The Black Brook

by Tom Drury

  “Adam and Eve are Cain and Abel’s parents?” said Loom. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, who’d you think?” said Alice.

  “My point is, outcast from what?” said Paul. But he felt as if he were talking too much, performing like a seal, for his old friends. “The whole family is outcast already. It’s as if God can’t keep his story straight.”

  “God was toying with the man,” said Loom.

  “I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me,” said Paul.

  “Good for you,” said Alice. “But if I remember right, doesn’t God do some favor for Cain?”

  “I don’t know how much of a favor it is,” said Paul. “He marks him so everyone will know not to kill him.”

  “A small consolation prize,” said Loom.

  Alice sat back with one hand in her lap and the other holding on to the frame of the wicker chair. “The strange thing about God,” she said, “when you think about it, is how quickly he lost control of his warped little experiment. From the moment people were created, they were lying and killing and running around on each other, and God was in the awkward position of having to say, ‘Hey, cut that out. Stop that. Come back here.’”

  “If you ask me, God set the bar too high,” said Loom. “Anyone who flies into a rage over the eating of an apple is going to have a pretty long day.”

  12

  Due to a last-minute shakeup at the Sun, Paul began not as the swing reporter but as a stuffer. The stuffers worked at galvanized metal tables at the opposite end of the pressroom from the presses: web-fed German offset machines that resembled a series of tractors without wheels. Rolls of uncut newsprint hurtled on jagged paths between ink-slick spinning cylinders, and the convergence of the webs from their humming and various levels into single newspapers seemed heroic and unlikely.

  Proximity to the presses gave significance to the stuffers’ jobs. If they had to work like machines, at least they had powerful ones to emulate, to draw rhythm and mission from. There were eleven stuffers, and each stood before three stacks of newspapers arrayed on the metal tables. They picked up inserts from the first stack, slid them into newspapers on the second stack, and moved the stuffed newspapers to the third stack. And then they did it again.

  Like any simple job, stuffing could be executed with grace or clumsiness. It all came down to delivering the insert into the fold with enough force to slide the newspaper onto the third stack, and those who could not master this maneuver did not make their quota and were let go. By the end of August Paul could slam the inserts home like a veteran. The newspapers were warm from the presses, the ink smelled like licorice and fuel, and he found the stuffers to be a likable crew, driven by precision and a caustic sense of solidarity. Sometimes Pete Lonborg appeared in the pressroom, looking so anxious and distracted that the stuffers could not help feeling blessed and centered by comparison. At first Paul assumed that Pete’s trips to the pressroom were intended to check on the wording of some controversial story, but it turned out that he worried about the quality of the Sun’s color printing.

  “The readers want color,” said Angela. Stuffers Angela, Ramona, and Paul were eating supper from lunch pails in the dark on the steps of the Temple of Hephaestus.

  “They’ll die if they don’t get color,” said Ramona. Her eyes seemed very moist, they always did, and Paul thought she looked like a woman waiting for her lover to return from the sea.

  “That’s what Pete thinks,” said Angela.

  “Look out for Pete,” Ramona said to Paul. “Pete’s a moody guy.” She peeled a small oval label from a green apple and stuck it on Paul’s forehead. “Look, it’s Lent.”

  “I’m sick of your moister-than-thou attitude,” said Paul.

  “What do you have to say about it?” said Ramona. “You’re the token male.”

  “The token has spoken,” said Angela. She had an avid face with heart-shaped lips.

  “Pete hates it when the grass in our photographs is blue, which it always is,” said Ramona.

  “Another thing the readers are supposedly dying for is to have all the news explained in little drawings,” said Angela.

  “Let them read comic books,” said Paul.

  “If you ask me, the readers are like anybody,” said Ramona. “They don’t know what they want.”

  “They want whatever we say they want,” said Angela.

  “And maybe what they want is not what they need,” said Ramona. “They want Andy Capp.”

  “I don’t fault Pete for being mad about the blue grass,” said Angela. “Now, his cheapness — that I fault him for.”

  “Tell Paul about the Christmas editorial,” said Ramona.

  “You know,” said Angela, “how they put a box in the post office for people to donate toys for poor children? So one Christmas Pete writes an editorial saying this is an improper use of federal territory.”

  “That’s cold,” said Paul.

  “He said he was all for poor kids getting toys,” said Ramona. “But he said federal property should not be used to favor one economic group to the exclusion of the others. He said once you start down that road, what would stop someone from using the post office to collect Rolex watches for the wealthy?”

  “It was an idiotic argument,” said Angela. “I know someone who had dinner at his home, and apparently he sliced the ham just compulsively thin.”

  “So what did the post office do?” said Paul.

  “The editorial never ran,” said Ramona. “Everyone thought it was too strong.”

  Another thing the stuffers did was to fold newspapers like paper boats and wear them as hats. The hats kept ink out of their hair, but they also added to the stuffers’ sense of unity and esprit de corps. Even the pressmen, who alone could stop the newspaper from coming out, and who gave this power frequent and solemn consideration, seemed grasping and superficial next to the stuffers.

