by Randy Alcorn
But what really paved the way for Clarence’s breakthrough to general columnist, he believed, was the nation’s slap in the face of the mainstream press in the fall of 1994. The vast majority of newspapers endorsed liberal candidates, but in all but a few cases the voters went against the papers. The American people didn’t trust the press, didn’t follow the press. And they didn’t just send a message to Washington, D.C. They sent a message to the entire newspaper industry. Including the Trib. That’s when Raylon Berkley and Jess Foley first talked to Clarence about the possibility of doing a general column. He now basked in the thrill he’d felt, this moment from the past a drug to kill the pain of the present.
Clarence opened mail and sorted through mounds of papers. It was good to be back at work, where a man could forget his problems, or at least paper them over with other ones.
“Clarence?”
“Yeah?” He looked over his right shoulder to see Tim Newcomb. Twelve years younger than Clarence, red headed and energetic, Newcomb had already proven himself in his first three years out of J-school. He was a solid reporter.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Newcomb said. “And your niece.”
“Thanks. My niece is going to be fine, though.”
“Really? So she’s out of danger now? That’s great.”
“Well, not out of danger. But she’s going to make it.”
“I’m really glad. It’s hard to get facts in a newsroom, you know. Somebody told me she was still in critical condition.”
Clarence didn’t want to discuss it.
“Anyway,” Newcomb said, “do you want an update on stories we’ve been covering while you were gone?”
“Sure, Tim. Pull up a chair.”
Actually, since Clarence was a columnist, he didn’t really need the update to do his job. But he welcomed it. He’d read the sports page every day the last week, but the real story was in the newsroom, where reporters and editors and columnists bantered about what should go in and what shouldn’t. Often the most interesting angles on the story never got reported, either for lack of attribution or in the interests of taste. Yes, taste was still an issue in journalism, even if the old standards of taste had gone out of style with bobby socks and saddle shoes.
Clarence looked around his workspace, comfortable as an old pair of bedroom slippers. Above his computer terminal were two rows of shelving, filled with about forty books, most of them on serious topics. He liked to think. He loved a good argument. He was serious about issues. Too serious, Geneva told him.
Posted on the cubicle walls to his right were a variety of typed or neatly written quotes and political cartoons, many of them lampooning the press itself. One clip was a 1995 snippet from the Washington Post. It read, “Correction: Yesterday’s Post incorrectly identified a D.C. monument. The building pictured was actually the Lincoln Memorial.”
Next to this was a group of actual headlines clipped from various major newspapers: “Asbestos Suit Pressed” and “Tuna Biting Off Washington Coast” were the Trib’s own. “Defendant’s Speech Ends in Long Sentence” and “Man Held over Giant LA Brush Fire” came from the L.A. Times. A half-dozen comparable clips from other papers accompanied them.
Taped on the top of his computer was a quote from President John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Tacked up on the corkboard to the side was one of his favorite letters, which he made a point of showing everyone. “Please get off your soapbox on abortion and come to terms with some of the real problems out there. For instance, our continued serial killings of animals, our brothers and sisters. The cannibalism must stop. George Bernard Shaw asked, ‘How can we expect peaceful conditions on earth, as long as our bodies are the living graves of murdered animals?’”
He loved getting letters like this. They made great fodder for columns. Besides, this one made him feel more literate. Whenever he ate a hamburger, he thought of George Bernard Shaw.
On the left side was a collection of some of his favorite leads, such as “NBC and the Titanic are the same, except the Titanic had an orchestra.” He looked absent-mindedly at one he’d once been impressed with—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Attention getting. Astounding. Right to the point. But for the first time he could remember, Clarence found himself wondering whether or not it was true.
Clarence punched numbers again, his tenth phone call in the last hour and a half.
“Bowles and Sirianni. How may I help you?”
“Grant Bowles, please. This is Clarence Abernathy.” He waited, flipping through more file cards.
“Morning, Clarence.”
“Grant—so what’s the deal with Dani’s house?”
“It’s borderline as to whether her assets are sufficient to require probate. But since she didn’t have a will, we can probably count on it going to probate.”
“How long is this going to take? And how much is it going to cost?”
“Who knows? Months at the very least. You know my hourly fee. Depends on how many complications we hit.”
“I can’t believe she didn’t have a will.”
“When you had me meet with her a few years ago, to clean up things with her ex-husband and all, I gave her the papers. According to the file here, my secretary followed up with a call, but Dani never returned the papers. At the time I asked her what would happen to her kids if she died, and she said you’d take them.”
“She said what?”
“I’m looking at my notes right here. She said she wanted you to raise them. Said they needed a man and she was sure you’d do it.”
You might have mentioned that to me, Sis.
He felt guilty even thinking it. He’d promised to always be there for her. Of course he’d take the kids.
“We need to get that house up for sale, Grant. I want to get the money into that trust for Dani’s kids.”
