“Oh no,” I said. “I’ve moved to Green. I’ll be here for quite a while. I’m eager to work with you and help with your advertising needs. I want to do what I can for Bouef Parish.”
Lee Roy made a choking sound and set down his Sprite. “Went down the wrong way,” he said. He pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his mouth, and then blotted a spill on his pristine shirt.
The next hour passed slowly, with me on the edge of the leather wingback I had chosen and Lee Roy slumped on the end of an overstuffed couch.
“Bouef Parish is a fine place to call home,” Major said, “but it isn’t the easiest place to do business, or to be in politics, for that matter. You can’t please some people. They’ll tell you they want things to be different but then tell you they don’t like change. They don’t get how tough it is to move things forward.”
“You do a good job,” Lee Roy jumped in. “You’ve worked wonders in this town. You turned the real estate market around and got us that highway. Didn’t let yourself be railroaded by those naysayers. You got that paper mill to come here too.”
Suddenly Lee Roy turned toward me. “Make sure you don’t get in his way. Major makes things happen. He is a true patriot too. A fine fellow.” His speech sounded like he was trying to sell me on a potential blind-date candidate.
“We get it done, don’t we, Roy?” Major asked, winking as he said it.
I had digested about all of Major that I could. “We better be going. We’ve got another stop to make today,” I said. “I can’t wait to watch you in action, Major. Learn how it's done.” I was not above sucking up to this guy if it made my life easier.
“Linder,” Major yelled suddenly. “Get Miss Lois here one of our coffee mugs and a calendar.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, hopping up so quickly her chair rolled back and hit the fax machine. She scrambled over to a metal cabinet and pulled the items out. It had been awhile since I had seen someone move that quickly to follow a boss's order. “Here you go, ma’am.”
“It's Lois, Linda. Thanks. I look forward to seeing you again. Maybe I could buy you lunch one day.”
As Lee Roy and I got in the car, I had to ask. “What's his story?”
My ad director, circulation manager, and apparently owner-wannabe shrugged, as though deciding if he could be bothered to answer.
“The usual. Major's an important guy in town—a power broker. You know he owns the Chevy dealership out on the edge of town and he's got his real estate business. He developed some real nice subdivisions for Green. Helps the area, helps the paper. He ran for office about a dozen years ago and decided he likes that too. Does everything and is a heckuva golfer. Been friends with the McCullers for years.”
He stopped, pursed his lips, and looked as though he didn’t know if he had said too little or too much. I wanted to know more, especially about Lee Roy's relationship with Major, but at this point I didn’t want to be too obvious.
“Is that his real name?”
“His real name's Bill, but he's gone by Major since his days in the Army Reserve right after college.” That was all Lee Roy was going to say about Major.
We parked on the street near the side entrance of Wilson's Department Store and headed in for our meeting with Eva Hillburn. After Major, I didn’t know what to expect. We walked directly into the office, skirting an empty desk out front.
“Louise takes Friday afternoons off,” Lee Roy said as we passed. “Let's go on back.”
Eva was on the phone when we entered, but waved us to sit down. She was a tiny woman in her mid- to late-fifties, with a helmet of dyed black hair—hair so black that it looked like the color would rub off on your hand. Intricately poufed— yes, pouf is the only word I could think of—it didn’t seem to be so much a hairstyle as an arrangement. I wondered what was in there.
I tried to take my eyes and mind off her hair and focus on the office and the rest of the woman. I finally had to make myself look away. Her desk was a small, ornately carved, dark wood antique. An Asian screen with hand-painted cranes sat in the corner. Some sort of silk-looking cloth behind glass hung nearby. Other Far Eastern pieces dotted the room, including a handful of vases and a few interesting mementoes. Everything was spotless, without a hint of clutter. Even her desk was nearly empty.
I judged and dismissed Eva as someone who had inherited money, didn’t do any real work, and probably went to the beauty parlor and the country club on the same day every week.
