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| to the police chief about a chap who is a suspect in the murder here of a woman who was
stabbed to death and left with a plastic bag over her head. She had served as a bookkeeper for a video poker company. I’ll call the chief back in the morning. Rule 87: “Whenever you call a police chief, whether you know him or not, call him or her, ‘Chief.’ It makes you sound more official. Cops love it when you refer to them as their title, except patrolmen. They get annoyed because they are underlings. But when I call the chief in the morning, he’ll probably be cooperative. It’s a small town up there. Saying “Chief” is a little like the familiarity you give a coach from the huddle. Our coach in high school, however, I would call “Freak” or “freakazoid” or “psycho.” Whoever stabbed Grace Swinson was a combination of these three nouns. Anyone who places a plastic bag over a victim’s head is trying to send a message. The psychological clue is unavoidably succinct. It’s like a “Welcome” mat. Today, Feb. 16, 1998: my front page weekly feature, “Friends In Focus,” which I usually introduce to the victim as something on the front page with a picture, included a word which was not in my original story. The word was “reminisced.” It was spelled wrong. Editors are like fallen angels. There were a lot of other grammatical errors which had been spliced in for good measure, but that’s okay. I’m sleeping better now. I’ve been working too hard at night, writing. Freelancing. Unsuspecting victims of the Friends in Focus usually don’t like the picture part. It’s vanity gone awry. Fake vanity clouds the most empty of minds. Primping a victim is mandatory treatment. “It’s a light-hearted feature about home-town folks. It has a picture.” Women usually groan and decline at this point. Guys smile, lean back in their chairs and say, “Well,” with fingers locked behind their skulls. My head is in a plastic bag at this point. “You’ll be the best Friend in Focus I’ll ever be able to come close to getting.” This line is a last resort. I got in trouble the day my wife went in the hospital for the miscarriage that Halloween. My wife on the hospital bed, I had left work early on layout day after being summoned. My beeper and a callback informed me that my last “On Your Mind,” a weekly man- and woman-on-the-street interview, which I usually introduce as “The Question of the Week,” because people simply don’t know who we are or what the purpose is, has gone south, and a woman is DEMANDING that she be given a check or cash or money order for $300. It had happened at the schoolhouse. A thousand times this come-on had been my successful hook for reeling in an unrelentingly stubborn victim. “Come on. I’ll give you $50.” I had been having a bad day that day. About 11 people had turned me down. Sometimes at the post office I have a good day if there is a good question, something the populus knows plenty about, but on a bad day you’ll go for three hours without having to turn the flash on. “Please ma’am,” I had pleaded. “I’ll give you....$300.” “Sure,” she said. Now she was on the telephone with my boss, demanding that she be paid dinero, and here I was, battling in the most serious moment of my life. Today...today it was the aftermath of layout deadline and printing day. “Don’t tell me you deliver the paper too?” asked the daily’s reporter in front of a slew of allegedly important public figures. Replying to such as asinine, inherently stupid question is beyond my comprehension. It was so embarrassing. Some day. Some day. Today, I was in the middle of delivering the papers, and I ran into a man smoking a butt. Puffing away. It was Lynwood Womack, the chief of the fire department. I was depressed about ending his glorious smoke break. But in five minutes, my new tape recorder had culled a great blip on a high-tech camera which they want for $25,000 to x-ray a building to find bodies and fire origins. From convenience stores, to hotels, to anyplace I pulled into, I’d stop the car. Turn off the engine. Walk to the trunk. Pull out of a stack, bundled by a Carolina blue plastic band, and pull the overlapped plastic band to unleash the involuntary explosion of the bundle. I leave the bundles in churches, graveyards and wherever humans occupy space. At closing time I went by The Palace to see if I could scarf an interview with Chicago. Jim Pankow. Boy would I like to meet him. I’d call my high school and