Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  Clarence’s coal-black hand made a striking impression on the shoulder of Jake’s off-white sweater.

  “It’s times like this when you need to get as far away from a newspaper as possible, just so you can breathe some clean air.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The holiday music from the Mustang’s stereo and the bell ringers along the sidewalk gave way to the business-as-usual sounds of the newsroom, which didn’t change for any holiday season, other than an occasional card or wreath taped to the side of someone’s terminal.

  Jake had gone to Carly and apologized profusely about the fiasco with the Times story. She was embarrassed, but said, “I don’t really know anyone in Los Angeles. I guess it doesn’t matter that much what they think about me.”

  To Jake it mattered and he had groveled, but Carly was surprisingly quick to forgive him. If only he could forgive himself. If only he had it to do over, he swore he’d never violate his daughter’s trust again.

  Jake pawed through his huge pile of mail, sorting all the materials from manila envelopes he’d received the last two weeks. The first batch was all from the Pacific Northwest in response to the original Tribune printing of the “condom” column. The second batch was from all over the west, from Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, and lots from California. Those had started coming in a week later, after syndication prints. The response was phenomenal. While an inner voice said “don’t be a fool; leave it alone,” he felt compelled to come back to this subject that had buried him in reader responses.

  He jotted down a rough outline of items he wanted to address, then hunkered down in his chair and rattled off a lot of words quickly, as if firing from a bunker. Twenty minutes later he stopped. He pressed the “home” key, popping the cursor back to the beginning of the column, and eagerly started reading.

  An interesting thing happened after my recent column about condom distribution being a poor solution to teen pregnancy and STDs. I received many supportive letters, and innumerable copies of studies and reports validating my points. But I also received the largest number of name-calling letters I’ve ever seen. Some of these names intrigued me. One was “religious bigot.” This struck me as strange, since I’m not a religious person, and there was nothing religious in the column.

  Another was “homophobe.” I reread my column, since I didn’t remember saying anything about homosexuality. In fact, I hadn’t! Given this level of interest and agitation, I’ve decided to put on my flak jacket and tackle this subject again.

  Several years ago our surgeon general made a classic statement. (I’m embarrassed to say that at the time I defended her for it.) She said, “Driver education tells kids what to do in the front of the car, and we should be telling them what to do in the back of the car.”

  She referred, of course, not to abstaining from sex, but to using condoms when having sex. (It wasn’t too much later the president’s AIDS czar blamed our problems on “Victorian morality.” Huh?)

  What doctors know and our children should too is that wearing a condom takes a few bullets out of the gun’s cylinder. But when you’re playing Russian roulette, eventually the one or two bullets left in the chamber will kill you. The solution is not to better the odds in Russian roulette. It is to stop playing it. That means sexual abstinence, as curiously offensive as that concept seems to be.

  Four days ago I watched the television program “Prime Time Live.” It featured schools that arrange for female students to have Norplant (a five-year birth control device) surgically implanted beneath their skin, without parental permission. What caught my attention was that they interviewed three eighth-grade girls who were sexually active. The interviewer asked if they would do anything different if they could start over. All three said they would wait until they were married to have sex. They were all very sorry they hadn’t.

  Amazingly, the interviewer did not follow up on the girls’ deep regrets at their lost virginity. It was the perfect opportunity—totally missed because of the program’s focus—to feature the concept some call “secondary virginity.” If sexual activity for teens is psychologically harmful and physically dangerous, and studies confirm it is, we must offer them a chance to go back, to start over with new values and commitments. We should offer them help in developing their self-control, help them to “just say no” to sex as we help them to “just say no” to drugs. And to realize that even if you said “yes” before, you can say “no” from now on.

  Recently Hollywood has gotten behind the Russian roulette “safe sex” programs. Yes, the same Hollywood which routinely shows teenagers hopping in the sack with each other. The same Hollywood which makes millions on teen sex and violence films. Given its track record, when Hollywood supports one side in this debate, perhaps it should be enough to convince us to throw our lot with the other side. (Why is it so politically fashionable to be concerned about polluting rivers but so unfashionable to be concerned about polluting minds?)

  Various abstinence centered programs have sprung up across the country, and a number of readers sent me copies of the curricula. Much of it looks very good. And it gives students a real choice. If they want to, they can still choose the Hollywood way, the Planned Parenthood way. But if they do, at least they should know what they’re choosing. They should know the profound physical and psychological risks. They should also know there’s a better way. They should understand the advantages of “saved sex” over “safe sex.”

  Alley cats and rodents engage in sex with any available partner and no thought of consequences. What raises us above animals is our capacity for understanding, insight and foresight. We understand how life works, that there are long-range consequences of our decisions. There is not only today. There is tomorrow. Perhaps it’s time more of us—both parents and children—learn to live not just for today, but for tomorrow.

  Jake sat back, curious at what he’d read. He’d written instinctively, without much pause for thought. The thought was there all right, but it had formulated on its own, simmering beneath the surface. The full shape and intensity of it hadn’t been clear until Jake read the words that emerged from him. For some reason, they frightened him.