  The Sun was a morning newspaper, and Paul’s shift ran from three-thirty in the afternoon till midnight. Sometimes when they got off work a handful of stuffers would ride out to Hanrahan’s for drinks. A burned state flag hung over the bar, and one night the bartender, who was bald on top and had long white hair on the sides, explained that the flag had come from the Tableville fire.

  “It started at the old high school,” he said. “The school was no longer used, but some filmmakers from Worcester had rented it to make sex movies. They used to come in every year and make a movie. There was an inquest, and it turned out that one of the cameramen left a cigarette burning. Ironically, the fire was the best thing that ever happened to Tableville, because the state came forward with a lot of rehab money. The Sun carried a big picture of the fireman rescuing the flag.”

  “I remember that photo,” said Ramona.

  “They finished the movie, though,” said the bartender. “It was called After-School Special, starring Camille Livesey. The fire footage was incorporated in the movie. Those people made use of everything. Camille Livesey used to come in here all the time while the production company was in town. She loved the jukebox. Good dancer, too. Really good dancer.”

  The flag was blue with a white shield and three twisted grapevines that looked like dollar signs. “What does Qui franstulit sustinet mean?” said Paul.

  “That which is transplanted sustains,” said Angela.

  Other nights Paul would walk the shining and empty streets of Ashland. Not far from the Sun was the evening-dress store, called The Good You, with the ancient mannequins. They seemed to squint, and all their hands were left hands. Farther along, he came upon the river that he had crossed on his first day in Ashland, a rocky river with old apartment buildings on either side. The lowest windows hovered near the water, and it seemed to Paul that these apartments would be roma
ntic to live in, for though he could not swim well, he believed that bodies of water, even shabby rivers with old appliances littering their banks, had an erotic influence dating back to the beginning of time and the stirrings of evolution. Just as he was thinking this, a young woman with bare shoulders leaned from one of the windows and twisted a yellow cloth over the river. Then it began to rain, lightly but steadily, as if the woman had wrung the rain from her cloth.

  Paul did his first reporting on Labor Day, when Jean Jones told him to contribute to the holiday roundup by going to see the Saberians’ fireworks display at Adelphic School. For years the club had given its fireworks on the Fourth of July, like everyone else, and the shift several years ago to the end of summer amounted to an admission that the private club could not compete with the publicly funded fireworks in Damascus. “You can meet up with a photographer there,” said Jean Jones.

  Paul grabbed a notebook and pen and drove over to the Adelphic School, a series of burrowing buildings that had been designed by a cousin of a famous architect. A Marshall Tucker tribute band played for a while and then the show began, with the townspeople lying on the grass in the dark watching the orange fires overhead. Some had brought their dogs, an action that Paul could explain only in terms of that peculiar form of displaced narcissism that finds expression, for example, in the tying of red bandannas on golden retrievers. Certainly the dogs did not have fun, alternately bolting and cowering under lawn chairs. The spectators spoke longingly of “the grand finale” from the moment the fireworks began, and Paul wondered why such displays did not begin with the grand finale, thus greatly reducing the traffic jam at the end of the night. Ashes drifted down, and sometimes live sparks, which looked as if they would land far away but didn’t, and spectators received small, pinch-like burns. “Get back, you people, get back,” someone said in a hollow amplified voice. “You are way too close. Every year we have people coming closer and closer. If we are to continue having fireworks in Ashland, you must get back, and by that I mean behind the soccer bleachers.”

  Finally the blasting and smoke subsided, and people gathered their weary children and relieved dogs for the trek home. Paul saw a slender woman with long curly hair and black-bodied cameras hanging from straps around her neck. “I’m glad you found me,” she said. “I’m Nina Berry. I took some pictures earlier and you have to get the people’s names.”

  Paul looked around. “Where?”

  “They were by the rock band a half hour ago.”

  “Well, what did they look like?”

  Nina dropped her jaw and widened her eyes, mimicking Paul’s confusion. “It was some fat guy and his fat kids,” she said, “How would I know? Just find them. You’re the reporter.”

  Instead, Paul interviewed Commander Smith, the Saberian in charge of the fireworks, who stood by the jungle gym with a bullhorn. “I’m from the Sun,” said Paul. “How would you characterize this year’s show?”

  “Very good this year,” said Commander Smith, a ravaged man wearing stiff blue jeans with the cuffs tucked into bulky white socks.

  “How much did the display cost?”

  “We don’t give that out. It isn’t about money.”

  “Do fireworks ever remind veterans of combat? Do they bring to mind certain battles?”

  “For me they don’t,” said Commander Smith. “Maybe a little. That’s a good question. I never thought of that. You’d have to ask around.”

  “Is next year’s display really in jeopardy?”

  “Oh, no. We say that, but we don’t mean it. There will always be fireworks. But I do wish people would stay back better.”

  Paul wrote the story on a computer in the center of the newsroom. It was a slow night for news, but you would not have known it by the hustling figures of the dozen people whose junior status or lack of a social life had qualified them to work on Labor Day night. They hurried back and forth among the upturned screens and snaking cords of the newsroom carrying half-eaten sandwiches and wielding pica poles like silver daggers. Paul had borrowed the computer of the court reporter, who had gone to Castine, Maine, for the weekend, and as he flipped through his notebook, he listened to the staccato typing of the police reporter, Carolyn Wheat, who was working at the adjacent terminal.