Boy Scout pal Bill Fulton on my new cell phone and put him on with him, and he’d freak out. Our Troop’s number was 420. Today my cousin was in ICU in Newton, N.C. and I couldn’t make it. Only a phone call. His diabetes was acting up. I felt like I was trapped. I want to be with him. Oh well, maybe I’ll get some typing done tonight. But there’s a phone call. “Where’s Trigg now?” “I think he’s still in Florida. Millie’s married now and working at the Greensboro paper still. Paul got married.” “I never thought he’d get married.” “And Morrison’s still at the Asheville paper. What’s your paper like?” “You know, I applied at the Chapel Hill paper, and I never thought it would get this bad, but the guy, the managing editor no, he had the nerve to tell this to me to my face. He said if you’re black and female, you’ve got a job. This was all off the record. He said he’d deny it if he had to. But he had had a rough day, and I think he had burned his green plastic bookkeeper visor that day. Some kind of diversity, huh? He looked like he had withered on the vine like a grape in the July humidity. I probably wouldn’t get a promotion anyway there.” “I’d give you a promotion if you’d give me a blowjob....” “Very funny. Hardee-har-har. How many good stories did you butcher this week?” “Man, our editorial content sucks. The editorial board sits around in these four-hour meetings, smoking cigarettes like there’s no tomorrow. The secretary throws a fit because she thinks she’s going to get cancer.” “I’m lighting one up now.” “I’m going to call out Larry Hagman on your ass. This is a boy’s club around here. The women don’t count, and when their opinion is considered, it’s weight is something less heavy than a feather. They have the mercury blues here. What are you making, $20,000 a year?” “Hell no, man. Try about $17,000.” “Do you get mileage?” “What? The hell you say. We get two cents a mile. Have you ever tried to charge an oil change on your mileage? That piece of paper gets as far as a peter up Billy Graham’s asshole.” “You rock the boat too much. Stay calm, cool. Don’t raise so much hell. Just do what they say to do. Maybe they’ll lay you off, and you can collect unemployment.” “My father would kill me if he knew I was on welfare.” “That’s not frigging welfare, dumb ass. It’s there for the taking. They pay for it.” “I’m a troublemaker by nature. I hate authority. It hates me. I can’t put up with somebody telling me what to do, when I can crap, when not to do this and that and how many frigging words a story should have, what size a photo should be, how I should hold the camera without damaging it, frigging with my quotes.....” “Quotes are sacred man, they’re not frigging with your quotes are they?” “They change them just to make a redneck hillbilly sound smart. The mayor. The fire chief. Anybody. Just turn it around, and it will make sense.” “Is Jennifer still at the Newton paper?” “I think so. Do you remember Helen? Those guys at the apartments claimed they were in the apartment above her and saw her that day.” “Oh yeah. That blew my mind. She was naked as a jaybird, right?” “Sure enough. Laid out on the carpet in the sunlight.” “The shades weren’t even drawn.” “No, I think she wanted them to see it. Damn!” “What a sight for sore eyes! They were partying that day. I think they turned the music down real low. They were playing Van Halen. The song where David Lee Roth is talking about pulling that chick’s pantyhose down.” “Well, she was masturbating right there on the floor, and they were hooting it up as she was moving around like a crab, giving them a show. I don’t think it was on purpose. First she was wearing her bra and panties. Then, after strutting around a while in the sunlight near the cement porch, she drew the shades a little and turned around, pulling her panties down some and then on down to her ankles, kicking them off with her big toe.” “That was wild.” “Then she unsnapped her bra, with her back to the window, looking back as if to check to see anyone was looking, pushing her hair over her shoulders, and then she turned around and rubbed some baby oil on her chest and titties. Those guys couldn’t believe it when she started rubbing herself standing up there, facing the window. Her knees were buckling as she hunkered down standing there, pumping her hips into the air and her finger.” “Damn. She was rubbing her titties too, huh?” “That’s what they said. No holding back. She was brazen. Then she got a blanket