True Colors

by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock

  Miss Cynthia Ryder remains about the same.

  What did that mean? I wondered. Remains the same as what?

  Miss Claire Boisvert has returned to her home in Quebec after visiting with her aunt.

  Mr. Harley Thompson has been having problems with a hernia and is confined to bed.

  I saw two problems right off. First, I sure didn’t want to be writing about things like hernias! Second, how was I going to find the news? Mrs. Barclay just called folks to ask them about their comings and goings and family news, but the thought of calling grown-ups to ask them about their business made my stomach ache. Besides, we didn’t have a telephone. That left interviewing them in person, but just the idea made me break into a sweat. I didn’t think I could bear it if Mrs. Thompson started talking about her husband’s hernia.

  “I’m pretty sure the New York Times doesn’t report on people’s hernias,” Nadine said.

  As mad as I was at her, I was pretty sure she was right.

  “Okay,” Nadine said. “You obviously need my help.” I didn’t tell her that instead of helping, she was just making me more nervous. Thinking about being nervous reminded me what Hannah had said.

  “Are you nervous about starting junior high this fall?” I asked her.

  “Of course not,” Nadine said, tossing her head. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.” And then I knew she was.

  “Well, I know I’ll be nervous when I start junior high,” I said.

  Nadine chewed on her lip, and for a moment, I thought she was going to confide in me, but then she changed her mind.

  “It’s not like you have to change schools, the way I do,” she declared. “You’ll still all just be in that one-room schoolhouse.”

  What did that have to do with anything? I wondered. But instead of asking her, I decided just to go home and read through the rest of the columns.

  Hannah wasn’t too keen on me taking the job (“You know I don’t hold with spreading gossip,” she said), but when she saw how nervous I was, her face softened.

  “All you have to do is just visit with folks when you make your deliveries,” she said. “Ask them how they are, then sit back and listen. Being a good reporter is mostly about being a good listener.”

  That sounded simple enough, but still, when I rode up to Mrs. Gallagher’s door the next afternoon, I felt like I had about a hundred of those crepuscular fireflies in my stomach. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a reporter after all.

  Mrs. Gallagher answered the door. I could hear loud moans coming from inside the house. Sounded like a cow bellowing.

  Mrs. Gallagher gave a wave of her hand.

  “Oh, that’s Roger,” she said. “Painful gas, don’t you know. He was playing in the old-timers game at the ball field and ate three chili dogs! Serves him right, I say.”

  This was worse than hearing about Mr. Thompson’s hernia. I was sure Mr. Gallagher wouldn’t want me reporting on his gas pains. I mean, would you want the whole town knowing that?

  The next day was Sunday. Hannah said I ought to catch people at church and interview them. All through the service, I felt nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, swinging my legs and chewing my lip, wondering who I should interview, and what questions I should ask. A hundred times I wished I hadn’t agreed to write Mrs. Barclay’s column. What was I thinking?

  Folks clustered in little groups on the church lawn after the service, visiting. Hannah pulled a little notebook and pencil from her purse. She handed them to me and gave me a nudge.

  “Go on,” she said, but when I shook my head, she strode right out into the middle of the lawn.

  “Blue’s writing Ida’s column while she’s away,” Hannah announced in a loud voice, “and she’d really appreciate whatever news you could tell her.”

  I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, I was so embarrassed, but folks did come over to speak to me, and I filled up two pages of Hannah’s little notebook.

  That afternoon, instead of going to the ball field, I worked at writing the column.

  By chore time, this is what I ended up with:

  Mrs. Hortense Potter caught her hand in her wringer washer.

  Mr. Clem Hazelton is looking for the person who lost a carburetor cap in his yard.

  Mrs. Bertha Thompson has some tripe she’s willing to give away.

  Mrs. Ernestine Wilkins is overrun with beet greens and string beans and says come help yourself.

  Mr. Ned Butler reports a missing sheep.

