9
When the television van drove into sight, the cries went up.
“Abortion is murder! Abortion is murder!”
Six women made up the parade, one pushing a stroller while holding a sign. The baby in the stroller slept, his head rolling from side to side.
“No more abortions! No more abortions!”
Until they saw the news van, their chanting had been half-hearted, growing only when other women approached and entered the clinic.
A carefully coiffed woman broke away from the circling line.
“Hi. I’m Betty Craft, the one who called the station, and you are?”
“Debbie Hanson.” She offered her hand. “We’re going to get a few pictures and we’d like to talk to you on camera.”
“Of course.” The woman gave a pink-lipsticked smile.
Cappy, the photographer, set up his tripod on the sidewalk. New smiles and vigor swept across the women. A happy chattering broke out and the smiles broadened each time their march took them past the camera.
“How long do you plan to picket the clinic?” Debbie asked.
“As long as it takes,” the woman told her. “It is murder, thousands and thousands of babies are being murdered. We have the pictures.”
Debbie nodded.
The temperature was already in the high nineties. It promised to hit one hundred and three.
“You better get over there now,” George Harding told her. “They’re not going to be doing much marching after noon.”
“There wouldn’t be marching at all, George, if we weren’t going to be there,” Ellen commented.
“No, they’ve been marching for quite a while,” he said. He knew that because Betty Craft called, demanding to know why no television station covered their protest.
“We are going to march until they close and we’ll go to another abortion clinic and another until they are all closed or until our legislators do something about this murder,” Betty Craft told Debbie Hanson.
“Keep it up, girls,” she called out. “No more murder. No more murder.”
They picked up the chant and the camera followed.
The interview took only a few minutes. The answers to Debbie’s questions were short and complete. She and the photographer went into the clinic before the polished woman could say anything else.
“You know,” said the woman in the white coat, “we don’t do abortions here. They don’t seem to understand. This is a family planning clinic. That’s what we do. Look,” she motioned to a table display of diaphragms, condoms and plastic packets of birth control pills.
“We show women how to prevent pregnancy, if that’s their choice. We tell them about birth control, the different types, the benefits or problems with each.”
Cappy knew the rules. He shot the diaphragm case, the pill packets and the wrapped condoms, not the unwrapped one. In the examination room, he avoided shooting the metal stirrups. They would give Carter an opportunity to made one of his jokes.
“And don’t show our clients,” said the woman who led them through the spotless rooms. They have a right to privacy. We guarantee them that. Although, it is almost impossible with those women out there.”
“Only the back of their heads, shadows,” Debbie assured her and gave a nod to Cappy which he didn’t bother to acknowledge.
“The point is we don’t do abortions and we’re serving a poor section of the city. If our clients choose to terminate pregnancy, we direct them to other support organizations. We don’t advise them. That’s their choice.” There was a haunted look in her eyes.
Debbie gave a reporter’s nod, showing neither agreement nor judgment.
“What those women are doing out there is scaring away frightened young women, children themselves. That’s our biggest problem, the teenage girls who need our help. Tens of thousands of teenage girls get pregnant every year in this country. That’s the problem, not abortion. Tell them that.”
It was going to be an easy piece to put together. A quote from each side, a few shots from inside and out. Debbie cut a transition stand-up in the clinic and moved back outside for the close.
“Got the marchers?” she asked Cappy.
He nodded, one eye glued to the camera. If the shot held, it would be Debbie slightly left of center screen with the marchers moving behind her.
She began practicing her stand-up as he fiddled.
“With what some view to be almost an epidemic of teen-age pregnancies this country, the people who run this clinic believe …”
“Ah, Miss?” came the voice. “Miss?”
She turned. Betty Craft stood there, a tight-lipped worried mouth having replaced the thin pink smile.
“Yes?”
“That thing, that thing you were saying about an epidemic.”
“Almost an epidemic is what I said.”
“Yes, well, but what does that mean?” The smile was back and it was small.
“It means a lot of young girls get pregnant who may not be able to handle it.”
“So what? Does that mean abortion is okay? Is that what it means? Because it isn’t. Abortion is never okay.”
“If you would let me finish,” Debbie said. She was anticipating the pain of holding her eyes open in the sun’s glare. There could be no squinting as she spoke to the camera, no lowering her gaze and never any sunglasses. She could feel the sweat under her arms.
Cappy waited, annoyed. It was hot and they had another story before he could break for his brown bag lunch in the photographers’ room.
Debbie gave a nod, lowered her gaze and then raised her eyes painfully wide to the camera.
“Three, two, one. The people who run this clinic believe they are offering an important service for women in this community. But other women say they want this clinic closed and plan to march until it is.
“This is Debbie Hanson for …”
Suddenly the cry went up. “Abortion is murder! Abortion is murder!”
As each woman in the short parade passed, she looked directly into the camera. Betty Craft had given the signal, a tight, clinched fist held at face level.
Cappy straightened up and gave Debbie a quick nod. Betty Craft smiled.
