Barking Dogs

by R. R. Irvine

  “Take our live shot,” Manwaring whispered into the cellular, feeling elated and guilty at the same time.

  The deputy mayor’s tears went coast to coast. “Defiance isn’t a regular town. It’s more like a communal farm, with families and friends working it together.”

  “We’ve been told the count could be as high as thirty,” Vicki said, improvising as Manwaring had suggested.

  “People come and go there all the time. I’ve done my share of volunteer work out there.”

  “Have you had any contact with Defiance since the fire started?”

  “One of the men has a ham radio, but we haven’t been able to raise him so far.”

  Manwaring checked his stopwatch, then signaled Vicki to start wrapping it up.

  “If you could speak to the people of Defiance right now,” Vicki said, “what would you tell them?”

  Stacie tried to answer but could only shake her head and sob. Manwaring winced.

  Nodding sympathetically, Vicki turned away from the distraught woman and stared into the camera. “Because of the high winds, rescue workers don’t think they’ll reach Defiance until late tomorrow afternoon. Only God knows what they’ll find when they do. This is Vicki Garcia reporting live from Ellsworth, Idaho. Back to you, Lee.”

  Manwaring started a new count on his stopwatch.

  Lee Aarons milked the Q and A session for a full minute and fifteen seconds, which added up to a record exposure time for Vicki on the Evening News.

  “We’re clear,” Manwaring said when New York went to commercial. “Great work, everybody.”

  Vicki flung herself at Manwaring, kissing him on the lips, her flickering tongue promising future delights. She retreated before his tongue could answer back.

  “Manwaring,” Reisner said distantly, “put Vicki on the line.”

  He handed her the cellular. She kissed it, too.

  Whatever Reisner said lit up Vicki’s face. “You tell Lee I feel the same way about him.” She winked at Manwaring. “They’re giving us a live insert on tomorrow’s Morning News.”

  Sighing, Manwaring took back the cellular.

  “We’ll be playing the Defiance angle in our prime time news updates throughout the night,” Reisner said. “That means I want you and your crew standing by until eleven our time, nine yours.”

  “We haven’t eaten yet,” Manwaring said.

  “Do you have more videotape?”

  “Fifteen minutes’ worth.”

  “Start feeding it, and let me get back to Lee and the rest of the news.”

  Once the feed was underway, Manwaring looked around for the deputy mayor.

  “She’s gone,” Vicki said. “She wasn’t too happy about the interview. She said we were insensitive. I told her I was only doing my job, that I only ask the questions that you write down for me.”

  “What would I do without you?”

  “I’m getting too old for this kind of thing,” Holland said. “Milking tragedies on rooftops is a job for youngsters like Wilcox here.”

  Wilcox twitched a shoulder but kept his eyes on the porta-pak.

  “Do you realize that we could have been in business for ourselves by now,” Holland went on.

  “Sure,” Manwaring said, “taping weddings and bar mitzvahs.”

  “It’s safer than hiking into the middle of a firestorm.”

  “You’d be bored in a week,” Manwaring said.

  “I’m hungry,” Vicki said.

  “You heard our New York producer,” Holland told her. “We’re on standby. Reisner’s rules are in effect.”

  “One of you is going to have to go get us something to eat.”

  “I’ll do it,” Deputy Vorhees volunteered. “The best fast food in town is at the Big I Cafe. That’s part of our motel. The cook there knows me, Miss Garcia. He’ll fix up whatever you want.”

  ******

  The Big I Cafe had a ten-foot blue neon I blinking on its roof. Next door, the Idaho Motor Lodge had a matching letter mounted on top of its office, which fronted a short row of side-by-side log cabins. Manwaring had decided to check into the motel while Deputy Vorhees was filling their dinner order next door.

  “You’re with ABN, aren’t you?” the young man behind the desk said the moment Manwaring stepped through the office door.

  Manwaring nodded.

  “Your office called this afternoon from Los Angeles.”

  “I hope they told you we’ll need four rooms.”