“You can’t sell the house until it goes through probate, Clarence. That’s how it works. Sorry.”
“So what do we do with it? We leave it sitting there and it’ll be torn to shreds. You don’t know that neighborhood.”
“I’d recommend somebody live there until this is settled. Maybe it can be rented out.”
“Yeah, and turned into a drug house or something.”
“You’ll have to think of something.”
Clarence hung up, hating the legal system. It was like politics—supposed to help people, and all it did was make life harder for them.
The phone rang. “Hello, Mr. Abernathy. This is Sheila, Councilman Norcoast’s secretary. The councilman wonders if you’re available to speak with him.”
“I haven’t got much time. But I guess I could squeeze him in.” Clarence smiled. It felt good.
“Clarence?” Norcoast spoke with a television anchor voice.
“Yeah?” Clarence tried to sound as unimpressed as he could.
“This is Reg. I know I said it at her funeral, but let me express to you again my deepest sympathy. Danita was a wonderful person. I’m so sorry about your loss.”
Nobody called her Danita. Nobody would, unless pretending to know her when he didn’t.
“Yeah, me too. Thanks for the flowers.”
Paid for with our tax dollars, no doubt.
“You’re very welcome. It’s the least I could do.”
“What’s on your mind, Mr. Norcoast?”
“Call me Reg, please, Clarence. Well, I have an idea of something we can do for your sister and the community.”
Aren’t you a little late for that?
“We’ve decided to kick off our ‘Fight Crime’ campaign a few weeks early. We’re thinking the best way to capture the public’s imagination is to have victims of violence appear at the rally and press conference. So people can see that those getting hurt are real people.”
Of course they’re real people. What other kind of people would they be?
&n
bsp; “My assistants are contacting the other families, but I wanted to talk to you personally so you’d know my commitment.”
Yeah. So I can say nice things about you in my column or so people will think I support you. Forget it. Never happen.
“A lot of people know your name, Clarence. You’re highly respected. A role model to the community. You being on the platform, that would be a real boost to what we’re trying to do.”
“I don’t think so,” Clarence said. “I’m not comfortable doing that. Besides, I don’t think it’s good practice for a journalist to make appearances at political events.”
“Oh, no, you don’t understand, Clarence. This isn’t political. It’s part of a concerted effort to reclaim our neighborhoods, to stop the violence, get kids back into school, say no to drugs and yes to opportunity.”
An endless fount of political platitudes. You forgot a chicken in every pot.
“No thanks.”
“But Reverend Clancy, your sister’s pastor, he said he thought you would be perfect.”
“Clancy said that?”
“Yes, he did. He’s going to be up there, kick off the program. So are family members of at least a dozen different people who’ve been killed. This is for our children. Can we count on you to help?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Well, please call me back by tomorrow. The rally is this Saturday, one o’clock at Woodlawn Park. Maybe you can say something?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“All right, no problem. But I do hope you’ll be there up on the platform. I know it’s something that would have made your sister happy. And it would be a big encouragement to our whole community.”
To whose community? What are you, an honorary black person?
“I’ll think about it.”
“All right, thanks, Clarence. I’ll look forward to hearing you say yes. And again, my deepest sympathies about Danita.”
Clarence put down the phone and shook his head, his profound distrust for politicians reinforced again. Democrat, Republican, Independent, it didn’t matter. He just couldn’t believe these guys were doing anything more than trying to keep themselves in power, cutting deals and taking payoffs. They were notorious for sidling up close to journalists, getting chummy. Reporters joked about this, but Clarence had seen them succumb to political charm, usually without knowing it. He’d determined not to spend time informally with any politicians unless he thought he could get more from them than they could get from him. Politics. Patterson, the Trib reporter assigned to the state capital in Salem, had told him, “There’s two things you don’t want to see made. Sausage and laws.”
Clarence was all for laws. It was lawmakers he didn’t trust. He worked to get a jump on his next column, forcing himself not to think about what kept trying to hijack his mind.
Tomorrow’s face-off with Detective Ollie Chandler.
At six o’clock in the morning, Clarence sipped a strong cup of coffee to prepare for the ritual of shave and shower. He stood gazing into his saltwater aquarium, watching the glass steam up from the heat of the cup. The brilliant yellow tangs glided across in formation, while the red-and-white lionfish with its swirling, feather-like spines ominously patrolled what he clearly regarded as his dominion. Hard to believe anything so beautiful could be so deadly.
Clarence loved the order and beauty of the underwater world. It was a world where he controlled the temperature, the water purity, the vegetation, the food, the props. Even the inhabitants. A world he could govern. A world where he called the shots.
His prize possession Eli, the black-speckled moray eel, lurked in the darkness, waiting to scare one of the kids’ friends who came by and tapped on the glass despite being told not to. Clarence chuckled to himself, realizing Eli was more terrified than the children to whom he’d become a legendary threat.