  I was sure Nadine would roll her eyes at what I’d written, so I didn’t even show it to her, and Mr. Gilpin made me rewrite it seven times before he said it was acceptable (I’d had to look through most of the C section of his dictionary to find out how to spell carburetor), but Thursday morning, when the paper came out and I saw my name, Blue Spooner, in print, something opened in my chest, like a flower opening to the sun.

  I watched across the supper table, my hands sweaty, as Hannah read my column. She refolded the paper and set it down beside her plate. The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile.

  “Ida just might find herself out of a job when she gets back,” Hannah said.

  chapter 17

  I carried the paper out when I fed Cat, and read my column to her while she ate, and went to bed with a nice warm glow.

  But the next morning, I found out a weekly column is a lot more work than it looks. I realized I couldn’t just sit back and enjoy what I’d written; I had to start right away working on next week’s column. I had to go back and ask the same folks that I’d just talked to if they had any new news (most of them didn’t), and even when I found something interesting, Mr. Gilpin wasn’t happy with how I’d written it, and would make me keep working on it until I just wanted to heave the whole thing out the window. But that feeling changed when Mr. Gilpin handed me my first paycheck, made out in my name, for $3.27. I couldn’t spend it—I had to put it in the college fund jar—but it still felt sweet, and it spurred me on.

  On my deliveries, Mr. Appleby told me his radio was on the blink, and Mrs. Appleby told me how her sister had made herself a new hat (I didn’t think either of those things was interesting enough to put in my column), and I was only half listening when Mrs. Gray launched into a story about her daughter. What did get my attention was when she said she wouldn’t need any of her regular deliveries the next week because she’d be visiting her daughter in Montpelier.

  Montpelier was only a few miles from Barre.

  I rode on, trying to figure out a way I could ask Mrs. Gray if I could go along with her, and I was still thinking when I dropped off Mr. Hazelton’s delivery of three loaves of bread and a dozen filled cookies.

  I liked Mr. Hazelton. He’d been a cowboy out west (“Came east with a load of horses, liked the country, and stayed,” he’d told me once), and it was his stories of being a cowboy that had made me want to be a cowboy, too. He showed me how to twirl a lariat, and I’d practiced lassoing the cows until Hannah put a stop to it.

  “You’re making them so nervous they’re giving less milk,” she’d said.

  Mr. Hazelton bit into one of the cookies.

  “Hannah’s cookies taste just like the ones my grandmother used to make,” he said. I nodded, not really listening. There had to be a way I could get to Barre.

  “Say, did Ned ever find that missing sheep?” Mr. Hazelton asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Just wondered,” Mr. Hazelton said, “because Raymond Lapointe’s got a calf missing as well. It broke its leg, so he was going to ship it to the slaughterhouse, but it up and disappeared. You might want to put that in your column.”

  I didn’t want to just be reporting on missing animals—I wasn’t writing a lost and found column!—but I wrote it down anyway.

  Mr. Hazelton scratched his head.

  “You know, it sure is strange how a calf with a broken leg could just up and disappear. Maybe Ned’s sheep didn’t wander off on its own, either
.”

  “You mean, you think someone stole them?” I asked.

  “Well, that calf couldn’t have walked off on its own now, could it?” Mr. Hazelton said.

  I rode along, feeling more excited by the minute. Here was my chance! If someone had stolen the animals, that made it a real news story. If I could find out who’d done it, I could write up an article for the newspaper, just like a real reporter. I might even be able to find out who’d stolen the circus animals, too. It wasn’t hard thinking up two possible suspects.

  The Wright brothers.

  I’d have to get proof—catch the Wright brothers with the animals—but it’d be better if I had some help. I sure didn’t want to be snooping around the Wright farm all by myself. My stomach felt wobbly even thinking about that, but reporters sometimes had to put themselves in dangerous situations. And it wouldn’t seem quite so scary if I had Nadine helping me. She and I could be a team, like the Hardy Boys.

  I was so wrapped up in thinking of all the different mysteries we could solve that I didn’t even notice I was at Mrs. Wells’s house until I saw her on her porch waving an envelope at me. My heart sank. I didn’t want to get caught listening to a long, boring story. I had a case to solve!

