Gone to Green

by Judy Christie

  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 exhusband 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 kee
p 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 black 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.

  Slowly the area changed. Agriculture lost much of its sway. The parish was heavily integrated. Many people moved to Shreveport or Dallas, looking for better jobs and more money. Television and air-conditioning came along and sent people indoors. The interstate bypassed the town, cutting down on the little commerce that flowed through the area. The community shrank, and The News-Item shrank right along with it.

  What had Ed been thinking? How was I going to keep us going for a year and find a buyer?

  I retreated to the to-do list in my notebook, determined to set up an appointment with the bank on Monday and to find a pest guy to get rid of the rats at the house. I fished around for an index card with some phone numbers that Iris Jo had given me. She laughingly called it my new Blackberry.

  "Iris Jo, this is Lois Barker," I said on the phone. "Am I calling at a bad time?"

  "Heavens no." She sounded pleased to hear my voice. "I was just vacuuming. How's your first Saturday in Green?"

  "Oh, it's going fine," I said. "I'm up at the office getting organized. I wondered if you could recommend someone to exterminate rats?"

  "Sure. Terry Bradshaw," she said.

  "Terry Bradshaw? Like the quarterback?"

  "No relation," she said, "but he's your man. Might want him to spray for roaches while he's out there. He goes to my church, good advertiser, too. Let me see if I can run him down for you."

  This was my lesson in how business was done at the newspaper in Green. Somebody knew somebody, usually through church or a relative. That somebody often was a good advertiser or might become an advertiser. I seldom made my own calls for any kind of service work.

  Tackling another set of files, I dug out an ancient calculator, the kind that made a sort of grinding noise when you hit the equal button. Profits had definitely spiraled downward after Ed bought the paper. I had a challenge ahead of me, but I wasn't up to it today.

  I stuck my head in the news area and waved goodbye to Tom, who saluted me and went back to a game of solitaire on his computer. The police radio blared as usual, but things were quiet otherwise.

  As I walked out of the building, I noticed the death notices had been updated-painted by Tom, I supposed-and the smoking teenager sat on the steps over by the dock, where she had been the day I pulled into town. Doing a slight turn, I walked over and said "hello," in a voice that sounded a little snippy, even to me.

  "I'm Lois Barker, the new owner of The News-Item. I noticed you out here the other day. Can I help you with something? Are you waiting for someone?"

  The girl was about sixteen and very cute, in a funky sort of way. Her red hair was longer in the front, with interesting blondish layering in the back. I knew from water-cooler dis
cussions in Dayton that those lowlights were not easy to pull off. She had on tight jeans, a pink velvet coat with fake fur trim and some boots I had seen on an actress in People magazine recently.

  She stared at me for about thirty seconds, with that goaway-and-leave-me-alone look. Then she stood up and walked slowly away. "Nope. Don't need anything. Not waiting for anyone.

  She stopped briefly, as if to say something. Instead, she tossed down her cigarette, ground it out, dug around in a big hobo style purse, pulled out a bright green lighter, lit another cigarette, and kept on walking.

  I got in my car and took a drive out to Route 2, homesick for Dayton and my life there. Halfway to the new place, I did a U-turn and spent the next two hours walking up and down every aisle in Wal-Mart, buying a few things I needed and a bunch of things I didn't.

  As I drove back to the motel, I saw the girl in the pink coat walking through the run-down neighborhood across the street, smoking yet another cigarette.

  8

  Green Middle School student Suzanne Seal will be lunching with the governor in November. Suzanne, 13, daughter of Jack and Cindy Seal, Route 2, won the Northwest Louisiana Art in the Schools Award with a watercolor of her nine-year-old sister, Gracie.

  -The Green News-Item

  Perhaps Green residents could have chosen a more central location to build a tribute to the boll weevil.

  Winding around back roads for more than an hour, I searched for the local landmark, a monument to the insect that destroyed cotton crops. The jaunt seemed like a good way to kill a Sunday morning-until I became hopelessly lost.

  Heading out of town on an unfamiliar highway, I turned right here, left there, and was soon on a gravel road. Completely lost, I noticed a man working around some ponds and headed toward him, walking carefully across a muddy path so as to avoid any snakes and ruining my new shoes. Three barking dogs charged at me, but the man called them back, and they calmed down.