How wrong I was. Her phone conversation blew that theory.
As I settled into my chair, she continued a complicated discussion about an upcoming meeting in Europe. “We have a major problem in Budapest,” she said in a professional tone and then proceeded to outline a half-dozen things that needed to be done right away.
I realized the knick-knacks that decorated her office were souvenirs of world business travels, not something she had picked up at Pier One.
“Great. I’ll check back with you on Monday. Keep me posted from your end.”
Hanging up the phone, she walked around the desk to give my hand a firm shake, nodding to Lee Roy in the process. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. Good to meet you, Lois. Happy to have you in Green. Nice to get some new blood in town.”
“My pleasure,” I said. “It's an interesting place. So you’ve lived here awhile?”
“Born and raised. Went off to college and followed my ex-husband to West Texas but came to my senses and headed home. I love this community, even if it does wear on you at times.”
My “go-to guy” sat on the edge of his chair, noticeably less at home here than he had been at Major's. He frowned at Eva's last comment.
”What are your plans for The News-Item? Any changes in store there?” Eva asked.
“I hope to build on the traditions of the paper and do what's needed to take things to the next level. I’ll assess the situation before I jump in.” My voice had the personality of a bowl of Jell-O without any fruit in it. Eva Hillburn looked at me in a way that told me she knew I was feeding her a line of bull.
“We can use some change around here,” she said. “I hope you’ll be a leader in that direction.”
“I hope so too,” I said, although I didn’t see myself being much of a leader in this dumpy town.
“I’m sure you know that Wilson's Department Store and Hillburn's Ford are big advertisers,” Eva said. I winced, waiting for her to make some demand I didn’t want to hear. “I look forward to working with you and continuing our good relationship.”
“I look forward to that too,” I said, “as does Lee Roy.” The ad director looked surprised when I mentioned his name.
“We’ve hit some snags in the past, as I’m sure Lee Roy has told you,” Eva said, “and I don’t want that to get in the way of moving ahead.”
My go-to guy had mentioned nothing about snags, bumps, or any other problems.
“We worked that out, Ms. Hillburn, as you know.” He cleared his throat. “That was a silly misunderstanding.”
“I suppose it was,” she said.
Lee Roy looked at his watch and stood up abruptly. “We need to be getting back to the paper, Lois.”
He walked out ahead of me, and I reached out to shake Eva's hand again. She looked me right in the eye and smiled. “It's good to have another woman business owner in town. I can’t wait to see what you do.”
“I’ll need your advice along the way,” I said. “I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”
When we got in the car, I turned to Lee Roy.
“Snags? What snags? Anything the owner might need to know?” I did not like being caught off guard. Plus, Lee Roy's chumminess with Major had gotten on my nerves more than I wanted to say.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, driving back to the paper. “Ms. Hillburn got a bit perturbed over some advertising rates and a story we didn’t follow up on. She pulled her ads for a month. That hurt. We had to go over there and beg her to get them back, me and Dub and Chuck. It was tricky. But she
needs us as much as we need her, so I knew she would come back.”
I interrupted. “What was the story she was interested in?”
He rolled his head around on his shoulders, the way you do when your neck feels tight. “She was upset that we didn’t run a story on some problems with pollution in the lake and some concerns raised about Mossy Bend.” Mossy Bend was Major's first big development on the north end of the lake, a gated community of expensive houses owned by local people with money and out-of-towners who wanted a getaway home.
Lee Roy did not continue. I felt the way I had once in a newspaper deposition, where I was instructed to briefly answer the question asked, nothing more. He seemed to have been to the same school of information coaching.
“And the advertising issue?” I asked.
“She was upset, yeah, upset would be the right word, with some rates she was getting.”
“Why? What sort of rates?”
Now he rolled his shoulders, too, as though the muscle pain was more intense and moving down his body. “She thought we were giving her brother a better rate.”
“Her brother?”