out and a pillow, and proceeded to get her rocks off laying on her back, legs spread wide open and using a stick.” “A vibrator?” “Yeah. When she started shrieking, that’s when the boys started losing it. That half- gallon of Jim Beam got gone real fast. They had pulled the blinds, you see, and she couldn’t see up at them. And when she came, you heard about that didn’t you?” “No. Hold on. I’ve got a call...I’m back. I’ve got Call Waiting.” “I can’t afford that crap. I’ve never been fired, but I know it would bother me a lot. Especially if I knew I did the right thing, which you did. I had an editor in Texas want to change my story because he was big buddies with the chancellor of this small college I was writing about. The chancellor made more money than the chancellor of the University of ‘You-Know-Who’ and more bucks than the governor or even president of the U.S. And he lived in a big-ass house built by the college. Big time slush funds, kick backs and other Texas dirt going on there. I told my boss if he changed the story, he could just take my name off of it. So he didn’t change it, technically. He just cut a paragraph or two out. I was livid. Got another job shortly thereafter. It sucked. Although I wasn’t sorry to leave that newspaper.” “Do you always have to call at midnight? That sucks.” “If you’re Caucasian with talent, and you know how to eat orders like a bulimic, you’re just right for this job. You can’t rock the boat, and you’ve got to be looking for a chance to sell out. This is the ultimate journalism job, Bullard. They fire people here just to cut costs, and the new people are replacements for any troublemakers. You wouldn’t last two minutes here.” “Why’s that?” “It’s the politics in the office. It’s a joke. People are out for numero-uno, and no one else. Trite comments get you probation. We work in a cramped cubicle. They made me take down my Mike Tyson poster. You wouldn’t believe it.” “Was he showing cleavage or something?” “Naw. I want to move to Alaska where the wine and the women are free. Good pay. The pay here sucks. It’s my fault for coming 400 miles for an interview.” “You’re lucky - the sucker who hired me opened his desk drawer while he was interviewed me, and I saw a bottle of liquor.” “That ain’t nothing. They massacred a story of mine just because I mentioned a school board member’s son. He’s on the football team, for Christ’s sake.” “It’s not your fault for applying.” “I’m just not accustomed to being questioned on every little detail of a story. They messing with my quotes.” “Those are sacred. You let them?” “I’m almost 40 years old. I’m used to it. Our morale here is like that of the last regiment coming out of Nam. It’s cynical as crap. People read my stories. I go into a file, and you can’t see who’s read it, but you can see the time and date it was read.” “You’re not in trouble until they start messinging with the story, man.” “They do! One time there was a fake quote inserted.” “I’d bust somebody’s ass over that.” “Everybody in the office is okay to your face, good-natured, relaxed, but in the break room all decorum breaks down. Everyone mostly harbors resentment and keeps it to themselves. I don’t.” “What do you do?” “I drink. I smoke pot. I go out and get a piece of strange pussy.” “You wear a rubber don’t you?” “Hell no. And when I do, I bite a hole in it so it will open up.” “EWWWWW!” “I’m gonna....” “...die of AIDS! You got the AIDS!” “No, I’m not. They look okay. Clean.” “Look WHAT? You know about that crap. It can hit anybody. I had a friend.....” “Was he your boyfriend?” “No, he helped counsel me in 1976. Wait until somebody dies you know.” “This newspaper is conservative. We haven’t had an editorial on AIDS yet.” “How long have you been there?” “Three years. Gestation period.” “That’s a record, man. Congratulations. You’re going to be in Editor & Publisher.” “Did you see my ad? ‘Alcoholic sports and news writer, can drink a case in a day, smoke three packs a day, never puke in the office. No libel suits. Pretty boy.” “Weren’t you just downsized?” “Yeah. Tensions are running high. I’m checking the classifieds.” “Look right after receptionist in the general employment column. They don’t put reporter jobs in professional listings here. Where’s David Harrison now?” “No idea. You’re asking the wrong person.” “They don’t even run corrections here. I messed up in a story and begged the editor to put in a correction. No way. I was just puffing a stogie.” “But