The Last Reporter

by Michael Winerip

  “After all those Cheez Doodles?” said Jennifer.

  Adam nodded and took a couple more sucks. It was working. He felt calmer. He popped the jawbreaker out of his mouth and said, “The sweetness in the jawbreaker balances the salt in the Cheez Doodles. I can wash it off if you —”

  “It’s OK,” she said. “I see your point. Look, Adam, I need to talk to you about Don. It’s not —”

  “No, no,” said Adam. “No, it’s not my business. You’re right. It’s none of my business. You don’t owe me —”

  “But I’d like —”

  “No,” said Adam. “We’re fine. I thought this out. Honest. We have a great relationship, you and me, as coeditors, and this other stuff shouldn’t affect it. We’re going to put out a great newspaper and even the most powerful people in Tremble can’t stop us. We’re going to say stuff the Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser and Bolandvision 12 would never say. We’re a great editing team, the two of us.” He was trying to remember — what was that advice he was supposed to be following? Oh, yes. “And I’m just happy to enjoy it for what it is,” he said.

  Jennifer was staring at him. She was smiling, and she looked — he wasn’t sure how to describe it exactly — kind of twinkly. “Adam Canfield,” she said softly, “you’re a funny boy.”

  Adam was mixed up. Her words sounded like one thing, but the way she looked, all that twinkly business, kind of felt like something deeper.

  She was staring at him really hard, but everything else about her was blurry. He felt like he was supposed to do something. Was he supposed to do something?

  Finally, she looked away. “OK,” she said, “So I think the first thing we need to do is go see Mrs. Ameche, tomorrow morning. Saturday, she’ll be at the Busy Bee. Can you go?”

  Adam’s Little League game wasn’t until two; he could.

  “Good,” said Jennifer. “We need to talk to her about getting the rest of the money for the Slash. She’s got so much common sense about this stuff. And then Monday, we need to call an emergency meeting in 306. Everybody has to be there. We’ll tell them no excuses, it’s life or death. Sound good?”

  Adam nodded; it did sound good, although not as good as when she’d called him a funny boy.

  The Busy Bee Flea Market was too far to bike to, so Jennifer’s mom dropped them off. Adam was surprised by what a great place it was; the Ameches never ceased to amaze him. The Busy Bee was an indoor flea market, a strange cross between a garage sale in your driveway and a very unfancy — some might say somewhat junky — indoor mall. Instead of boutique shops, there were rows of eight-by-ten foot stalls on two floors.

  Adam was in paradise; he kept wanting to stop at each booth. It was like walking around the Ameches’ backyard, except a little better organized. At one booth were a father and son selling all kinds of baseball cards and memorabilia, including a Pete Rose rookie card that the boy told Adam was worth “a cool thousand.” It occurred to Adam — if he just grabbed that card and ran, they could sell that one card for a cool thousand and pay for the June issue of the Slash. He was about to ask the price of a 1960 gold-embossed Vintage World Series Topps card of Pittsburgh Pirates immortal second baseman Bill Mazeroski when Jennifer dragged him away, leading him up the escalator to the second floor, where the Ameches had a stall in the back.

  On one side of the Ameches was a booth with racks of sportswear, including big football jerseys and brightly colored sports shorts. On the other side was a woman selling nothing but ceramic cats.

  Adam knew he probably should feel at least a little bit worked up about seeing Don Ameche, because of the Jennifer stuff, but the truth was, he just wasn’t anymore. He was too happy to see the Ameche brothers. There was something about them — they always looked so relaxed and jolly. No matter what they were doing, it seemed to be the exact thing they should be doing. The two were sitting in folding beach chairs in front of the booth, cleaning up golf balls. Don was scrubbing the balls with a wire brush, then flipping them to Alan, who shined them up with a shammy before dumping them in a big bucket that said, GOLF BALLS! LIKE NEW! 3 FOR $2! CHEAP! Behind them, on shelves against the back wall, were a couple of model airplanes with engines they’d repaired, a set of rebuilt electric hedge-clippers, a desktop computer, and two shelves filled with jars of Mrs. Ameche’s famous tomato products. Taking up most of the rest of the back of the booth was the power mower. All four wheels were back on, as was a tag that said, LIKE NEW, $324.99 CHEAP!