  He pressed the word count button. 750. Good. Now he could go back and edit, polish it up, add a few lines. Maybe make it sound a little less … whatever. He’d better make it good. Winston and Jess weren’t going to be happy he was addressing this subject again, even though it got a huge response before, which was normally what editors wanted from a column.

  For the next hour he whittled away At 11:46 he pressed the save and send buttons, and the column whipped through the network wires to wait briefly for Winston.

  At 12:10 Jake relaxed, surprised Winston hadn’t called him in. He glanced down the aisle to his office, and his heart skipped a beat as he saw Jess standing across the desk from Winston. There could be any number of reasons, Jake realized. Why did he think they were discussing him?

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his right shoulder and heard a voice saying, “Is this the Reverend Jake Woods?” Jake knew what the face would look like before he turned and saw it.

  “CLABERN!” Jake called Clarence by his computer handle. “What’s up? And what’s with the Reverend? Come to confess your sins?”

  “Neither of us has time for that. Actually, I just read your column.” Clarence whistled. “Man, you got everybody talkin’. I heard somebody say you must have had an out of body experience after the accident or something. Like you met God and now you’re trying to make him like you. Reverend Woods, that’s what they’re calling you.” Clarence was clearly enjoying this.

  “Why? Just for talking common sense? What’s that got to do with being religious?”

  “Hey, don’t get chaffed with me, Rev. You’re preachin’ to the choir. I’m on your team, remember? I just wish I’d written that piece. I’ve been trying to figure out how to work that kind of stuff into a sports column. Got a few ideas to bounce off you. How about we talk over lunch?”

>   “Great.” Jake looked down to see Jess and Winston still talking intently. “I feel like a drive. Ever been to Lou’s Diner?”

  “Lou’s Diner? Never heard of it. Which makes me a little suspicious.”

  “You’re in for a treat. It’s on me.”

  They small-talked till they got to Lou’s and ordered. Rory was delighted to see Jake. When he heard Clarence was a sports columnist he told him all about Cecily’s soccer and Robert’s water polo, and how he and Maria loved to watch their kids’ games, and how the whole family was going to be together all day for Christmas and it was his favorite time of year. In turn, Clarence told Rory all about his wife and kids. Jake had never asked Clarence much about them. Finally, the demands of work pulled Rory from the much-preferred socializing. He left to cook the order, but only after he brought over a cappuccino and latté, on the house.

  “Refreshing guy. I like him.” Clarence said. “This place is like a throwback to the past.”

  “The diner time forgot.”

  “Yeah, exactly. It reminds me of a conversation with Jess just the other day. We were discussing my goal to get out of sports columns into political or general or any place I could talk about some serious stuff. He told me nobody doubts my skills, but they question some of my beliefs and politics, though he said it differently—I forget how—so it would still sound open-minded.

  “Anyway, Jess looked at me and said, ’Aren’t you afraid of these religious right groups and all their political goals?’ I replied—and this probably seals my professional fate at the Trib—’No, why should I be?’

  “He looked at me like I was crazy and said, ’They’re convinced their way is the right way, they’re so dogmatic, and they’re so … intolerant.’ First, I pointed out that those holding the opposite positions are just as convinced they’re right and just as dogmatic. I asked him, ’So is dogmatism and intolerance made better just because you don’t believe in God, or made worse because you do?’ Then I said something that never occurred to me till that moment.”

  “What? If it’s good, I’ll steal it from you.”

  “You’re welcome to it. I said, I’ve read through the letters from Focus on the Family that lay out all the values they support. I’ve read through the political goals and proposed legislation the conservative Christian groups have come up with. And the truth is, if they got their way on every single thing they want—and of course they never will—but if they did, then you know what the bottom line would be? America would just look a lot more like the country I was born in than the country it’s become.’ So I told Jess, ’If you’re asking me which country I prefer, the answer is, the one I was born in.”

  “Never thought of it that way.”

  “Me neither. Of course, the America I grew up in was far from perfect, and the religious conservatives aren’t right about everything. But when you compare their agenda and the country it gave us to the country the secular liberals have given us the last thirty years, well, which would your children be safer in? Which did they get a better education in? Which one did more families stay together in, spend time together, communicate and become close knit? Which let the black community pull itself up by its bootstraps and compete and get good jobs, like my daddy and uncles did, and which has lulled so many blacks into a permanent underclass? Sure, there was a lot of racism, but there still is. We’re being treated differently, and our children are in gangs, killing each other, because they’ve got no incentives, no direction, no role models. No fathers. And they won’t even let us use our tax money to send our children to decent schools.”

  Clarence had talked like this before, but for the first time Jake felt that much of what he was saying was right on target.

  “That’s what I mean about sitting in this place, Jake. It’s like it brings back the values of days past, when we were growing up. The days of Ozzie and Harriet and Ward and June Cleaver and Donna Reed. You know, before Freddy Kruegger, Madonna, and Howard Stern. It’s a world I wish my kids could grow up in, instead of walking through weapons detectors at school and getting inundated with R-rated movies and being fitted for birth control devices when half of them can’t even read by the time they graduate.”

