The Best in the West

by Kathleen Walker

  Carter couldn’t care less. He used the three minutes of weather time to straighten his tie or check his script for incomplete sentences or grammatical errors.

  “What the hell is this?” he would demand during a story or a commercial break. He would yell it into the anchor-desk phone, sending his words to the director’s booth and the producer.

  “What the hell is this supposed to mean on page twelve?”

  Jean Ann used her three minutes of weather to check her face in the small hand mirror and to lick her lips. She made her own grammatical corrections as she read from the TelePrompTer. That’s what made her so good on-air. She saw the mistakes coming and made some sense out of them.

  Even when she couldn’t make that fast mental to verbal copy change, she would keep on reading as though it was perfectly clear and those watching and listening would only think they had somehow misunderstood. How could what Jean Ann Maypin said be gibberish?

  They both sat, lost in their thoughts, as Art Novak chattered on.

  16

  “I can’t stand that song,” said the young woman who worked in accounting.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Ellen asked.

  “That stuff about dust blowing in the wind. I don’t think I’m dust in the wind,” she sniffed angrily. “I think I am way more than that.”

  Ellen looked at the thick legs, the sturdy shoes, the short curled hair that should have been on the head of a middle-aged woman, not this twenty-two year old. But then, she had met the mother.

  She came to see where her daughter worked. She carried a brown plastic handbag in the crook of her arm. Her hair was steel gray and tightly permed. She wore a bright blue polyester dress with a matching jacket and a thin, white, plastic belt. She wore dark pantyhose and white, thick-healed sandals. She was from Wisconsin.

  Ellen watched as the woman’s eyes darted from the lights of the television monitors to the sounds of the scanners to the beige carpeting to the figures moving through the newsroom. She felt sorry for the woman who was so excited by her trip to the station.

  “Hey, let me give you a tour,” she offered.

  The tour included an introduction to Tom Carter who was curt and to Jean Ann who grasped her hand with both of her own.

  “Thank you so much,” the mother murmured over and over again as they walked through the station.

  “It’s nothing,” Ellen told her.

  “That’s all we are in the end, isn’t it, dust?” Ellen now said to the daughter. “I mean, dust to dust and all that.”

  “I think I’m more than that.” Her face was red with indignation. “Much more.”

  She turned abruptly and walked away.

  Ellen shrugged and looked over at Debbie.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I sorta like the idea.”

  “What are you going to do for your series?” Debbie asked without looking up from her typewriter.

  Chuck Farrell had warned them that if they didn’t come up with their series for the fall rating book, he would assign them ones of his own choice.

  “I think I want to do something on that hospice down south,” Debbie said.

  “Oh, that sounds like fun.”

  “I think it could be good.”

  “I’m going with the Klan,” Ellen said of the group that had recently started to make its presence known in the area.

  “They’re recruiting,” she told Tony Santella, handing him a flyer she found posted on a light pole.

  “Can you get all the visuals you need?” was his only concern. “Like it,” said Brown.

  He did like it. Good subject, lots of interest, four or five parts. Talk to black leaders. One part shot at a Klan meeting, another with shadowed interviews with Klansmen. It would work.

  Debbie’s first idea for a series had been one on bikers.

  “Are you crazy?” roared Tony.

  “What do you want to do, pull a train or something?” Jack Benton sneered.

  “No way,” stated Brown.

  “Why not?”

  “They are scum,” Tony said.

  “No,” she said, “that’s the story. Some of them raise money for charity. They do things for handicapped children. They do a lot of things besides wearing black leather jackets.”

  It didn’t matter. Brown shuddered at the thought of long-haired men in black jackets roaring up to the front door, parking their bikes on the sidewalk, walking around his newsroom. No way. He didn’t want it and neither did the audience.

  They might go for crashes and bodies, carefully shot, on the freeway. That was natural. They were curious about that sort of thing. But, they didn’t like sleaze and bikers were sleaze.

  The Klan story, that was something else. They needed to know about it, that it was out there in their neighborhoods. Ellen would do it right. He could already picture the night shot of white-hooded men standing by some bonfire. Did they still do that? he wondered.

  Do series during ratings, that’s what they said Back East. Series helped the ratings, gave them something to promote. The Klan was good, he nodded. But, what they really needed this rating book was some sort of uplifting, happy, hopeful series, something that would make them feel good. They could run it on the ten o’clock, the last story, the kicker, and again on the noon.

  “You have any ideas for a light series?” he asked Debbie Hanson. “Something uplifting, you know, happy?”

  All she could offer was the hospice and a title.

  “I thought I’d call it ‘A Good Place to Die.’”

  Brown stared at her, his hands folded on his stomach.

  “Well, I suppose so,” he sighed. “But what we really need is something light.”

  “Somebody Across the Street is doing a series on incest,” Chuck announced to anyone within hearing distance.

  “Why don’t we get Kowalski to do one on rape?” Ellen called out.

  “It’s been done,” Kowalski yelled back. “Won an award last year for some station in Colorado.”