  The clerk removed his L.A. Dodgers baseball cap, revealing a bald head that added twenty years to his age. “The woman who called said you’d be wanting just two rooms, that you’d be sharing one with Vicki Garcia and your crew would be bunking together in the other.”

  “She was putting you on.”

  He shrugged. “I saved two rooms for you like she said. Everything else is taken.”

  “I could pay extra,” Manwaring said.

  “It wouldn’t change anything.”

  “There’s nothing like a jealous woman named Joyce.”

  The clerk reached for the bill of his cap, found it missing, and shook his head.

  “Put Miss Garcia in one cabin,” Manwaring said. “The three of us will have to share the other.”

  “Each room comes with two beds. If I have to move a cot, it will cost extra.”

  As soon as Manwaring’s credit card number had been logged, the clerk handed over a pair of keys. “Tell Miss Garcia I gave her our two best rooms, the end cabins, numbers seven and eight.”

  “Is there a bar nearby?”

  The clerk jabbed a thumb toward a side window. “They’ve got one at the Big I next door, though you wouldn’t know it by the crowd.”

  Manwaring stepped to the window and peered out. Deputy Vorhees was standing in an otherwise empty cafe.

  “Where is everybody?” Manwaring asked.

  “At the press conference, where else?”

  “Jesus.”

  “You’d better hurry.” The clerk retrieved his cap and pulled the brim down over his eyes. “It’s scheduled for seven-thirty at city hall. If my clock’s right, you’ve got two minutes to get there.”

  4

  THE MOMENT the press conference was announced, Vicki sent Holland inside the council chambers to set up his camera. While he was doing that, she called New York collect, using a pay phone in the lobby of city hall. Reisner’s rules said upcoming press conferences were to be reported immediately. Lee Aarons answered on Reisner’s extension.

  “Ola, babe,” the anchorman said. “Como estas?”

  “We’ve been through that before,” she said.

  “A good-looking babe like you shouldn’t be ashamed of her heritage.”

  “I don’t speak Spanish, Lee. Let’s leave it at that.” She wasn’t about to explain that her father had insisted she learn only English. We didn’t come to this country to speak Spanish, he’d told her every time she’d used a forbidden word. We came here to be Americans.

  Aarons said laboriously, “Que te parse? Nos acostamos juntes?”

  That, she understood, although it was impossibly fractured. He wanted to go to bed with her. She feigned ignorance. “Put Reisner on the phone. I’ve got to update him on the situation here.”

  “He said he’d be right back.”

  “This is important.”

  “He’s taking a piss, OK? Now do you want to hold on and talk dirty, or what?”

  “Give him a message. Tell him the mayor’s about to hold a press conference. If he says something new, we’ll feed tape as soon as possible.”

  “You can feed me anytime, babe.”

  “I’ll be at this number for the next two or three minutes.” Vicki read off the number of the pay phone.

  “Que te—”

  Asshole, she thought, and hung up before she put her opinion of him into words. Men like Aarons made her wish she’d been able to change her name to something less ethnic. But it was the name Garcia, not her degree in journalism or her years o
f experience in the field, that had gotten her the network job. So be it. She had no illusions. She’d been hired as ABN’s answer to Connie Chung, though Reisner would never admit it.

  The phone rang just as she’d been expecting it to.

  “Where’s Manwaring?” Reisner asked immediately.

  “He’s working on the setup with Holland,” she lied. Necessities like food were not covered by Reisner’s rules. Neither was sleep.

  “I expect my field producers to stay in touch.”

  “It’s a war zone out there, Herb. We’re doing our best.”

  “Tell Manwaring I’ll be monitoring the competition all night. If I see something we don’t have . . .” Reisner disconnected without completing his thought.

  To cover Manwaring’s ass, Vicki went looking for a news source who might give them an edge. She found Stacie Wagstaff, the deputy mayor, bathing her face in the ladies’ room. Her eyes looked red and swollen, but then so did Vicki’s, thanks to the pervasive pall of smoke.