  “Does all this relate to your column idea?”

  “Yeah, it does. It’s the whole sports role model thing. The best athletes are black, let’s face it.” Jake smiled at Clarence’s directness.

  “Ten percent of the population and eighty percent of the NBA, with an occasional white guy who beats the genetic odds. Meanwhile the schools these guys went to are passing out condoms and Norplant and you name it with no parental permission, just like you said in your column. Not many credible people are showing the alternative of responsibility, abstinence, saving yourself for marriage. Well, the guys in sports are the role models. Nobody’s more credible than they are. Every boy wants to be like them. And make no mistake, if these boys aren’t taught something radically different than what they’re growing up with now, they’re going to be dead or in jail, and they’re going to take down a lot of women and children and other young men with them. I want to challenge these athletes to bring this message back to the ’hood.”

  “Are enough athletes living that way themselves to convince kids to do the same?”

  “More and more. You don’t have as much Wilt Chamberlain and Magic Johnson stuff going on now. More out of fear than anything, for some of the guys, but fear’s better than nothing. It’s a start. And you’ve got guys like A. C. Green and some others. But we need three or four in every city, with every pro team. Do you realize what that could do for boys, black and white? Anyway, I’m thinking of raising up that challenge in my Sunday column after Christmas. Maybe the family aspect of Christmas will grease the skids. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re a brave man. Or maybe a little stupid.” Jake grinned. It was fun to be on the outside looking in.

  “Takes one to know one, huh? Here’s where it really gets controversial. People will agree with the need for strong role models. But I’m going to link the absence of fathers to the abortion issue.”

  “How? What’s the link?”

  “Simple. Men are told when they get a woman pregnant it isn’t their baby, it’s just hers. They’re told they have no say if they want the baby to live. Spousal consent is an offensive concept to abortion rights people. Men have no rights concerning the babies they’ve fathered. But, Jake, we all know rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. You can’t separate them. So, when we tell men they have no rights, we’re really telling them they have no responsibilities.

  “How can we say, ’You have no right to stand up for the welfare of this child,’ then expect them to take any responsibility whatsoever for the child if the mother decides to let him live? You can’t have it both ways. Either the father has rights and responsibilities for the child, or he has neither rights nor responsibilities for the child.

  “So what do we have as a result of believing this abortion propaganda? A bunch of irresponsible men. They’ve been taught they’re not needed in the home, women and children can get along fine without them—better because the government gives them a paycheck as long as they don’t marry the father. So the men can go get a woman pregnant, then move on to the next woman and do the same thing, instead of settling down, getting a job, and supporting their family. If they decide they want to take responsibility, which is what they should want, they’re told it’s none of their business, it’s the woman’s baby, not theirs.”

  Clarence looked at Jake. “Okay, what do you think?”

  “Three months ago I would have said you were off base. I would have thought maybe you’d lost it. Now, I don’t know. No, actually I do know. You’re making perfect sense.”

  “Scary, isn’t it?”

  “More than you can believe. But are you really going to bootleg all this into a sports column?”

  “Why not? Who are the sports figures? Young virile men, lots of them black men, looked on as role models
by black boys and young men. As a sports columnist, as a black man myself—and still virile I might add—can’t I challenge these guys to stand up on this issue?”

  “Can’t hurt to try. What’s there to lose … other than your reputation and your career?

  “You talk like a man speaking from experience.”

  Jake studied the onion ring in his hand. “Yeah.”

  Jake came in to the Trib at 10:00 A.M. the next day, December 23. Among the responses were a few cheerful “Merry Christmases.” He also caught several strange looks that he interpreted as stemming from personal offense or genuine concern about his mental health. He also saw a few smiles and nods of approval, several from people whose names he couldn’t remember. The looks felt like covert acknowledgments made by one undercover agent to another, signaling a sense of camaraderie they didn’t openly display in the hostile environment they’d managed to infiltrate.

  “Messages waiting” greeted him at his desk. The “top priority” memo from Jess was terse.

  “Back off on your moralistic columns, Jake. You’re getting too preachy. Winston and I decided to let this column go. Now we’re taking the heat for you. Tone it down. Go back to what made us assign you to columns in the first place. You know we’ve always given you every latitude in the past, but this isn’t a religion column. We already carry Bill Buckley, and you’re not him. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

  Jake was shocked. It was the sternest rebuke from Jess he’d ever received. Jess never pulled a trump card like this. What did he mean he was taking the heat for Jake? Then the light turned on. The publisher. Of course. Raylan Berkely was upset. And why not? His wife was on the Planned Parenthood board, active in NOW. It was one thing to carry a few columnists that challenged political correctness. It was something else to employ one. That was too much like complicity. Berkely hadn’t come to Jake—he prided himself on non-interference with the newsroom. But now he was coming down on Jake’s superiors, twisting their arms to twist his.