you don’t have any competition. We’ve got the daily here.” “Tough crap. Why don’t you put paper clips in the coin holes? That’s what I did. It works.” “That’s juvenile. Besides, you can get locked up. It’s not that bad.” “It is here. They say my stories are too long. Too many words. Not enough words the next day. Quote the locals. Make them sound good.” “It’s a sweatshop here. You have to punch a frigging clock. Breaks too. Sucks. I go to the movies sometimes in the afternoons. Saw ‘Forrest Gump’ last Friday.” “Don’t they suspect anything?” “Naw. They don’t give a crap. My mileage last month was 2,000 miles.” “Durn. Do they pay for oil changes? Nobody does. My transmission is shot. The durned engine runs hot when it gets above 105. My A.C. is out. I pour water over me to stay cool. It’s too hot to drink.” “It’s never too hot to drink. You need to see a shrink again.” “How many stories do you do a day?” “Seven.” “What? crap. That’s a world’s record. You remember the day I shot out 13. And they were still pushing me. I’m going to mess up bad, make a mistake that will reshape libel laws for the next millennium. We had a copy editor who loved his Nazi uniform.” “At the school board meeting the other night I cut one. Stinky. The assistant superintendent starting sniffing and looking around. I acted like I was writing notes in the old Steno.” “Was it an SBD?” “Hell no! By the time the meeting was over, everyone was talking amongst themselves. It just about rotted me out.” “They encourage hatred here. Competitiveness is just a bylaw. One guy here got fired just because nobody was friendly to him. It’s a terrible place to work.” “You still know how to flip burgers?” “Our publisher has a high school education.” “Well, so do you. So do I.” “Well, the reporters are told to lay off the sacred cows, you know, the banks. We’ve got one old hack who writes about social events and the history of the county. What a stupid idiot.” “But people eat that crap up.” “What you need is a major shakedown. Firings en masse. Ask for a raise; that will start the domino effect. The money here stays at the top.” “What’s your circulation?” “Oh, hell! The publisher tells us to say 22,000, but it’s really 15,000. I hate to lie to people.” “Thou shalt not....” “That’s right. Affirmative my dear Spock. It’s easy to live around here. There’s nothing but cotton mills and laid-off losers dangling from the ABC store with a pack of Marlboro in one pocket and a pocketknife with crusty mayo in the other. We might get a 401-K program soon. I’m going to quit before that.” “God, if I had been saving since I started, I’d be a J. Paul Getty by now.” “I wish I had all the clips I had sent. Sometimes I send my last Xerox, if I’m broke.” “Do you still have that story on the drug addict?” “That was a good one.” “I have a lot of crime to cover. There was a gross decapitation the other day. The sheriff called. A man on crack had gone loony and had lured these two brothers and a woman to a shack. They were found buried under the building. It was near a field.” “What?” “Ham hocks rotting, lying around the durned thing. It was awful. The worst smelling thing you’ve ever seen. The coroner told me to burn my shoes.” “Burn your shoes? I thought you just bought some Rockports?” “Christmas present. Seventy frigging dollars. I went home and burned them. The sheriff had called me on my day off about the murders. I was drunk when I got there. It was raining. The cops were warming themselves by a fire near the shack.” “Did they smell you?” “Naw. I was smoking pot too. Real messed up. I didn’t give a durn. I called it in. They sent a reporter over.” “Big paper, small town. Nobody ever calls me back. I play phone tag all day long.” “That’s it, bro.” “The unemployment rate is 10 percent. Crack is eating up the black people here. You can go down one street and buy it from your car, I hear. I’ve never done crack. It came along way after....” “I saw some once. It was yellow. Looked like a snotcake. Rough. Why do people buy that crap?” “Want me to call you back?” “You can.” Click-up. Ring. Ten rings. “That was quick. You whacking off?” “I gotta piss. Hold on....” “What? Wait!” Two minutes pass. A flush. Footsteps. A cat screams. Cursing. A door slams. Footsteps on a wooden floor. More cussing. Impatience rules. Refrigerator door opens. Beer fart. Belch. “What in the hell took you so long? Did you masturbate or something?” “Naw. My roommate left a mess.” “At least you haven’t