  George was listening. Any mention of a story cut through the clatter of the scanners and the constantly ringing phones.

  “We could find a new angle,” he offered.

  Chuck rolled his eyes.

  “Right, George,” Ellen laughed, “a new angle on rape.”

  “Well,” he said, “there’s always more than one angle, isn’t there?”

  17

  Chuck Farrell prepared his speech on all the reasons he deserved more money. He had been at the station four years. He pulled the early morning producer shift that nobody else wanted. He filled in on the assignment desk. He worked through the day and part of the night when there was a big story or when somebody called in sick. What would the argument be? He didn’t do his job? He did his job and a few others too.

  “You should tell them how valuable you are,” Mary Jo told him. “Tell them you deserve more money.”

  God knows they were going to need it with a new baby coming. They had a right, didn’t they, to two children and their two-bedroom house on the west side of town.

  “We don’t have it,” Jim Brown said as they faced each other across the dark wood desk. “I’d do it if I could, but we don’t have it.”

  “Ah, come on, Jim,” Chuck snorted. “You know I’m worth more and I’m only talking about thirty or forty dollars a week. If I was working by the hour, I’d be making more than that in overtime.”

  “We don’t have it,” Brown said again, and shook his head slowly. “You know we get this budget from Back East and we have to stick to it. You’re already at the top for your job.”

  “I’m doing other things,” Chuck argued. “I’ve been working with the series.”

  Brown shrugged.

  “Is there something else I can do to make more?” Chuck asked. “Give me something. I’ve got a baby coming.”

  “You know I would if I could, but it’s not up to me.”

  “Then who? Carter? Who? I’ll go talk to them.”

  Brown smil
ed. “The guys Back East. You know that. It’s their station.”

  He mimicked the hopelessness of the situation by opening his arms wide, palms up.

  “Tell them not to buy another microphone and give me the money instead,” Chuck said.

  “Wish it were that simple. I really wish it were.”

  Chuck sat back. Jim was telling him the truth. He didn’t have control over the money. He would give him a raise if he could. He was a fair man. You could see he cared. It was written all over his face.

  “We’ll figure out something, guy. We will,” Brown promised.

  “I guess Mary Jo and I have made it before,” Chuck tried to reassure him. “Like you say, Jim, piece of cake.”

  Brown smiled. He did say that.

  “Piece of cake,” he would tell the guys Back East who called with a suggestion, a request, a demand. He said it with a smile in his voice.

  “Sure, piece of cake.”

  They loved hearing it. They would carry that “piece of cake” to the men above them and on it would move, through the planning meetings and the luncheons and the after-work drinks.

  “Brown said it’s a piece of cake,” they would say. The others would smile. It was good knowing Brown would come through.

  He also said, “No problem,” and he meant it. He had no problems in his newsroom, no changes that could not be made, no advice that would not be taken.

  Brown offered the guys Back East no opinion other than the one he thought they wanted to hear. He never offered information that did not support their beliefs. He never disagreed with them unless he knew that’s what they wanted. After all, as he told himself and his people, they owned the candy store.

  “They want us to do what?” the cry would go up at the weekly newsroom meetings.

  He’d shrug and shake his head. It was a silent statement of, “Hey, that’s the way it is. What can you do?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” they would shout. “Are they nuts?”

  The people Back East were a combination of other stations and newspapers and charcoal gray suits carrying attaché cases filled with consultants’ reports and rating books.

  “Who are they?” Debbie asked the other heads that languidly turned toward the gray parade on one of their sporadic visits.

  A pursed mouth, a lifted eyebrow would be her answer. “Who cares?” the movements said.

  “Who exactly do we work for?” she asked Chuck Farrell.

  “Some guys in Philadelphia who’ll probably sell the place in two years.”

  Those people Back East did not think long and hard about the station as long as it worked. The ratings were high, the budget tight. As long as everything but the budget numbers stayed high, everything was fine. As the number two station in the twenty-fifth market, it made the obscene profit that kept even those Back East moderately content until someone felt the need to make his mark by making the station even more profitable.

  “Does the local news make money?” Debbie asked Brown.

  He smiled and then laughed. It was an open, full, deep laugh. Strange for Brown.

  “We are the station,” he said. “We make the money.”

  “But we spend it too.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” he said. “We make money.”

  Which, of course, meant he had been lying to Chuck Farrell. They had plenty of money. They had money for a helicopter, for trips covering stories around the state, for Jean Ann’s hairdresser and wardrobe. They had money for state-of-the-art equipment and a fleet of vans and company cars. They definitely had money for that.

  Farrell would get his bonus at Christmas. They all would. The bonuses came in a block and Brown and Carter would divvy it up. Most of them would get about the same amount. Someone would get a little more. One person might only get a token. The message was clear. Time to move on. A good a way as any, Brown thought, for letting them know.

  Like he said, no problem. No problem but one. He had wrestled with it for ten years. Carter was the one problem he couldn’t knock loose and he wasn’t sure he should. Carter made his people unhappy but he was also the perfect fall guy. He could be blamed for everything that went wrong in the newsroom.