  “You did a fine job for us at the fire,” Vicki said.

  Stacie pulled a paper towel from the wall dispenser and blotted her face without looking in the mirror. As a result, she missed a spot of soot on one cheek.

  Vicki tapped her own cheek to signal that there was still repair work to be done. Stacie’s response was to rub her face angrily, which only spread the soot around.

  Vicki shrugged. “Why the press conference?”

  Stacie wadded the damp towel into a ball and hurled it at the wastebasket. “I saw a tape of your news show a few minutes ago. From now on, find someone else to use.”

  “I was only doing my job.”

  “Do you enjoy making fun of people like me? Small-town folks who don’t know any better?”

  “The public has a right to know what’s happening,” Vicki said as she’d done so many times before. Each time she repeated that phrase, she became less certain of its truth.

  “Do they have a right to see me cry? I wouldn’t have, you know, if you hadn’t pushed so hard. You and that damned producer of yours. You both turn on the charm to get what you want, don’t you? String along the yokels and make them cry.”

  Vicki washed her hands to avoid the woman’s angry eyes.

  “What makes it worse,” Stacie added, “is that he wrote everything out for you in advance.”

  “I speak for myself.” Vicki tried to get Manwaring off the hook. “Those questions were mine. If you don’t like them, blame me.”

  5

  “THANK GOD you got here,” Vicki said as Manwaring slipped in beside her in the city hall council chambers. “Word came about the news conference right after you left.” She handed him her briefcase and notebook, which she’d opened but had yet to use. “I thought I was going to have to take notes.”

  They were seated on the first of a dozen pewlike wooden benches that faced a horseshoe desk. Behind it, there were chairs and microphones enough for four councilmen and the mayor. At the moment, none of the chairs was occupied, though Mayor Ed Kearns and Sheriff Jess Nichols were whispering together nearby.

  At the back of the council chambers, six cameramen, Lew Holland among them, had set up their equipment in a cluster. To save battery power, they’d run a maze of power cords to an adaptor that was plugged into a single wall outlet.

  Manwaring leaned close to Vicki’s ear. “Does Reisner know about the news conference?”

  “I called him as soon as Mayor Ed gave me the word. Naturally, I covered for you. „Herb,’ I said, „he’s out working his ass off for you digging up background material.’”

  “What did you really tell him?”

  Vicki smiled. “I thought you were getting us something to eat.”

  “Your faithful deputy ought to be here any minute. I was checking us into the motel.”

  She patted his hand. “I left Wilcox on the roof with the cellular and the porta-pak so we can transmit in a hurry if we have to.”

  “Has the mayor made any kind of announcement yet?”

  “He was about to start, then decided to wait for somebody. He didn’t say who.”

  Manwaring checked the audience. Half a dozen or so looked like obvious locals, casually dressed in jeans and open-neck shirts, most likely those who didn’t have flammable property to worry about. Well away from them, two men in dark business suits sat side by side with folded arms, morticians if Manwaring had to guess. The rest were newsmen like himself, except for Stacie Wagstaff, the deputy mayor, who was seated alone on the back bench.

  “Don’t bother with her,” Vicki said. “I tried talking to that woman before you got here. You burned your bridge there when you made her weep.”

  “There’s only one woman in my life,” Manwaring said.

  “A boy needs his mother.”

  He stared at her, trying to read her tone of voice, trying to remember how much of his childhood, of his personal life, he’d let slip to Vicki over the year they’d been working together.

  “Take notes for me if anything happens before I get back,” he said and headed for the back row before she had time to complain.

  Holland raised a thumb, confirming that everything was under control as far as he was concerned. Manwaring raised an eyebrow and pointed to the electrical setup. His cameraman responded with a shrug that seemed to say blown fuses were out of his union jurisdiction.

  Shaking his head, Manwaring stood next to Stacie Wagstaff until she grudgingly slid along the bench to make room for him.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for the interview,” he said quietly.

