Grievances

by Mark Ethridge

  It was near midnight but The Depot was crowded with more than three dozen patrons. A quick head count revealed more than half of them were Charlotte Times staffers, a few of them dayside reporters who had gotten off earlier, started drinking and were still at it by the time the night shift rolled in. Country songs played on the jukebox and the place smelled of sawdust and beer. Walker had seated himself at a corner table, back to the wall. The two Lone Star longnecks had already been delivered and one of them was almost empty. He waved me over.

  “Get yourself a Texas tea and come sit down,” he shouted above the din.

  I did as he said, sipped my beer, and waited for the axe to fall. Walker picked at the label of his Lone Star and said nothing. Finally, I couldn’t stand the tension.

  “You wanted to talk to me about the other day. I already know I blew it.”

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you. You took a stand. It had to be done.”

  I was stunned. “You mean I’m not going to get fired?”

  “Not over this, pardner. Now, long-term, I ain’t holdin’ all the cards. I am saying it ain’t gonna happen as long as I’m the dealer.”

  “And you’ve talked with Reich about this?”

  Walker drained his first Lone Star and swallowed a belch. “Yup.”

  “Good God, what did you tell him?”

  “Same thing I always tell him. Reporters are crazy. The truth is always the best defense. It’s good you nailed him in public. There’s no way he could retaliate without looking like the jerk he is.”

  “That’s what my father said. Problem is, we may have won the battle but lost the war. I don’t get fired. But the Sampson story’s a loss. You didn’t change the publisher’s mind about that, did you?”

  “Didn’t even try.” He burped. “Would have been like tryin’ to talk sense to an Oklahoma fan. Besides, if I convinced him it was a good story, he’d probably want the E.B. assigned to it.”

  Walker put down his second Lone Star and leaned toward me. “You know you’re right about it being a war. And it’s more than a war for the Wallace Sampson story. It’s a war for people we write about and the people we write for. Reich calls ’em customers. I call ’em citizens. It’s a war for journalism. And you know what? If we don’t win, it’s not worth being here. So as long as I’m the trail boss we’re gonna keep ridin’ that story no matter how wild it gets. Reich told me to ‘end this ceaseless thrall’ but he didn’t say it to you. So I’m checking out. I’m hooking you up with another editor until you bring this thing in.”

  Reich’s command had indeed been directed to Walker but I had no doubt he meant it for the whole newsroom.

  “Isn’t that stretching it? He meant the newspaper should end its ceaseless thrall.”

  “We are a business that depends on precise language. It’s not my fault he’s a cretin. I intend to follow his instructions precisely. My ceaseless thrall is over. But yours isn’t. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to cover for you guys while you’re doing it.” He sat back in his seat and took a long pull on the Lone Star.

  I told Walker about Dad’s point about obits—that it didn’t matter where you were when you wrote them. We could do them just as well from Hirtsboro, South Carolina as we could from the newsroom of the Charlotte Times, leaving the daytime hours free for pursuing the story of who killed Wallace Sampson.

  “Your dad always was a sly bastard,” Walker said when I had finished. “How is the old boy?”

  “Lousy.” I told him about the cancer but I talked a lot about the upbeat parts. New strides in treatment. A relatively good quality of life. As I repeated them, I began to feel stronger, better, like maybe we could lick this thing.

  Walker has no tolerance for anything false, including self-deception. “Pardner, sounds like he’s cooked. You know, this may not be the best time for you to be doing this investigation.”

  I thought of my dad and I thought about Delana. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I know one thing. I’m not waiting. This murder has gone unpunished for far too long.”

  Suddenly, my feet began to vibrate. The table began to move and the railroad memorabilia on the walls began to rattle. Soon the whole building was shaking as a slow freight train rumbled by on the tracks beside the passenger platform. Conversation stopped. It was a tradition at The Depot that when the train rolled through you chugged whatever drink you were holding and immediately ordered another. Walker finished his second beer, I finished my first and a waitress quickly appeared with replacements.

  The Depot was becoming even more crowded as the stragglers from the copy desk and sports rolled in. Someone pushed some tables together and soon, Walker and I were surrounded by a half dozen loud conversations.

  “So, what’s this I hear about you being in Minneapolis?” one of the copy editors asked Walker. Walker just shook his head and smiled.

  “What do you know?” a dayside reporter demanded of the copy editor.

  “You remember Alex Tift? Guy who used to be on our national desk and went up to The Star-Tribune? He called yesterday. Said he saw Walker in the Star-Tribune building. Am I right, Walker?”

  Walker said nothing.

  “Said Walker was wearing the biggest thickest winter coat anyone had ever seen.”

  Even Walker laughed.

  I left The Depot feeling almost buoyant. I still had my job. And miraculously, we were going to get to resume work on the Wallace Sampson story. I called Delana who was happy but not surprised.

  But the unease that I felt when I learned Walker was in the job market was still with me two days later when Bullock and I loaded up the Dodge and headed for Hirtsboro.

  “Do you think Walker’s history?” I asked Bullock as he drove.