  “What’s new with the cops?” said Paul.

  “A red Ford Tempo heading eastbound on Route 283 crossed over the line and struck a westbound Pontiac Trans Am,” said Carolyn. “The drivers were treated and released at Red Mountain Infirmary. The bludgeoned body of a carnie was discovered behind the band shell at Thales Park, name withheld pending notification of kin. And the cab driver Herman Marx got stiffed and chased the fare-skipper to the corner of Walnut Street and Scrimshaw Avenue, where a roving band of youths helped apprehend the suspect. But forget the news. When I get off tonight I’m going to go home and make myself a root beer float. I put a tall glass in the freezer this morning, and I can almost hear it calling my name.”

  After Paul finished his story he had to wait for the county editor to read it and sign off.

  “What’s this bullshit about people with dogs being narcissistic?” said the editor. His name was Chris Bait, and he was known for two things: eating celery in the newsroom and working himself into a panic over minor issues. “I have a dog. What are you, Nicholas von Hoffman?”

  “Not if they have a dog,” said Paul. “I’m saying if they bring a dog to a fireworks display. You know, it’s just kind of strange. Think about it.”

  “I’m cutting all that,” said Chris. “Do you hear me? Cutting it. And I still need an ID on some kids in a photograph.”

  “I don’t have the names,” said Paul. “The photographer didn’t even know what they looked like.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Chris. He scanned the room grimly. “Don’t worry Emmons. You’re brand-new here, and this doesn’t happen to be your fault. No, I’m afraid it’s Nina Berry. She’s on probation you know.”

  “Am I done?” said Paul.

  “Yeah, go have a few pops,” said Chris Bait. Then he stormed off to find Nina.

  The trees turned color nearly a month early in Ashland due to the elevation, and the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth. The days would dawn clear, but by afternoon smoky clouds would move in, gray and blue, and the late sun would be left to slide sideways beneath the clouds. Paul decided that it was the purple clouds that gave the red and yellow leaves their most powerful definition. Only rain could hurt the foliage. In the rain, the bright colors became a little pathetic. Leaves no longer whirled like twisters across the roadways but clumped glumly in the ditches. Those that had not yet fallen seemed finally to do so in embarrassment.

  Yet people loved the leaves. No one worried about how they would look in the rain. Tour buses clogged the streets of the town. The tree everyone had to see was a basswood on the eastern ascent of Red Mountain called the Spirit Tree, after a poem written by the nineteenth-century diarist Cyril Sawtelle of Tableville. Leaves from this tree were said to grant wishes, and wishful visitors had usually picked its branches clean by the time of the Rake Parade, which was held on the second weekend in September. Ashlanders regarded the foliage season with ambivalence. On the one hand, it meant several weeks of hindered driving and no access to restaurants, and on the other, the leaf industry provided the town’s third-largest source of income, after Ashland Fastener and Binder and the milk-processing plant. Bowing to the financial power of the leaves, and trying to demonstrate that he was one of the people, Pete Lonborg made a kind of ceremony out of raking the leaves that fell from the ash tree in a small park next to the newspaper. The resulting leaf pile would stand for several weeks, giving Sun readers a chance to guess at the number of leaves, which would be counted just as the bottom ones were losing their individuality in order to win cash prizes.

  One night between the Rake Parade and the counting of the leaves,
Paul Emmons left work to find Alice Hanover waiting for him outside the Temple of Hephaestus. She sat listening to country music on the radio of a big station wagon with wood panels. Her back pressed against the door and her legs rested on the seat.

  “You’re up late,” said Paul.

  “I’m a night person,” she said. “I like the house after everyone has gone to sleep. I sit at the kitchen table writing letters or paying bills. I drive around. There’s always something to do if you’re a night person.”

  Ashland’s taxicab drifted by, with the vigilante Herman Marx at the wheel.

  Alice got out of the station wagon, and she and Paul sat down on a wooden bench near the leaves that Pete Lonborg had raked.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “At the motel,” said Paul. “They gave me a weekly rate.”

  “Do you like it?” said Alice.

  “It isn’t bad, but you can’t cook. I’m going to start looking for an apartment.”

  “What about our house?”

  “But you live there.”

  “No, listen.” Alice got up from the bench, walked to Pete’s leaves, and took a clump of them in her hands. “Now just think this over. We own the house next to ours, but it’s been empty as long as I’ve lived here. I gather there used to be a family in it, but their circumstances changed, and Loom’s father bought the place as a buffer. All this would be years ago. We’ve never done anything with it, and for a long time I’ve wanted to rent it out, but every tenant I could dig up, Loom didn’t want living next to him. Loom has a funny relationship with this town. It gets better, and it doesn’t get better.”

  “I think I saw that house when I went out in your boat.”

  “When was that?”

  “The night I got here,” said Paul. “You weren’t home.”

  “You bold spider,” said Alice. She threw the leaves at Paul. “It’s pretty rundown. And the windows are small and high. How do you feel about small windows?”