“Want to do another one?” Cappy asked.
Debbie shook her head. What was the use? It was the best she could do, considering the sun and Betty Craft.
“I sort of wonder something,” she said to her as she wound the microphone cord.
“Yes?” It was a smile of condescension.
“Do you have any adopted children?”
Now it was a smirk.
“Why, yes, I do. Thank you for asking.”
Ellen told her to ask that question. She said they all marched and shouted about abortion and murder and little baby fetuses with fingers and toes, but how many actually adopted any of the babies other people didn’t want?
“Not unless,” she added, “they have blond hair and blue eyes.”
Debbie knew she couldn’t ask Betty Craft if her baby had blond hair and blue eyes but she bet Ellen would have.
“What’s next?” Cappy asked when they were back in the van.
“This doctor is teaching these mentally retarded people about sex. Or, they’re getting married and he gives them this course about sex in marriage.”
He stared at her.
“What the hell are we going to cover it with?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.” She was reading the assignment sheet. “It says it’s an interview and to ask him if he knows any couple we can talk to.”
“Retards?”
She nodded.
“Oh, great,” he moaned. “Who thought this one up?”
She shrugged. It sounded okay back at the station.
“How the hell you gonna get releases on them?” Cappy demanded. “You can’t shoot these people. You have to have a release. Man, this is impossible.”
He shook his head.
“Harding is an idiot. He knows we have to ha
ve releases. He knows that.”
He could already see it would be another two hours before he hit the brown bag.
A few miles away the counselor waited. He was not a doctor nor had he given George Harding that misinformation. In front of him were the teaching materials he used in his sessions with the young men and women who believed they were in love and wanted to marry. They were black and white line drawings of naked couples in sexual positions. He doubted the cameraman would use them.
He bet the reporter would ask him about his feelings about these people having children. He grimaced with the thought. Funny, what they considered news.
*
“Take Indian School all the way,” Ellen told the handsome black man drving the van. “We should probably get there sometime tomorrow.”
Photographer Clifford Williams gave a short laugh.
“Why do they call it Indian School?” he asked.
“It’s where the Indians go to school. They used to bring them in off the reservations after we took over their land. Haven’t you ever seen those pictures with all the little Indian kids dressed up like they were white?”
He shook his head.
“We wanted them to look and act white. Now they come to the school because there aren’t a lot of schools on the reservations. Maybe it’s a way to get away.”
She wasn’t surprised Debbie wanted to cover Indians. She wanted that as well back in New Mexico. She wasn’t fascinated with the Indians in the city who sold their jewelry along the plaza in Old Town or in Santa Fe. She saw a sullen meanness about them that was changing, not for the better, with the look of a new merchant class, attractive young women with glasses and too fast smiles.
What fascinated her were the Indians she did not see, the ones who lived far off the freeway on the sand and hard earth that ran for hours between Grants and Window Rock.
“It’s a bitch trying to do a story on Indians,” she told Clifford.
“Why’s that?”
“You have to get special approval for anything you want to do. It’s a real pain.”
She came up against it a few times in Albuquerque when she tried to cover some story on a reservation.
“We’ll bring it up before the council,” would be the standard response.
“Okay.” She would keep her voice calm and low. “When will that be?”
“Next meeting is in a month. We’ll talk about it then.”
She once traveled to a council meeting, hoping to be allowed to film afterwards. They told her to wait outside. She napped in the car while her photographer sat in the meeting. They never got permission to do the story.
“Damn,” Clifford swore and hit the steering wheel. “I am hot.”
The van’s air conditioner had been broken for two weeks but George said he couldn’t spare it for a day or two of repair work. The heat from the massive engine filled the front of the van. Searing hot air blew on them from the open windows.
“You got any money?” Clifford asked.
She fumbled through her big purse stuffed with notebook, cigarettes, pens, wallet, mirror, and lipstick for the stand-up she would have to do.
“Nothing. Not a dime. I didn’t get a chance to get to a bank,” she said.
“I am going to die if I don’t get something cold to drink. I am so fucking hot,” he moaned.
She laughed. The sweat dripped down her neck.
He leaned back in the seat. “Man, I should be driving a goddamn Bekins van. My goddamn back is gone, shuckin’ and jivin’ this shit all over town. And we don’t even have a fucking quarter for a fucking soda.”
He sighed deeply and peeked over at her.
They both exploded in laughter. They still had a story to shoot west of town and an hour’s drive back to the station. The sweat dripped down her back. She shook her head and turned to her window.
The first time she saw an Indian was in a grocery story in Albuquerque. She watched as the Navajo woman passed in her long black skirt, her bright blue velvet blouse and her turquoise jewelry big and heavy on her chest.
“Interesting,” she commented to the cashier as she reached for her change.
The girl followed her eyes. “Yeah, well,” she said between quick chews on her gum. “I grew up with them. They ain’t so interesting when you know them.”