  “One way or the other. He can’t take the publisher and the publisher can’t take him. So either he leaves or he’ll be fired.” Bullock lit a cigarette, noticed my grimace, grunted and cracked the window. “I’ve seen it a million times.”

  “What about us?”

  “Hell, I’m the oldest rat in the barn. I’ll outlast ’em all. Besides, they can’t do anything to me they haven’t already done.”

  “What about me?”

  “I’d say if Walker goes, you’re screwed.”

  Tasha and Maybelle sniffed the tires of the Dodge and greeted us with tails that wagged like wiper blades in a downpour when we parked in front of Windrow. A note on the door from Brad told us to make ourselves at home. It was 3:30 p.m., almost time to start the obituary shift. We dumped our clothes in our rooms and moved a phone, a couple of chairs, and a small table into the nook off the kitchen.

  “There,” Bullock said, emerging from underneath the table where he had been plugging in the phone and a fax machine. “Our office away from the office.”

  “Yeah, all we need is a publisher to walk through here twice a day and demoralize us.”

  At 4:00 p.m., Bullock called the news desk and got the obituary listings for the next day. Obituaries at the Times took three forms. The first were the simple six-line listings that merely provided name, profession, date of birth, date of death, hometown, survivors, and funeral arrangements. These were phoned in to the newspaper by the funeral homes each afternoon and were printed free, as a public service.

  For a price, these obituaries could be lengthened to include as much information as the family was willing to pay for, told in whatever way the family saw fit. It was advertising, not news, and had nothing to do with the newsroom. But it was a popular way of honoring the departed and, for the newspaper, a very lucrative one, with no ads to be designed, no sales commission to be paid, and no writer to be employed.

  The third kind of obituary, the kind that had become the publisher’s obsession, was known as the headed obit because it carried a headline. These obituaries were real news stories, objectively reported by journalists like Bullock, me, a
nd almost everyone else who’s ever passed through the profession. Many newspapers ran three or four a week and confined them to the noteworthy. But at the Charlotte Times, obituaries were a beat unto themselves and then some. To keep the publisher off track, Bullock and I had committed to producing at least one headed obituary apiece every day we were in Hirtsboro.

  Our starting place was the free listings provided by the funeral homes. From these scant facts came the clues about who might make an interesting headed obit. The most obvious clue was the name. Whether it was in the newsroom in Charlotte or in the Halls’ breakfast nook in Hirtsboro, the technique was the same: scan the listings for the famous or simply well-known—not just the names of the deceased themselves but the names of the survivors. The death of a relative of the famous can be almost as newsworthy as the death of the famous person himself. Then look at professions. An interesting job can make good copy. So can a top position in a company people might recognize. Anyone who’d ever worked in the newsroom was guaranteed a nice write-up. Treat your departed colleagues kindly, was the rule, because when it is your turn . . .

  Look at the age of the decedent and pay particular interest to the young and the very old. By publisher’s decree, everyone in the circulation area who made it to one hundred was honored with a headed obit in the Charlotte Times. And the young. What can you say about a kid who died? A lot, it turns out. Look at the dates of death—for spouses who might have died together or for someone who might have gone out on their birthday.

  I scanned the faxed listings and settled on the founder of an electrical supply firm whom I knew was a member of Warren Reich’s country club.

  “Jesus, Gene Roy died,” Bullock said in amazement when he reached a listing for a retired lieutenant from the Charlotte police department vice squad. “I can write this off the top of my head.”

  There was only one phone so as Bullock made his calls to the police department and to the Roy family, I wandered around Brad and Lindsay’s plantation home. The earthy smell of slow-cooking collards drew me to the kitchen. A collection of bright gourds filled a carved wooden bowl on an antique table in a bay-windowed alcove. From a certain angle—an angle that left out the stainless steel refrigerator built into an adjacent wall—the bowl and gourds looked like a still life by one of the old masters. Outside the window, the bare fields of the plantation stretched to the Savannah. Stripped of vegetation, the land showed more contour, more hills and ravines than when the crops were high. I listened to Bullock on the phone, a familiar newsroom event, and looked back out the window. The view was much better than the one from my cubicle.

  Down the hall, I poked my head into Brad’s study. A photograph of his Harvard fencing team hung above his desk, which was buried beneath plastic baggies of vegetable matter, photographs and drawings of plants, and pages of text that I imagined were for his book on Windrow’s botanicals.

  A few minutes later I found myself in the Halls’ living room, studying the books they had on their shelves. I can tell a lot about people from the kinds of books they keep. Sometimes I will pull them down and open them to look for an inscription or to see if they’ve actually been read. I browsed the titles: An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdahl; The Obedient Dog by Benjamin Broad; the complete report of the 1967 Commission of U.S. Civil Disorders; The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort; The Orangeburg Massacre by Jack Bass; and book after book about plants.

  The front door opened and Lindsay Hall walked in. I jumped back as embarrassed as if I’d been caught peeking in her medicine chest or spying in her boudoir.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you.” She reached behind her neck with one hand and removed the band that held her short pony-tail. She shook her blonde hair out to collar length. She wore jeans, a white blouse, an old blue blazer, and knee-high riding boots. Her outing had given her cheeks color and her casual dress helped soften the reserved, patrician image I had of her.