  “Thought you might like an extra copy of your column for your scrapbook,” Mrs. Wells said.

  I didn’t tell Mrs. Wells that I didn’t have a scrapbook, and I didn’t tell her that Mrs. Appleby, Esther, Mrs. Thompson, and Mr. Hazelton had all given me extra copies of my column.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wells,” I said. That was nice of her, saving my column for me, and I felt sorry I’d complained so much about her. Hannah was right: she was just lonely.

  “It’s quite the responsibility, isn’t it, having to write a weekly column?” Mrs. Wells said. I nodded, feeling more kindly toward her by the minute.

  Mrs. Wells gripped my arm.

  “Well, you come in and sit down and I’ll tell you all about my sister’s operation on her toe.”

  That made me even more determined to be a reporter. Mr. Gilpin didn’t have to sit around listening to stories about hernias, toe operations, or new hats! He was forever rushing off to fires, or accidents, or interviews with important people, and he and Mr. Allard were always trying to “scoop” each other on those stories. It made me think that if I could get proof it was the Wright brothers who’d stolen the missing animals, I could scoop them. My article might even make the front page!

  Maybe I ought to start keeping a scrapbook to hold my columns and the articles I was going to write.

  Mr. Gilpin let me type up my columns on his typewriter. When he first sat me in front of it, with its gleaming gold letters spelling out OLIVETTI staring back at me, I was scared to touch it, but he showed me how to put the paper in and how to push the lever on the return carriage when I got to the end of a line (I loved hearing that little bell!). I had to punch the keys with my fingers, but I liked watching the way the little arms would swing up and smack the paper to print the letters. Except when I made mistakes. Then I had to go back, put in a new piece of paper, and start all over again.

  I was forever having to look up spellings, too, in the huge dictionary on Mr. Gilpin’s desk. I’d never known anyone to read a dictionary the way Mr. Gilpin did; he liked words even more than Nadine did.

  While I worked on my columns, Mr. Gilpin worked more on writing his pageants for the sesquicentennial celebration.

  “I’m working on the one about Mr. Webster right now,” Mr. Gilpin said. When he saw that I didn’t know who Mr. Webster was, he pointed to a photograph on the wall beside one of the file cabinets. I’d never noticed the picture before.

  “Mr. Ellery Webster, founder of the Monitor,” Mr. Gilpin said. “He was with the Eleventh Vermont in the Civil War. Got captured, sent to Andersonville Prison in Georgia, and came home weighing just seventy pounds. He was a hero, but he said the ones who didn’t come back were the real heroes.”

  I leaned in to get a closer look at Mr. Webster.

  “Times like that test a man, bring out his true colors,” Mr. Gilpin said.

  I didn’t know what Mr. Gilpin was talking about, but from the look in Mr. Webster’s eyes, you could tell he’d been through some awful times.

  “Mr. Webster wrote some fine articles about his experiences,” Mr. Gilpin said. “You might want to look them up sometime, in the back issues. He had a way with words.”

  I wondered if that was Mr. Gilpin’s nice way of saying I didn’t have a way with words.

  After I finished typing up my column, Mr. Gilpin decided I needed a tour of the building to see how the Monitor was produced. He showed me the Linotype machine, which produced a line of type that was then placed in forms that went on the press to print the paper. He gave it a loving pat, as if it were an old horse.

  “This machine revolutionized typesetting,” he said. “Before this, we had to set type all by hand, one letter at a time. It took hours.”

  Downstairs, besides all the stacks of old newspapers, was the big flatbed press that printed the paper.

  “I started out as a printer’s devil, just like Raleigh,” Mr. Gilpin said. “Mr. Jacobs was the owner and editor then, and he let me set type, and even run the press. It was the most fascinating thing I’d ever done, and I knew then that I’d found my calling, what I wanted to do with my life.”

  I wondered what that would feel like, to be so sure of what you wanted to do with your life. I was still trying to decide between cowboy and trapeze artist.

  “I’ve had a rich, rewarding life,” Mr. Gilpin said. “But I’ve always regretted that I didn’t get my high school diploma.”

