She gave a short laugh. “Oh, I think that is exactly the point. Think about it. We could do one part on the dangers of hiking without ever leaving the station.”
“Ellen, is there something you want to say?” he asked, annoyed.
“No. I’m here to find out what happened to Debbie.”
“You know what happened.”
“No. I know what happened on the mountain, I guess.” She shrugged. “But I don’t know what happened here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have a feeling something happened here at the station, something not so nice. Now, why would I feel that way, Jim?”
She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. She ran her hand along the crease in one leg of her black slacks.
“I hear Debbie had some trouble here before she went on her little walk,” she said, playing with the crease.
He swallowed hard.
“I hear there was some problem with Tom and she ran out of here in tears,” Ellen continued.
His face went tight, the fear starting low in his chest.
“It’s the little things that make a story interesting. Don’t you think?” She smiled.
“Ellen, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but you’re wrong, whatever it is,” he stated strongly.
“Really? And here I’m thinking it might make it a better story, a little extra something nobody’s talked about. Isn’t that what makes it news, even now? And we do love our news, don’t we, Jimmy.” She grinned. “So why don’t we talk about what happened to her here that set her off that morning?”
“Nothing happened here,” he declared firmly to hide his growing fear.
“Of course,” she went on,” nobody really cares, but if they did, all you would have to do was tell them how much we loved good old Debbie and how much she loved her job and how happy she was here, like all of us. Right?”
Suddenly, she felt incredibly tired. All the other things she wanted to say, all the anger she put into the words she rehearsed, had faded away. She stood.
“What’s it to you, Ellen?” he demanded, sensing the weakness. “How much did you ever care about Debbie, or anybody else, for that matter? What kind of a friend were you to Debbie?”
Now he could have his own smile.
“I think you’re in shock, Ellen. You go home and cool off. When you come back, we’ll have a talk about how you see your work and your future here.”
She left his office without shutting the door.
He waited for a few seconds before going to the doorway and looking out. He could see her, the top of her head over the cubicle partitions. He quickly pulled back and closed the door. He sat in his chair. He was shaking.
She could cause some trouble. Yes, she could, with that big mouth of hers. She’d make a few phone calls and he’d get the questions. The whole thing was supposed to be over and done with. He heard about the argument with Carter. Carter said it was nothing. Both of them letting off some steam.
“I only asked her where she had been and why she wasn’t answering the phone,” Carter told him. “What the hell? If you ask me, the girl was always a little loose around the gills.”
And now there was this other thing, this phone call from Clifford Williams. Steve told him he called and said he was halfway to New York.
“Said he was going to buy a fur coat,” Steve said and grinned. “Though you might like to know.”
The only black in the newsroom leaves, no explanation. It might look bad to the people Back East. Then again, maybe not. You could never tell with those guys.
*
Chuck Farrell watched as Ellen threw papers and tapes into a box.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Another tape clattered into the box. “He wants me to do a series on hiking accidents, but frankly, I don’t think I want to.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care, Chuck, but I have to get out of here.”
“You know, Ellen,” he said softly, “we’re all just trying to earn a living. That’s all. We’re people doing a job. We’re all trying to survive.”
“Good for you, Chuck, but I can’t, not this way.” Her voice broke with the words. “I’m definitely not tough enough for this.”
She picked up the box and walked down the cubicle row. She paused at Carter’s office. He wasn’t there.
52
The night air was soft. A good night, she thought, March and still cool.
There wasn’t too much noise, some traffic moving in the distance, the gentle hum of a hundred television sets filtered through screened windows and open patio doors.
She sat in the car, her legs outside, feet on the ground. It never took long to move. She looked at the sky, black as that night in the forest. She had been so sick with fear that night, sick that the men who killed four or five people were there, hiding in the dark, waiting as she waited with her dolt of a photographer.
“Look,” the officers told her, “if these guys come, you run. Get into the woods. They’d love to get their hands on some television people.” They both nodded their blond, short-cropped heads.
She tried joking with them.
“If I hear anything, I’ll dive under your car.”
“There won’t be any room,” said one of the twins. “We’ll be there first.” He wasn’t smiling.
They told her, off the record, that the baby these men had killed had been tossed in the air for target practice. No one was going to make that official, they told her. It was too horrible.
God, she was scared that night. She didn’t want to die there, not for that story, not for any story. She shuddered with the memory of the fear and the cold. She wondered if she told Debbie about that night and how frightened she had been.
Tonight she’d drive north and keep going, north, maybe northwest. She would go someplace where it was cold, where there were great chucks of empty land, few people, and television sets filled with snow. She’d go someplace where they didn’t know what The Today Show was and didn’t care.
*
“That’s the news for now,” Carter gave the audience his lips-closed, corners-curled, smile.
“We’ll be back at ten o’clock with more of the news of our state and our nation.” Jean Ann Maypin smiled wide as she spoke. Her lips were dry.
“And so,” Carter took it back, “from all of us, good evening and good news.”
Jean Ann nodded her agreement. She tightened the crossing of her ankles.
Carter picked his script and turned to her as though to smile, to chat, to relax. He tapped the script sheets on the desk.
In the control room, the director called for the wide shot, and producer Tony Santella gave a crooked smile to all those in the room.
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Piece of cake.”
In his office, in his high-backed vinyl chair, Jim Brown sat, hands folded over his belly, and stared at nothing at all.
EPILOGUE
There is a perfect view of the city from the park at the foot of the mountain. Here, sitting in your car or resting against the side of the mountain, you can see how the night begins, how the sky turns red and gold and blue and then fades to black.
You watch the city lights come on, cooling even the hottest night with their sparkling white promise. There are other lights as well, those from the cars speeding on the road below, back and forth from a thousand places. At night, it is a city of the future, of prosperity, of all you could ever dream.
There is only one problem with all of this. The park closes at dusk, the same time the city and the sky turn beautiful. Of course, you could watch the coming of the night by standing outside the park gates. You could, if so inclined, jump the fence, climb a short way up the mountain and sit and wait for the night to begin. But, more than likely, you know that inside the park or outside the gates, the view is about the same. Besides, you can see the city lights quite well fr
om a moving car on the road below.
KATHLEEN WALKER spent ten years as a television reporter and producer covering the news for network affiliates in New Mexico and Arizona. She moved on to freelance writing after her last position with PBS in Tempe, Arizona. The Best in the West is based on her experiences in television news.
Her freelance work includes numerous articles for Arizona Highways magazine. Her two studies of the Spanish Colonial mission system in Arizona and California—San Xavier: The Spirit Endures and A Place of Peace: San Juan Capistrano—were published by its book division. Her first novel, A Crucifixion in Mexico, was published by Black Heron Press. She is also the author of a book of short stories, Life in a Cactus Garden, and a collection of humorous essays, Desert Mornings—Tales of Coffee, Cactus & Chaos.
She did her undergraduate work in Latin American History at La Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City and earned her master’s degree in Corporate and Political Communications at Fairfield University in Connecticut.
She resides in Tucson, Arizona.
The Best in the West Page 26