more quick thing, if you’ve got a minute.” An attractive woman in her twenties, she fidgeted in the chair, almost like a high school student in the principal's office. Her clothes looked inexpensive, but she wore them well.

“Sure.” I nodded.

“Well, I usually take my lunch from noon till one every day. I like to watch
All My Children
while I eat my turkey sandwich. Is that going to be a problem?” By now she was so nervous she fiddled with her fingernails.

Tammy's questions made me antsy, cementing the scope of my new job. I was responsible for the next day's front page— and for making sure we had the proper car advertising and that the grocery store inserts got in? And setting lunch hours for the staff?

“Whatever you’ve been doing, just keep doing it for now,” I said.

“Do you watch any soap operas, Miss Lois?”

I shook my head and stood up. I did what any self-respecting new newspaper owner would do. I decided to leave the building. “I guess I’d better get going,” I said. “Have a good afternoon, Tammy.”

She looked perplexed as I walked out to Iris Jo's desk.

“Do you think you could show me the house the McCullers offered for the year?” I asked my new assistant. The rent-free house had come up at the last minute, part of the package when the Big Boys were trying to entice me to Green in a hurry. Seeing it had suddenly risen on my priority list.

Slightly frazzled, Iris Jo explained in her kind way that she did not have time for the jaunt. “I would love to go with you, but I just don’t see how I can. I’m still trying to close out the books for the year and am a little behind, what with all the changes. May I see your keys, please?”

Digging around in my envelopes, she fished out a key. “Do you think you might take a look by yourself? Or, I could ask Tammy to take you. She might be able to get away.”

Riding with Tammy would thwart my escape, so I took the key. “No problem,” I said. “I can check it out on my own. It’ll help me get the lay of the land.”

“Here's how to get there,” Iris said. She jotted down directions that included a gravel road, a house trailer with three dogs in the front yard, and a small church. I immediately surmised I was not being offered one of the famed McCuller condos on the lake.

During the past seventy-two hours I had beaten myself up pretty good for my lack of preparation for this move, including nailing down a place to live. I had to keep reminding myself I had done the best I could—saying goodbye, covering holiday shifts, studying my new paper.

“Thanks, Iris Jo, for all your help. I’ll be fine.” My words were more confident than my spirit at that moment.

As I walked through the building, Alex, the reporter in a pair of torn jeans and a faded T-shirt, stopped me and asked for my bio and a quote or two for the news announcement the next day. “I’d like to take a mug shot of you before you get away too.”

I was embarrassed that I had not even thought of the story for the paper. My journalism skills were already slipping.

I sat down for a quick interview and typed out some quotes, not trusting him to get it right. “Don’t we have a photographer on staff?” I asked, knowing I had seen a name on the payroll sheets, in addition to a parking spot labeled “Photographer.”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex said. “He works part-time and takes photos for advertising and news. I think he's out shooting some houses for the real estate pages today. I usually shoot my own art. Unless it's a really big story, you know.”

It took only a split second for him to realize that didn’t sound right. “I mean breaking news, you know, spot news, that kind of stuff. We can handle mugs, portraits, whatever you want to call them.”

So I stood in the front of the building and let Alex shoot me. He chattered as he snapped away, with the blunt speech of most young reporters. “I’ve been at the paper about six months and appreciate being part of your farm club. This will serve me well when I get ready to move to a bigger paper. I can learn a lot from a woman owner from out of state. A new perspective, you know.”

He snapped another photo and glanced at his watch. “Well, got to go. Time for the police jury meeting.” Before I could collect my thoughts, he sprinted to his car, with his tennis shoes slapping the pavement.

I walked slowly into the building and stopped to ask Tammy my own quick questions. “Tammy, what is a police jury meeting? And why do we have a list of names painted on the window?” The list had grown by two since I came in that morning.

“The police jury, they’re like the governing body of the parish, you know, Bouef Parish. Green's the parish seat for Bouef Parish. We don’t have counties down here in Louisiana.” She sort of drawled out the word “Louisiana” in a nice way, in between hemming and hawing. “You probably know it's spelled B-o-u-e-f, but it's pronounced Beff, kind of like the name Jeff.” I remembered Ed telling me the same thing and felt my throat tighten.

“Anyway, the police jury runs lots of legal announcements—good money for us and sometimes some juicy stuff in there. You just wouldn’t believe who don’t pay their taxes.” She took a breath. “Lately, they’ve been discussing a new subdivision or something that Major Wilson and his group want to develop on the lake. Not quite sure about all that.”

Tammy paused to pick up the phone, hitting one of two lines and sounding quite pleasant to the person who wanted to place a wedding announcement in the paper.

“How much do we charge for those?” I asked when she got off. She looked surprised.

“Charge? For weddings? What do you mean? They’re free.” I could tell my question had set off a mild panic, as though we were about to end a centuries long tradition and cheat people out of their right to be in the paper for free. I was considering just that.

I asked again about the names painted on the window. I had never seen anything like it, and I could not figure it out, which bugged me.

“Oh, those are people who have died since the paper came out,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Funeral homes fax them in from all over the area. I put them up there every day so people will know who they need to visit at the funeral home, get their food ready, that sort of thing. I mean, I do it every weekday … not weekends. Tom in the newsroom usually comes in on weekends to post them. You’d be surprised how many folks come by to take a look every day.”

Then, as if remembering my question about paid weddings, she said, “It's a real community service … and we run their obits in the paper on Tuesdays or Fridays. That's free too. Birth announcements too. You know, Miss Lois, everyone ought to get their name in the paper for free when they are born, get married, and die. And we do wedding anniversaries for free, too, from twenty-five years on up.”

I now owned and had to make a profit from a paper that offered free everything and painted a list of death notices on the front window. Perhaps I should revisit my prayer for wisdom.

Green police made a traffic stop on Main Street after several
911 calls that a Mercedes Benz was driving erratically and
there appeared to be no one at the wheel. Upon stopping the
car, police discovered the driver was a seven-year old who
had taken his father's car for a spin in retaliation for his dad
not buying him a new skateboard. No arrests were made.

—The Green News-Item

I
n my mind, my new home was a nice little rental cottage within a couple of miles of the paper. I was surprised, therefore, when Iris Jo's directions led me out to one of the main highways, away from the lake, and away from civilization as best I could tell. There were lots of woods everywhere—piney woods they were called in the regional advertising materials —a deserted cotton gin, and what looked to be agricultural acreage and ponds with pumps in them.

I found Grace Community Chapel and turned onto the gravel road and past the “house where the new lady preacher lives” and the “coach's trailer with three dogs in the front yard.” I passed another pond or two and then a tidy house on the right, with green shingle siding. A small fake windmill sat in the front yard, and a fishing boat was parked to the side. Iris Jo had told me she lived there.

Slowly, I drove “exactly two miles” down the road, hoping not to ding my windshield and looking for a mailbox labeled Route 2, Box 32. “My” house would be sitting back a piece on the left, according to Iris Jo, and would have a screened porch, a garage, and a big cottonwood tree in the side yard. The house belonged to Aunt Helen McCuller—“Ain’t” Helen as the local people pronounced it, a woman who had gone to the nursing home a year or so ago. One of the McCuller kids had lived there for a while before moving to Dallas to take a CPA job. It had been vacant since.