“Yeah, Major. You know, he's her brother.”
I had not known, and I was even more annoyed that Lee Roy hadn’t dropped that fact on me earlier. Now that I thought about it, Eva Hillburn did run Wilson's Department Store, and Wilson was Major's last name. I should have picked up on that. I needed to learn quickly who was related to whom, who was divorced from whom, and who had an axe to grind.
Instead of focusing on the omission of key information, I went right to the money/advertising issue. “And were we giving her brother a better price?”
Pulling into the newspaper lot, Lee Roy parked and looked at me. “Yes, we were. He's a bigger player, had more linage, so we went off the rate card for him. That development cost him a lot of money, and we wanted to help him out, help the town. I thought we were overcharging him. Dub and Chuck agreed. It was none of Eva's business, but she's still mad that Major tried to sell the family store out from under her.”
I was ready to call it a day and get out of the car with Lee Roy. I was nearly dizzy, wondering who I could trust and what my role would be in dealing with this cast of characters.
Everything was so unfamiliar.
I didn’t like not knowing what I was doing.
7
The nearby community of Lake Village has joined
municipal governments nationwide in approving an
ordinance banning sagging pants on men and women in
public. Councilwoman Lucinda Lovelady authored the
ordinance, calling the display of underwear “outrageous
and an affront to dignity everywhere, and it doesn’t matter
if they’re Hanes or Wal-Mart brand.”
—The Green News-Item
A tall African American woman sat behind the counter in the Lakeside Motel office, reading a Bible. She didn’t notice me until I said, “Excuse me,” and then she jumped and shrieked. “Oh, child, you scared me! I didn’t hear you come in. May I help you?”
The woman was stately. She was dressed nicely in a casual shirt and skirt and wore glasses that she took off as we spoke and let dangle around her neck by a chain. I introduced myself and asked to extend my reservation. “I also wanted to let you know how much I have enjoyed my stay so far,” I said. “I hope you will let the owners know how much I appreciate the room.”
“I expect I can do that,” she said with a smile and held out her hand. “I’m Pearl Taylor. My husband and I own the Lakeside. I think you left a message for my husband, by the way. He's the head of the Lakeside Neighborhood Association.”
I was mortified. I assumed she was hired help. I knew from reporter Alex that her husband was an influential man in town, one I needed to get to know. I stammered and told Mrs. Taylor I was happy to meet her and looked forward to hearing from Mr. Taylor and practically ran backward out of the room.
“Monday week,” she said as I was leaving. “He hopes to meet with you Monday week about five o’clock. Will that work? Maybe you could stay for supper?”
I stopped. “Monday week? This coming Monday?”
“Next Monday,” she said. “The week after this coming week.”
“That's a new one for me.” I tried to stop myself from frowning.
“I believe I have bumfuzzled you,” she said with a laugh. “But I do hope you’ll come anyway. Not this Monday but the next.”
“I’d love to come. Thank you.” I accidentally spun gravel while leaving the parking lot. Bumfuzzled? Monday week? With everything else I had to keep up with, I clearly needed a lesson in talking Southern.
Downtown on a weekend was as deserted as it had been on New Year's Day, with the exception of a couple of pickups and minivans at the antique mall. The News-Item building was eerily empty. I roamed through each department, trying to get a better sense of the place. This reeked of snooping, but I considered it the new owner's prerogative.
In the advertising-marketing area, a huge ivy sat on a filing cabinet with a big sign that said, “Do Not Water This Plant.” I tried to imagine stealth employees coming in and secretly watering the plant. The same person who made “Flush after Using” signs for the women's bathroom probably wrote this sign. Or maybe it was the person who had changed the bathroom signs to read, “Blush after Using.”