  Last but hardly least was Mrs. Ameche, who was sitting behind an easel, painting. Beside her was a smaller easel that displayed her sign: DONATELLA AMECHE / PORTRAITS - WHILE - YOU - SHOP / SATISFACTION GUARANTEED. The sign said that portraits done in pastels started at thirty-five dollars, in oils, one hundred dollars. The sign was decorated with a painting of the Ameche brothers, and it really looked like them, even if they were wearing collared shirts.

  When the Ameche brothers saw Adam and Jennifer, they gave a whoop. Alan fished two golf balls out of the clean bucket and shoved them in his mouth.

  “Gwawaoooiyum,” he said.

  Adam looked puzzled. “What did he say?”

  “Gwawaoooiyum,” repeated Don.

  “I think he said ‘guavas and yams,’” said Jennifer.

  “He wants you to guess who he is,” said Don.

  Alan nodded. “Gwawaoooiyum.”

  “You’re a squirrel,” guessed Adam.

  Don rolled his eyes.

  “He’s you,” said Jennifer.

  “With your jawbreaker,” said Don.

  “Now I see it,” said Adam. He pulled out his jawbreaker from the plastic bag and popped it in his mouth. “Gwawaoooiyum,” said Adam.

  “Alan with two golf balls?” guessed Don.

  “A guava and yam?” guessed Jennifer.

  Adam shook his head and popped it out. “I’m me,” he said. “Anybody want a suck?”

  Mrs. Ameche was so busy painting, it seemed like she hadn’t noticed them.

  “When Mom’s painting,” said Don.

  “She’s in a trance,” said Alan.

  “She knows you’re here,” said Don.

  “She hears everything you say,” said Alan.

  “It’s just, she puts you in the back of her brain,” said Don.

  “Until she’s ready for a paint break,” said Alan. “Or she catches you doing something nasty . . .”

  “OK if we look over her shoulder?” asked Jennifer.

  The Ameche brothers said that’s what everybody at the Busy Bee did.

  Adam and Jennifer went over behind Mrs. Ameche. She was painting a portrait of a red speedboat. There was a photo of the boat on the easel. In the photo, the day looked gloomy, the boat was sitting in seaweedy water at a marina dock that was splattered with bird doo, and had a bunch of other boats moored nearby.

  In Mrs. Ameche’s portrait, the exact same boat was tied to an old-fashioned wooden dock by a thick rope, on a crystal-clear lake, under a blue sky with one and a half puffy white clouds floating by. Mrs. Ameche was just finishing up the second cloud.

  “It’s a twenty-one-footer,” whispered Don.

  “Five-point-oh two-seventy-horsepower Volvo GXi EF Inboard/Outboard,” said Alan.

  “Good engine,” said Don.

  “Mom could’ve put the owners in,” said Alan.

  “Costs extra,” said Don.

  “Lady was on a budget,” said Alan.

  A man came up to them.

  “Oh, hi,” said Don.

  “You’re back,” said Alan.

  The man said he’d decided to buy the lawn mower. “You want to start it up again?” said Don. “Just to make sure?”

  “No, that’s fine,” said the man, “Engine’s good. I did want to know — would you take two-seventy-five?”

  The Ameche brothers looked over to Mrs. Ameche, who kept her eye on the canvas but scratched her ear with the end of the paintbrush before getting back to the cloud.

  “Three hundred,” said Don.r />
  “OK,” said the man, “deal.” And the Ameche brothers led him over to the mower to finish up the sale.

  “So, how are you, Jenny?” asked Mrs. Ameche.

  “The painting’s beautiful,” said Jennifer.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” said Mrs. Ameche, who’d finished the second cloud and was now dabbing in a row of birds in a V formation flying off in the distant sky.

  “Yeah,” said Adam. “But no offense, it doesn’t look like the photo.”

  “Adam!” said Jennifer.

  “Oh, Adam,” said Mrs. Ameche. “Of course it doesn’t. You’re such a hotsy-totsy reporter, but honest to buzzbee, I don’t think you have a lick of business sense. People at Busy Bee, they’re putting out hard-earned dollars, they don’t want some boring real-life portrait. They want better than real life. This woman — she’s giving this painting to her husband. It’s his boat. They’re married forty-five years, God bless. Money must be tight — she can’t afford the extra fifty dollars to put him in the boat. After forty-five years, you think he needs to see seaweed? This is what he wants to see when he goes fishing.”