  “You didn’t. I mean you did,” I stumbled. “Brad left us a note and said it was okay to come in.”

  “She knows,” said Brad, piling through the door with his arms loaded with groceries. “I’m glad you made it back,” he said as he headed into the kitchen.

  I felt my stomach returning to its normal position. “I hope we’re not imposing,” I told Lindsay.

  “Brad’s an impulsive man,” she sighed. “I’ve learned to live with it.” She caught herself and brightened. “It will be good to have you here. It’s always nice to have visitors. Not many people to talk to in Hirtsboro. Brad can take it for long stretches at a time. I can’t. Not without company.”

  She walked into the kitchen and I followed. When she saw the nook, the office set-up and Bullock on the phone, she stopped short.

  “How long do you expect to be here?” she asked.

  I was the invited guest. I wasn’t sure what to say. But Brad saved me. “Until we’re done,” he answered.

  “What constitutes done?” Lindsay asked with a touch of impatience.

  “Done is finding the killers of Wallace Sampson,” Brad said.

  At that moment, there was an explosion of profanity from the nook where Bullock was on the phone. “Cut the shit,” he yelled. “I don’t need that goddamned department crap about all comment’s gotta come from the damn chief. I’m trying to do an obit, dammit, and I need some asshole to talk to!”

  Lindsay sighed. “Brad, I wish I didn’t have my doubts about the likelihood of your success. But I think we can all agree it will be best if that happens sooner rather than later.”

  “Sorry about that.” I waved to get Bullock’s attention in the nook so I could prevent any further outbursts.

  Together, the Halls unloaded their groceries. Bullock and I stayed in the nook and went about our assignments. When he was done reporting, Bullock began the Gene Roy obituary, writing long-hand in his reporter’s notebook. I took up the phone. First I called the library and asked Nancy Atkinson to check the clips to see if my electrical supply owner had ever made the news. I called the photo morgue to see if we had a mug shot. Employees at his company provided background and anecdotes. I remembered the publisher’s country club connection. It was almost 6:00 p.m. but I had a brainstorm and I took a chance.

  “Warren Reich, please,” I said when his secretary answered. “Matt Harper calling.”

  Bullock looked up from his story wide-eyed. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I put my hand over the receiver. “I’m reporting an obit. The publisher knew this guy. Besides, what better way for the publisher to learn how I’m spending my time?”

  Bullock shrugged. The publisher came on and I told him why I was calling. I got the quotes I needed. We both played it straight, with no mention of the recent flare-up in the newsroom. At the end, he thanked me for calling.

  “You see,” I said. “The publisher’s not such a bad guy after all.”

  Bullock snorted.

  We broke for a dinner of cornbread and collard greens, wrote the obituaries, and phoned them in without trouble.

  The next morning, Bullock dressed in his usual uniform, but today, it just felt wrong. I swallowed my instinct to say something. At breakfast at the Hungry Tummy, he wolfed down side orders of ham and sausage as well as a regular order of three eggs over with bacon. Our favorite blonde, heavy-hipped waitress looked on with respect.

  I stuck to coffee and grits while I thought about the best way to approach Vanessa Brown. She’d haltingly answered our questions when Bradford Hall and I had interviewed her the first time. But I’d left feeling that she’d been scared, that she was holding back.

  I thought about my father’s advice to put away the notebook so the subject would feel at ease.

  “Ronnie, we need to change course,” I said as he mopped his plate with a piece of toast. “We need to talk to Vanessa but it can’t be here and it can’t be you.”

  He stopped in mid-wipe. “Why
not?”

  “Because this is where she works. Her boss is here. She’s not going to be relaxed. If she has something to say, she’s sure as hell not going to say it here.”

  “And what’s the problem with me?”

  “You haven’t met her before. When I interviewed her the first time, it was with Brad. For another, you look like a cop The last thing we need is for her to be intimidated by some stranger in a quasi-uniform.”

  Bullock looked hurt. “Well, that’s just fine. But what about you? You’re the only guy in the whole town of Hirtsboro and probably all of South Carolina in a friggin’ tie. What do you figure she thinks you are? The plantation owner?”

  I looked at myself in a mirror that ran the length of the wall above the grill. Blue blazer with brass buttons. Blue Oxford shirt. Rep tie in the colors of my alma mater. If not the plantation owner then certainly the Princeton Club.

  I took off my tie and unfastened my top button. “Let’s drop back and punt until we figure out exactly what we need to do.”

  We ordered a second cup of coffee and then a third before we finally agreed on a plan. I’d talk to Vanessa Brown here at the Hungry Tummy but only to set up a time and a place when we all could talk later. When and where would be her choice but it would be someplace away from work.

  Bullock paid the bill and went to the Dodge to wait, taking my tie and jacket with him. I sat at the picnic table for nearly an hour before she appeared, laughing as she spilled out of the door with the rest of the kitchen crew and dressed in the same Brown Family Reunion T-shirt and blue bandanna she’d been wearing when we first met. As the rest of the workers drifted a discreet distance away, Vanessa Brown approached me.