  “What can you do?” Brown’s soft smile would say. “What can any of us do?”

  No matter how insipid his comments, how ridiculous his demands, Carter pulled in the ratings and kept them in that solid contender spot. Sometimes he even took them into first place. Happened a few times and it would happen again.

  Tom Carter was top dog even if his title of news manager put him one rung below Brown in the chain of command. Of course, the minute those ratings started their downward slide, and they would, he was a dead man.

  In his fat vinyl chair, Jim Brown dreamed of how he would handle the day when it happened. He pondered it, sent the thought meandering pleasantly through his brain, tasting it, feeling it, the day when it finally happened.

  “Well, Tom,” he would say when the moment came. “Well, Tom, what can I say?” And, likely as not, Carter would spit back at him.

  “Eat my ass,” he’d say or something like that. Brown smiled with the thought. Carter would look like a mean, ugly dog and he’d say, “Eat my ass.”

  Now, if he did his Well-Tom-what-can-I-say? standing at the door of Carter’s office so everyone could see and stretch to hear, there would be a different response. They would shake hands and pat at each other’s shoulders.

  “Yeah, I know,” Carter would say. “Not your fault.”

  Carter would leave right away, no matter how it was done. He’d be out the door, coming back later for his boxes. There would be no good-bye to the newsroom and certainly not one to the audience. You didn’t do it that way. You disappeared. By the next day, the television critic for the morning paper might have the story and he might run with it for a few days, adding quotes, opinions. It didn’t matter. Neither would the phone calls.

  Oh, they’d come, hundreds that first week. Some would be shrill with indignation, the How-could-you-do-this-terrible-thing-I’ll-never-watch-your-station-again calls. Letters would be written to the newspapers. A radio show would open the phone lines to listeners.

  “We’ve watched that man for years,” they would say. “We’re never going to watch that station again.”

  The callers would be women, usually, in their fifties and sixties. The important men, the men who sat with Tom Carter at the front tables, might try to get through to the men Back East, thinking they would listen and rethink the decision.

  Even the old hands in the newsroom, the ones who had been through this at other stations, would stoop to the temptation of wondering when they would give in to the pressure. Even Carter, as well as he knew the business, would be there waiting, relishing the dream of that moment when he got the call with the Hey-guy-look-we-want-you-back.

  There would be no phone call, no gloating return. There would be no sneering glance across the newsroom before going into the glass office and slamming the door. There would be no more three-camera nights and knowing snickers to the audience. It didn’t happen, anywhere.

  Station powers and their minions knew you waited it out. The phone calls eventually stopped and the audience would forget the men and women they loved every night. Months later there would be that stray call from someone who had moved away and come back.

  “I was wondering where he was,” they would say. “On vacation or something?”

  There would be short laughs in the newsroom as the words were passed around. That was all.

  Brown could taste every second of it. Carter would disappear one night and that would be it. When you disappear from television, you are almost immediately forgotten.

  Poor Carter, Brown nodded to himself, he wasn’t such a bad guy. He’d say goodbye to him when the day came and he’d make Carter say goodbye. It would be done in the glass office with an open door. They would both shake hands and put their free hand on the other man’s shoulder. Brown knew there would be a tear in that old
guy’s eyes. Yeah, there would be. His too, probably. When all was said and done, they had been through it together. They were men of The Best.

  18

  Ellen parked her car in the middle of the empty library parking lot as she had been told to by her phone contact, a Klan leader named Harry.

  “That way we will be able to tell if we’re being followed,” he explained.

  She shook her head at his stupidity. If she wanted, if Brown insisted, it would have been easy to follow the car that picked her up, too easy.

  The big green Buick pulled into the lot.

  “You Ellen Peters?” the driver asked, leaning out of the window.

  “Hi.” She tried to keep her voice friendly and young.

  “I’m Ken. That’s Bruce,” he said, nodding to the shadows of the backseat.

  “Hi,” she said again.

  His eyes darted from her face to the parking lot to the few cars passing on the street.

  “Did Harry warn you about anybody following us?”

  “Yes, and nobody is,” she told him. She walked around the car and got into the front seat.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see,” he said and threw the car into gear.

  “It’s a nice night,” she tried. “Not too hot.”

  He said nothing. There was no movement in the back.

  “Where are you from?” she finally asked.

  “A lot of places,” he snapped.

  “I’m from Boston,” she said and smiled again.

  “Lots of nigger trouble up there. Lots of it everywhere,” he said and laughed over his shoulder to the man in the dark. A snicker came back.

  The driver’s hair was cut short to the skull. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans.

  “Take this down, hurry,” he ordered, passing a small pad and pencil across the seat. A hand reached for it.

  “BGT,” he read out. “Zero, zero, six.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Taking down that guy’s license.” He pointed to the car in front of them. “He’s been acting strange. First he was in front of us. Then he was behind us and now he’s in front of us again.”