  Adam nodded. Mrs. Ameche was always getting so worked up. She really had a weird way of thinking about stuff.

  “We’re in two different businesses,” said Mrs. Ameche. “You reporters, you’re after truth. Nothing wrong with that. Especially reporters brave enough to tell the truth to people like the Bolands. My customers, they get enough truth every day. They’ve got the bitter truth coming out of their ears. They need a truth break . . .” Mrs. Ameche opened up a worn appointment book that was stacked with photos and note cards. She grabbed a wedding photo from the top. “See this couple? Notice how short he is? When I paint their portrait, I’m going to make him taller than her. Nicer for them . . . Hold on . . .”

  A woman and two young kids had stopped to watch Mrs. Ameche paint. “You should preserve their faces,” Mrs. Ameche said to the mother. “They won’t look the same in a year.”

  “Oh, I know it,” said the mother, who started to walk away.

  “I can do it in twenty minutes,” said Mrs. Ameche.

  “We’re just visiting from New York,” said the mother as she headed off.

  Adam watched them disappear down the hallway. He didn’t know if he could take being turned down like that. It was funny — he didn’t mind asking strangers to do stuff for him for one of his stories, because it really wasn’t for him personally, it was more like part of this noble quest for truth. But trying to sell someone something just so you could get money? He felt embarrassed for Mrs. Ameche.

  “Did that hurt?” asked Jennifer.

  “Did what, Jenny?”

  “Being turned down like that?”

  “Oh, my gosh, no,” Mrs. Ameche said. “I figure I get about fifty turn-downs for every yes. So when someone says no, I’m just getting closer to my yes.”

  Don handed his mother the cash from the lawn mower, and Mrs. Ameche tucked it away under her painter’s smock.

  Several people came by and bought jars of tomato products. They seemed to be repeat customers. They asked for specific products: Mrs. Ameche’s famous championship tomato paste. Mrs. Ameche’s famous championship stewed tomatoes. Mrs. Ameche’s famous championship green pickled tomatoes. A security guard bought two jars of sauce and six golf balls.

  An old man who didn’t buy anything but just seemed to want to talk asked the Ameche brothers how the new crop of tomatoes was looking; he asked if they were going to win a fourth straight championship.

  “Growing big, I bet,” said the old man.

  “Hard to say,” answered Don.

  “Too early,” said Alan.

  “Have to ask Mom,” said Don.

  “Right now, she’s not taking questions,” said Alan.

  “Tight deadline,” said Don.

  “Wedding portrait,” said Alan.

  “Oh, I know how it is,” said the old man. “When she rises from her coma, you tell her Red Tony said hello.”

  “We will, Red Tony,” said Don.

  “Thanks, Red Tony,” said Alan.

  When he’d gone, Mrs. Ameche looked around her canvas and said, “That man is a public nuisance. For twenty years, he’s been trying to figure out the secret ingredient in my fertilizer. Every year he enters the state championship, and I don’t think he’s ever grown a tomato over two pounds. It’s a terrible thing to say, but sometimes I just can’t help judging people by the size of their tomato.”

  “You’re a snob, Ma,” said Don.

  “I bet a lot of good people have small tomatoes,” said Alan.

  “You’re right,” said Mrs. Ameche, who kept on painting. “You are right. I plead guilty to being a genius when it comes to tomatoes. We all have our faults. Except these two —” and she wagged her paintbrush at Adam and Jennifer. “So, what are you doing here? If you came to buy the lawn mower, it’s sold.”

  They told her they had enough stories to put out another great issue of the Slash. They quickly described how the reporting was going. When they got to the story about the state test getting easier, Mrs. Ameche actually stopped painting, stood up, thrust both her fists in the air, let out a loud whoop, and then started doing a strange dance that looked like jumping up and down on a pogo stick while pumping her arms in and out like a boxer.

  “Ma, please,” said Don.

  “Mom, not in public, come on,” said Alan.

  “Ma, this can’t be good for business,” said Don.

  “You’re going to get security up here,” said Alan.

  Mrs. Ameche stopped dancing. She looked disappointed. “Jenny, the Ameche brothers are turning into teenagers,” she said. “They’re afraid of what other people think. I used to do my Ha-Ha, I Told You So, Ha-Ha dance — the Ameche brothers would dance right along. Am I right, boys? You used to love doing the Ha-Ha.”