  I think my jaw must have dropped a little. Mr. Gilpin, the smartest person I knew, hadn’t gone to college!

  “It’s made me work harder,” Mr. Gilpin went on. “Roy Allard went to Harvard, and you can be sure there’s not a day goes by that he doesn’t remind me of that, and that he’s going to do his best to beat me to every story—to get there first, and to report on it better.”

  I didn’t tell Mr. Gilpin that that’s what I was going to do with my story on the missing animals. Wouldn’t Mr. Gilpin and Mr. Allard be surprised when I scooped both of them!

  chapter 18

  Mr. Gilpin leaned back in his chair.

  “There, I’ve finished,” he announced. “We’ll set Saturday as the first rehearsal for the pageant.”

  He told me which events he’d chosen for the re-enactments and let me read what he’d written. He had Rogers’s Rangers fleeing back to Vermont after they’d attacked an Abenaki village in Quebec with the Abenakis in hot pursuit; there was the signing of the town charter in 1802, the War of 1812, and the Embargo Act, where Thomas Jefferson had declared it illegal to trade with the English in Canada, so smuggling became common. The smuggling caused many skirmishes between town officials and the smugglers. In one of those skirmishes, in 1814, John Ware was shot in the leg and had to have it amputated.

  “I’m going to play John Ware myself,” Mr. Gilpin said with a grin. “I’m perfect for the role. I’ll just have to make sure that the leg Doc saws off is my wooden leg!”

  “Who’s going to play the smugglers?” I asked.

  Mr. Gilpin chewed his lip.

  “Well, I was thinking of the Wright brothers,” he said, “but knowing them, I’m worried they might just show up with a real gun.”

  I thought Mr. Gilpin was smart to worry about that.

  “Well,” I said, “if you did put them in, you could throw them in jail and then, accidentally on purpose, lose the key.”

  Mr. Gilpin slapped his wooden leg and roared with laughter.

  “By golly, that’s a dandy idea,” he said. “I just might do that.”

  For the reenactment of Runaway Pond, Mr. Gilpin was having Raleigh play Spencer Chamberlain.

  “In high school, Raleigh was the fastest runner in the Kingdom,” Mr. Gilpin said.

  With his long legs, I could imagine that Raleigh’d always been fa
st. What I couldn’t imagine was that Raleigh had ever gone to high school.

  “With the right coaching, Raleigh could have been in the Olympics,” Mr. Gilpin said. “He had real potential before … well, before his accident.”

  I wanted to ask Mr. Gilpin about Raleigh’s accident, but it didn’t seem right, somehow. It was hard to imagine Raleigh before. I’d only known him after. It showed how fast things could change. One minute you’re a track star, your whole life ahead of you, and the next, you’ve got a dent in your head, and the only words you can say are Blue True and baby.

  “Mind you, he’s still fast,” Mr. Gilpin said. “Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?” And I looked at him blankly, wondering what he was talking about.

  “Stands to reason he’d be fast,” Mr. Gilpin repeated. “Raleigh is Spencer Chamberlain’s great-great-great-grandson.”

  Imagine that.

  “Will any of Raleigh’s family be at the pageant to watch him?” I asked. I was curious to see what Raleigh’s family looked like.

  Mr. Gilpin shook his head.

  “Raleigh doesn’t have family,” Mr. Gilpin said. “A second wave of influenza passed through here in 1920, and both of Raleigh’s parents died from it. Raleigh had just been born, so he was sent off to live with his grandmother, but she died when he was sixteen, so he came back to live on the old homeplace. He’s been on his own ever since.”

  So Raleigh and I did have some things in common: he never got to know his mother or father, either.

  “Have you ever been to his house?” I asked, thinking of the stories all the kids at school had made up about him.

  “Not since his folks lived there,” said Mr. Gilpin. “Then, when the road and bridge to that place washed out in the ’27 flood, the town never did build them back, didn’t seem to be a need, with no one living there. Now it’s just too hard a place to get to, especially for a man with one leg. But Raleigh seems to like the solitude out there. I imagine he feels safer.”