work for a Freedom paper or Thomson.” “Have you ever heard of the Wall of Shame in Gastonia?” “They just fired our business writer.” “What for?” “Work performance. Our evaluations are a joke. If they want you out, they just write you up.” “Why did he really get fired?” “He wrote a story on how crapty the economy is. He spoke his mind too. He had backbone. I’ll miss him. I think he was a homosexual.” “How come?” “I don’t know. That’s what everyone said. He didn’t date anyone.” “That doesn’t mean anything. You don’t either!” “I get more pussy that you’ll ever walk over.” “What an idealist you are!” “You aren’t the only person working in a hellhole. We have liars, perverts, bullies, thugs, you name it!” “Sluts!” “Yeah! Plenty mucho, dude. They got for the management and upper editorial managers. They hired embryonic nuances who lack a shred of any life experience and mentor them, playing them like violins into shallow journalism.” “Manipulation?” “Heavy-duty. I could keep going on until I’m blue in the face. Are you drinking?” “Of course.” “My boss is vindictive as hell. He sent one of our reporters 45 miles down the interstate the other day just to fetch a paper from the competition. I would have told him to go get it himself. I kid the guy now about, ‘Hey, how about going to Bloomerville to get me a Coke and a pack of Nabs?’ He gets mad as a hornet.” “I would too. Our photo editor has an attitude. He brings his kids in the office, and they plunder into everything, and he lets them go hog-wild. When you check out a camera, he makes you sign out the time, and he jumps on you in front of others when you mess up. He even criticized the way I hold a camera once.” “Our turnover is bad. Incredibly high.” “Our’s too. Autocratic, dumb-ass editor. They’re vindictive. If you complain about something in front of a superior, they’ll hold it against you until you’re history.” “Heard that pard.” “I wish we had a union.” “Those are fightin’ words.” “We just lost a copy editor to the Asheville Citizen.” “That’s a good paper.” Burp. “Better than some. Our editors squash the big stories and sit on them. One of them, I can’t even tell you about. I’d get in trouble.” “Sober up. I watched ‘Psycho’ the other night for the 300th time.” “One girl got fired for no reason. It can happen at any moment with no notice. They reward the plebes here for their incompetent ramblings in a little column they give us. The managing editor bites his nails. He’s overweight. One city editor got fired for making a pass at a chick he was interviewing.” “Interviewing? Damn! That’s bold as hell. What did she do?” “She reported him. They let his ass go quicker than a skeeter craps.” “Ever ask for an advance?” “Hell yes.” “Get it?” “Hell no. I’ve tried it several times. Used every excuse. Electricity bill. Debts. Wagers. I’m a professional at it. Used every excuse in the book.” “Our city editor is a real boob. He has chased off a lot of the best reporters in journalism, and he landed a job last week. They cut our metro bureau because some accountants have concubines. I’m not just complaining. Don’t listen to me.” “Come on.” Sounds of sucking smoke. Coughing. “Anybody ever get a send-off party there?” “ crap no. One guy did. He went to the Chamber of Commerce.” “Cocksucker. I’ll bet he was an asshole.” “Naw. Everybody liked him. The management hated it when he got a party. They tried like hell to stop it, but it was harder than stopping an avalanche. He had been nice to everyone in the newsroom. I think they had a party hoping I’d quit. My bull crap meter is stuck on high.” “I’ve never gotten a going-away party. They’re always dreadfully pitiful. Scourge.” Big sip of bourbon. “It’s not weird for a story to go through two edits here before getting published.” “That many?” “We have more here if there’s somebody here. Sometimes nobody reads my stuff.” “That’s dangerous as hell.” “Our reporters have no grammar skills. We get letters to the editor out the ying-of-the- yang.” “Have you got a vacation coming up? Maybe you could visit?” “Hell no. They say you get them here. You don’t. They make you split them up into half-weekend trips home. One guy started crying in the newsroom one day because he couldn’t go to his father’s funeral.” “What a loser! Did he commit suicide? Now THAT would be a story!” “No, but he beat his girlfriend up a lot. She was a photographer.” Download 2.99 Mb. Share with your friends:
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