  “Cut it out, Ma,” said Don.

  “Can we just get back to regular here?” said Alan.

  Mrs. Ameche sat back down and resumed painting.

  “So,” said Adam, “we need your help, Mrs. Ameche. We have ten days to get the paper to the printer. That’s ten days to raise another five hundred dollars to get it printed.”

  “We know how hard the Ameche brothers tried,” said Jennifer. “And we feel terrible. We may not even be able to pay them.”

  Mrs. Ameche didn’t say anything; she just kept working on the wedding portrait.

  “Is she in her painting trance?” whispered Jennifer.

  “No,” said Don, “she’s thinking.”

  “How can you tell?” whispered Adam.

  “The eyes,” said Alan.

  “They’re more darty,” said Don.

  Adam was staring at the wedding portrait. The man was taller than his wife now, but the funny thing was, it didn’t look as ridiculous as it sounded. Mrs. Ameche had drawn the couple from a slighty different angle from the photo, sort of off to the left looking downward into the picture from the husband’s side, and somehow from that angle, it seemed he really could be taller, that the photo might have been wrong.

  “OK,” said Mrs. Ameche. “When I’m in a tight spot like this, I always try to think of a similar moment in a great movie and how the good guys got out of that. And right now I’m thinking of The Wizard of Oz and how that lovely Dorothy — and I have to tell you, Jenny, you remind me a little of her; you’ve got that same sunniness — how she just wanted to get back to Kansas. And after she’s been through everything, she goes to that good witch and the good witch tells her —”

  “Ma,” said Don, “they don’t want to go home.”

  “They don’t live in Kansas, Ma,” said Alan. “They need five hundred bucks.”

  “Oh, shush. What the good witch says is Dorothy had it in her power the whole time to go home anytime she wanted; she just needed to click her ruby slippers a bunch and say she wanted to go, and she was out of there.”

  Adam looked at Jennifer’s feet. She was wearing sneakers. The
y didn’t look that clickable.

  “You have the ability to raise that money; you just have to tell people you need it,” said Mrs. Ameche. “We did this all wrong. We were trying to sell ads like a regular paper. You have to explain your situation. You’re a great newspaper, and the Bolands and the school board shut you down. And you’ve got more truth to tell. You’ve got to go to all the people who believe in you and the ones you’ve helped. This is America, and Americans may bellyache about the media, but they love freedom of speech. It’s a country of blabbermouths. They will help. Like that woman you wrote about, with the wooden cow that got stolen. She sounded like a rich lady — lived out on Breckenridge, right? Well, I bet she’d be happy to donate a couple bucks to help the Slash — you got her cow back —”

  “Whoa,” said Jennifer. “She wanted to buy a mail subscription — I bet you’re right.”

  “Yes,” said Adam. “That secretary for the lawyers who saved the basketball hoops — she said the same thing.”

  “I knew it!” yelled Mrs. Ameche. “I knew it —” and she rose like she might do her Ha-Ha dance again, but stopped when Jennifer said, “Hold on.”

  Mrs. Ameche glanced at the Busy Bee ceiling. “Don’t tell me, Jenny. Now you’re embarrassed by the Ha-Ha.”

  “No, no,” said Jennifer. “It’s not that.”

  “Ma, she wouldn’t say if she was,” said Don.

  “She’s got too nice manners, Ma,” said Alan.

  “No, no,” repeated Jennifer. “It’s not the Ha-Ha I’m worried about — it’s ethics.”

  Ethics! thought Adam. Oh, no. It seemed like they were about to get out of this, and there was that stupid word again. Ethics. It was always getting in the way of everything. He hated ethics; he wished they’d just dry up and die.

  The Ameche brothers looked stricken.

  “It’s not our fault,” said Don.

  “We’ve been one-hundred percent good ethics since you yelled at us, Ma,” said Alan.

  Jennifer waved them off. She said the same thing to Mrs. Ameche now that she’d said to the Slash staff several weeks before: She was worried that if she and Adam and others on the Slash were asking for money from people who’d been sources for their news stories, it would be like they were asking them to pay for being written about in the Slash. And then everyone would start thinking only people who gave money would get their names in the paper. “That’s not what we’re doing,” Jennifer said. “But it might look like that.”