The news area was the most interesting, of course. If journalists put the same creativity into the paper as they did into their cubicles, newspapers would be in much better shape. Horror action figures and funky postcards of oversized mailboxes and rocking chairs and a giant pickle on a train covered Alex's desk. The work area next to his was covered with stacks of books and oddities, including what looked to be the entire cast of Star Wars made out of Peeps, those bright colored marshmallows you get at Easter. Baffled, I sat down at the desk to study this bizarre work of art.
“Like my sculptures?” a deep voice asked close to my ear.
I gasped at a high-pitched inhuman sound. When I turned around, a frumpy old guy who needed a shave stood within six inches of me. He was wearing a green eyeshade, the kind newspaper editors wore in the old days. His clothes were wrinkled with bits of dried food on them. His sweatshirt said, “Nothing goes right when your underwear's tight.”
He held out his hand. “Tom McNutt, weekend cops reporter, copy editor, and classified advertising layout person. You must be the new owner.”
I stood up, slowly took his hand, wishing it were just a bit cleaner and feeling guilty he had caught me at his desk. “Tom? Hernia surgery, right?”
He nodded, and we exchanged the usual pleasantries about how he was feeling.
“You did this?” I asked, pointing to his desk.
“Yep. I have the entire cast of Lord of the Rings at home. You know Peeps are not as easy to work with as you might think, but they were ninety percent off at the Dollar Hut, so the price was right.”
“I imagine so,” I said and backed away from him a few feet. I was uneasy in the room alone with him, but surely he wasn’t a mass murderer. He worked for me, for heaven's sake.
“I just made a pot of coffee,” he said, pointing toward the break area near the composing room. “Want a cup?”
The next few minutes we dug around for a clean cup and made small talk. I have never understood how offices get the collection of coffee mugs they do and how they become so hopelessly filthy. The only thing worse than the coffee area would be the refrigerator, I was certain.
Tom had worked at the paper for an amazing thirty-nine years, starting as a copy boy back when it was a daily and doing every imaginable job since.
“See this scar,” he said, holding out his hand. “Accidentally slammed my hand onto one of those spikes where the newspaper copy used to be put. Remember those?” I winced and nodded, then decided this was better than seeing his hernia scar.
“I have diabetes. That's why I wear these,” he said, holding up a foot covered with a bla
ck boot. “And high blood pressure. I would have loved to have become a full-time reporter when I was a young’un, but I didn’t have the gumption for it.”
He briefly interrupted his life story. “What color sugar you want?” he asked. “Pink or yellow?”
I turned down his sweetener offer. I was a black coffee kind of woman. Tom, however, must like his sweet because he tore open four packets and poured them in the cup, followed by a liberal shaking of lumpy creamer. “Nectar of the gods,” he said as he took his first sip.
“Well, I was just exploring the building a little bit,” I said. “Guess I’ll head on back to my office.”
“Good luck to you,” he said. “Let me know what I can do you for.”
I walked purposefully toward my office, acting as though I had important business to take care of. Unlocking my door, I sat down in the fake leather desk chair that was way too big for me. In my mind's eye, I looked like Edith Ann—that Lily Tomlin character—little person, huge chair.
An attempt to call Marti proved fruitless. She was probably getting her nails done or out for her Saturday morning long run.
I went into the conference room to sort through some boxes the Big Boys had left, pulling out a ragged file that said “History.” Tom had surprised me when he said he had worked at the paper when it was a daily, so I settled in to read a lengthy history of The News-Item, on yellow, brittle paper.
The story was fascinating, written by Helen McCuller, sister to the father of the Big Boys and matriarch of the family. The narrative was more intriguing since I would be living in the author's house on Route 2.
Helen told how the paper had been a fiery daily, with a reputation for getting wrongs righted. “Governors and senators and important businessmen came to call on the newspaper, needing its support for their causes,” she wrote. “The News-Item was one of the first voices to suggest that cotton would not always be king and that Blacks had the right to vote.” Both stances had gotten the front windows broken and the presses sabotaged.
Gone to Green (Green (Abingdon Press)) Page 6