Clarence studied the glowing blue-and-orange Potter’s angelfish and the green-and-blue long nose bird wrasse. He watched as the orange-and-white two band anemone fish darted in and out of his makeshift home. He wondered sometimes how they could stand living in a world so small and artificial. He imagined they must long to live in the adventurous world for which they’d been made, rather than this confined one. Reaching to sprinkle food into the water, he felt certain they must yearn to see beyond the distorted glass, to make sense of the shadowy image they now saw from a distance, the caretaker who provided their food and maintained their environment.
He untucked his shirt and wiped a fingerprint off the glass. There. The world he governed looked perfect now.
You poor dumb creatures don’t even know what you’re missing, do you? You can’t imagine the great oceans beyond. You can’t even see past your little artificial world.
After his shower, Clarence performed the daily ritual of putting in his contact lenses. People wear contacts for different reasons, but Clarence Abernathy wore them because glasses emphasized a flaw. It was never good strategy to give visibility to a weakness. Which was why most people who knew him weren’t aware he was an insulin-dependent diabetic. He took the blood test now: 132. Not bad. Barely above normal. He took two insulin bottles from the refrigerator and stuck a slender syringe into the bottle marked Humulin U, then withdrew twelve units. Next he extracted fifteen units of Humulin R. With his left hand he untucked his T-shirt and injected the insulin, then went to pour his breakfast cereal.
His only other physical liability was, as the doctor put it, anomalous trichromatism. A type of color blindness. He could see the whole range of colors visible to people with normal vision, but he matched colors differently than they. He especially had trouble with greens, often mixing up yellow and green. It was a source of irritation in little ways. Like bringing home Golden Delicious apples instead of Granny Smiths.
He would keep the chinks in his armor invisible. That was critical when you advanced into enemy territory, which Clarence felt he did nearly every day. Especially today, when after finishing his column he would march to police headquarters and demand some answers from Ollie Chandler.
Clarence was eager to get to the office. Still, he determined to read the Bible now, just in case God was keeping score and it would stack up on the side of healing Felicia.
“Name and claim the blessings of God,” he remembered the preacher say in his former church. “Jesus wants you well,” he’d said. “The only reason you don’t have money and health is you don’t ask for it. God takes care of his own.”
The preacher hadn’t quoted many passages, but Clarence looked up those he could remember.
“Well, God, I’m naming Felicia. And I’m claiming her. I’m claiming your healing for her. I don’t know why you let Dani die. But I’m trusting you not to let Felicia die. I’m trusting you to keep your promises.”
Four miles from his house, Clarence pulled up to a stoplight at the corner of Burnside and Powell. His window rolled down and arm leaning out, he glanced at the snow-white Toyota Camry LE on his left, meeting the eyes of the young female driver. He heard a familiar sound—the decisive thud of power locks.
As he pulled across the intersection, he stole a look in his rearview mirror. What was it that terrified people? His skin was rough, weathered as if he’d endured more life and carried more burdens than a man of forty-two should have. But he didn’t look like a killer or a mugger or a rapist. Did he?
He studied the backside of his dark brown hands on the steering wheel, his creamy-white fingernails making a striking contrast. He turned up one of his palms, surprisingly light. It was as if an artist painting his skin had used up all the dark brown paint and only had enough left to spread it thinly on his palms, with none left at all for his nails. If his whole body was the color of his nails, or even the color of his palms, how might his life have been different? Better? Worse? He would never know.
Clarence walked into the Trib at eight o’clock, exchanging smiles with Joe the security guard and Elaine the receptionist. Things weren’t as bad now.
People were asking about Felicia, but that was okay. He hoped his optimism was infectious enough to influence God.
He went to his desk, sat down, and inserted his tan foam earplugs, preparing to write his column. But he had four hours before his noon deadline. Too much time. The incentive wasn’t strong yet, the mood not quite right. As usual before starting the column, he revisited his inner world, walking through its vast interconnected corridors, picking up things along the way that would work themselves into the column.
In his first few years as a journalist, he’d carried his blackness like a heavy backpack. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but he could never leave it behind. Just the moment he started to forget it, he saw someone staring at him, studying him as if he were a zoo specimen. Whenever he looked at them, their eyes immediately turned the other way. He felt as if some of the whites were overseers, standing and watching him, looking for him to slack off, to pause too long between pulls on the hoe. It was a few years before this feeling subsided.
When he’d worked at the Oregon Journal back in the late seventies and early eighties, they’d been curious about him, as his white friends at OSU had been. In a predominantly white college he had still hung with blacks almost exclusively, just as whites hung with whites. The white ball players talked about things utterly foreign to him—camping, hunting, surfing, skiing, even hang gliding. Only the occasional reference to fishing and tennis struck a resonant chord.