She watched them, the women with their long dark skirts and their wide silver belts and rivers of necklaces. She studied the tiny serious-eyed children. At stoplights, she stared into the windows of the pickup trucks at the young male drivers with their cowboy hats decorated with a single feather. She watched but neither she nor they ever let their eyes meet, except for the children. They would stare solemnly back at her.
“Man,” Clifford Williams sighed again as they continued their way west, “not one fucking quarter.”
10
Back at the station, they told Debbie about the release problem. First it was Tony Santella, the weeknight producer handpicked and trained by Jim Brown.
“You get releases on a story like that or we’ll all be sued from here to hell,” he told her.
“You know, somebody’s grandmother or uncle or something sees the story and starts saying you defamed their kid and we get sued for thousands. Brown will tell you,” he nodded. “It happens.”
It did happen. They knew the stories.
“That bozo Fred Painter did some story on a drooly old grandmother,” Jack Benton said, “in some rest home for the criminally insane or something.”
Her eyes widened.
“Nah, nah,” he sneered. “It was only some nursing home, but the next thing you know this grandson of hers who hadn’t seen the old lady in five hundred years is on the phone screaming that we embarrassed the family and what the hell were we going to do about it and who the hell said we could take a picture of the old babe anyhow?”
“They paid ’em off,” somebody offered from another cubicle. “A couple of thousand.”
“Yeah, but they think they’re going to get millions,” Jack Benton said. “So now they make us get a release for every moron. Hey,” he shouted, “you hear that, Kowalski? That’s good. For every moron and she’s out doing retards. I am good,” he cackled.
“You’re the moron,” Frank Kowalski yelled.
Chuck Farrell explained it to her.
“You see, they can’t sign a release because they aren’t supposed to be able to handle their own legal affairs. And, sometimes their parents can’t sign a release because the state is sort of a guardian and the state won’t sign because they want the kids’ permission or the parents’ or somebody’s that we can’t get because they keep telling us to get them from the state. Most of the time we get nothing so we don’t do the stories. Nobody wants to do them anyway.”
“What the hell am I supposed to shoot, George?” photographers would demand in front of his desk.
“Am I supposed to shoot shadows, George? How the hell are we going to do a story about shadows, George? Why the hell are we doing this story anyway, George?”
Reporters didn’t want to deal with any of it. And, even the tough ones had trouble laughing their way through some of those stories. Chuck Farrell saw their faces when they came back and he listened to them.
“You know it’s this program where they bring dogs into this nursing home for a few hours and all the people play with them. You know? We got some good stuff and we got releases,” Frank Kowalski told him.
“But, I mean, you wonder,” his voice grew hoarse, “why can’t they have pets? It makes them happy. You could see that. I don’t understand. They get to be with a dog for a couple of hours and then they take them away. That doesn’t make any sense. Give ‘em a fucking dog.”
“They do it with children too,” said Harold Lewis, moving into the conversation.
“What?”
“They have these programs where they bring in children like a grandma, grandpa thing. They hold them and play with them and then the kids go home.”
His
soft, gentle face with the black-rimmed glasses looked over the partition. “It’s strange.”
“I’ll bet,” shouted Jack Benton. “All those old guys holding all those little girls. You want to sit in my lap, girlie?” he rasped.
Chuck Farrell had to laugh. Benton would never change.
Ellen had been to her share of nursing homes. She wanted to get out fast. The patients would reach for her, grab her hand. It was as though they were begging her to get them out of those airless, horrible places.
She had seen it all. She had seen the old ladies in the gray rooms lying on white beds, already corpses, already with the nose pulled into a beak, cheeks sunken, dying.
“No one has come to see her in years,” some nurse would tell her. “Isn’t that terrible, and she’s such a dear.”
The nurse seemed to relish the story, whatever nurse it was.
Ellen told Debbie a few of the stories in the quiet of an early afternoon newsroom. She told her about the old woman who had somehow fallen into the care of the sloppy, grease-speckled woman.
“She’s happy, isn’t she?” the woman insisted. Her voice was brittle, the mouth mean. “She’s a hundred years old.”
Ellen stared at the small body that moved with shallow breaths. The heat in the tiny room was stifling. An orange sheet covered the window, turning the light of the day into a haze of shadows and dust.
“Who’s going to take care of her if I don’t? Who?” The woman moved to the bed. “She can’t move. She can’t talk. She can’t do nothin’ but,” she bent over the body and shouted into one long, white ear, “we love her, don’t we.”
The body made a whimper, like a child startled in the night.
“I mean, what would happen to her without me?”
“What is going on there?” Ellen shouted to county authorities who certified nursing homes. “Is she actually getting paid for this? Is anybody checking on this place?”
“Did they check it out?” Debbie asked her.
“Probably, but I don’t know. I didn’t follow up on it.” She sighed.
“I did one story at a beautiful nursing home, a big bucks place. This nurse told me about this one old woman who got all dressed up every Christmas morning, gloves, hat, the whole bit. She would sit in the lobby and wait for her children to come. All day she would sit there. She did this on all the holidays. All dressed up.”
The Best in the West Page 7