  “Sure.” Her eyes were red rimmed, her hair windblown, her face smudged with soot.

  He started to reach for his handkerchief, then thought better of it.

  She said, “There are better ways of earning a living than asking, „How do you feel now that your friends in Defiance have been burned to death?’”

  “That’s not exactly how Vicki put it.”

  “Close enough.” Stacie’s shoulders rose and fell. She rubbed one cheek, spreading the soot around. “I shouldn’t blame you. It’s my own fault. I’ve seen you people crucify enough innocent victims to know better. I’m mad at myself, though, because I let you use me.”

  Reisner’s rules, Manwaring thought. They’d gotten him into trouble before, even punched in the nose once.

  “I apologize,” he said. “But it hasn’t been easy getting information, especially about Defiance.”

  “Right now, we don’t know anything more than you do. I just hope to God the satellite photos tell us something when they arrive.”

  “Is that why you’ve called a news conference?”

  “The mayor was on NBC live. They asked him the same question you did. „How do you feel?’ Only in his case they sugar-coated it a bit.”

  “I need some background on Defiance,” Manwaring said.

  “The mayor has met with everyone on the council. He wants us to let him do the talking from now on. One spokesman for all of us.”

  “Do you always do what you’re told?”

  “I have to live here; you don’t.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you people are hiding something?” he said.

  “Have you ever been on the other end of the camera?”

  Manwaring shook his head.

  Stacie tapped herself on the collarbone. “Our lives belong to us, not you. You’re an outsider. You wouldn’t understand about Ellsworth or Defiance.”

  “Like it or not, Defiance is news. Thanks to television, people all over the world are watching what happens here.”

  “I have friends in Defiance. Had, I guess. I grew up with them. They were good people. I’m tired of seeing them taunted because they chose a different way of life.”

  “I’m not here to make fun of the dead.”

  She stared at him intently. “I know why you’re good at your work. You look like such a nice guy, like someone to be trusted.”

  “Try me,” Manwaring said.

&
nbsp; She sighed. “You’ll hear it soon enough for yourself anyway. There are some people in this town who are happy about the fire. Who are saying good riddance to Defiance and what it stood for.”

  Someone blew into a microphone. Manwaring looked up to see the mayor signaling for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is our fire chief, Harold Romney. He’s just completed his reconnaissance of the fire lines.”

  The chief, wearing grimy, sweat-stained suntans and a side-arm, removed his service cap to reveal immaculate, wavy white hair. “As of now,” he said, “we’re still in trouble. The winds are killing us. We can’t expect any kind of aerial backup until late tomorrow afternoon.”

  With the mayor’s help, Romney taped an aerial photograph to a portable blackboard.

  “We’re here.” Romney designated Ellsworth with an X, then drew a large half-circle north of the town. “The fire is still burning away from us. It’s passed through Defiance, which means access to that area is clear from the east. Unfortunately, there are no roads leading in from that direction.”

  Neil Twombly, NBC’s correspondent, spoke up. “Are you saying there’s nothing left to burn in Defiance?”

  The fire chief and mayor exchanged quick glances. Romney said, “There’s always the risk that a fire can double back, though in this case I don’t think there’s much fuel left.”

  “Show us Defiance on the map,” CNN’s Linda Fisher said.

  The fire chief obliged.

  The mayor said, “As soon as it’s safe to take you people in, we’ll get you there.”

  “What about survivors?” Linda followed up.

  “The phone lines are gone, of course,” Romney said. “The power is out, too.”

  Vicki jumped in. “You haven’t answered the question. What about survivors?”

  The chief hesitated.

  “It doesn’t look good,” the mayor said.

  Stacie Wagstaff leaned close to Manwaring and murmured, “You poor things. You can’t ask the dead how they feel.”

  6

  THE BIG I Cafe was standing room only at midnight, two hours past its posted closing time. Inside, the steamy atmosphere smelled of smoke and sweat. The temperature had to be well over one hundred degrees.