2
Maine has its share of odd town names–Mars Hill, Skowhegan, Argyle, Rosemary–and there's nothing all that odd about Wimsy, once you know it was called after Jebediah Wimsy, who settled the Point along about 1780.
Waterville is the nearest city, two miles from Wimsy Main Street, across the Big Smoke River. Next town beyond that is Winslow, across two more rivers–Sebasticook and Kennebec. Three or four miles south, where the Smoke gets swallowed by the Kennebec, is Twin Rivers State Park, at the Vassalboro town line.
Fox left me at the Voice's front door. I crossed the tiny lobby and went up the fire stairs, ignoring the two-bit elevator. I hate elevators.
Bill Jacques nodded as I strode into the newsroom. "Ms. Pierce. Glad you could make it."
I resisted the temptation to stick my tongue out at him; settling instead for a frosty, "Good evening, Mr. Jacques," as I swept past on the way to third desk, my reportorial perch for the last twenty months.
Second desk is Sue Danforth, a pinch-faced woman who looks years older than the thirty-two life has handed her so far. She looked up with her version of a smile as I went past. "Good evening, Jennifer."
"Hi." I paused, smiling down into her tired blue eyes. "Working tonight?"
"Just finishing up," she said. "Pam's watching Molly, so I can be a couple minutes late."
Pam is Sue's sister; Molly is Sue's daughter. Molly's dad is Jimmy Danforth, who works in the woods when he's sober. Unfortunately, he's not sober all that often, and tends toward belligerence, drunk or not. He cost Sue a small fortune in bail, broken furniture and bruises before she finally got fed up, changed the locks and filed a protection order.
The last I'd heard, Jimmy was "on the town," as the phrase goes–getting food stamps and drunk more often than ever. His name was in the cop log every week or so: Disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated, shoplifting–that one was cigarettes, mostly.
"I've got a call in to the state police," Sue said, easing back into her chair like she thought a sudden move would pain her. She reached for her notebook, flipped pages, and nodded.
"Hit and run out on the School Road–Angel Bolduc, sixteen–apparently hit while she was walking home from hockey practice, slid into the ditch. Guy in a truck happened to glance down, saw the red coat and got on the radio. The hospital's supposed to call, too, with an update." She glanced up at me. "The file name's run. Fill in the blanks for me and send it when it's ready?"
"Sure."
"Thanks," she said, and shook her head. "What kind of person do you have to be, to hit somebody like that and just drive away?"
"Maybe they didn't know," I offered half-heartedly. Sue snorted.
"They knew," she said darkly, and eased toward her screen. "I've got another couple 'graphs on this one…"
I took the hint and moved on to my desk, reached behind the old CPU and flicked up the switch, then went back to the cloakroom to struggle free of the parka.
The computer had loaded by the time I returned. The heading above the four-choice menu read Karen's Computer.
Karen Hopkins had been third-desk reporter before me. She'd fled back to her native California two years ago and I'd succeeded to her position a bare four months after her departure, but I'd never gotten around to changing the name on the menu. If asked, I would have said that the name over the menu was a matter of utter indifference to me.
This evening, finger poised over '1' for 'Write', I frowned at the menu head, unaccountably annoyed.
Really, Jennifer, how indolent can you be?
Before I finished chiding myself, my fingers had moved, dropping me into DOS and pulling up the .BAT file. It took approximately three seconds to find and alter the proper line, save the batch and reboot.
The computer groaned, struggled, beeped. The screen ghosted, then offered up the menu: Jen's Computer it announced. I nodded, absurdly pleased with myself, and hit '1' for 'Write'.
*
I've worked as a secretary, an advertising copywriter, a computer sales person, and a waitress in my time, but reporting takes the cake for sheer unstructured wackiness. You go out, you interview someone, you go in, you write, you go out for the cop log, you come back, you take a couple obits, make a few phone calls, check something in the story morgue, go out for another interview–or maybe a meeting–write, set up interviews for tomorrow or the next day, clarify points or rewrite to editorial direction, all the while keeping one ear on the scanner and writing like hell, especially if you're on late shift, because the deadline for all stories is 11 p.m., sharp.
The first couple weeks I worked at the Voice, I thought I was going to go crazy.
Then, I started to like it.
Now, I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing as paying work.
Reporters carry a license to pry. Armed with only a pad, a Bic and a couple questions, I take on townspeople, police officers, shopkeepers, dissidents, selectpersons, school board officials and occasional bad asses. It's astonishing, the information people will happily give to "the press." All I have to do is–ask.
I've had assignments I haven't liked: Talking to the mother of a four-year-old drowning victim. Interviewing the old man whose equally old dog was shot dead in the dooryard by hunters who swore they'd thought the animal was a deer. Car crashes. . . I really don't like to cover car crashes.
Mostly, though–taken on average–I like my job. I like getting out and around and meeting the people in my new hometown. I like the weirdness, and the chaos. I like the way that a newspaper actually comes out of it all, three days a week, every week, regular as winter.
The phone rang. I cradled it between cheek and shoulder while I uncapped the Bic one-handed and flipped my pad to a clean sheet.
It was Second Selectman Lyle Saunders, calling to be sure I'd be at meeting this evening–selectperson's meeting, that would be, my every-other-Tuesday assignment.
"Be some interesting tonight," Lyle confided. "Comprehensive Plan Committee's going to present its recommendations."
"Hot stuff," I said, deadpan.
"That's all right." Lyle chuckled. "Be coffee, anyway, and a place in from the weather."
I grinned and put the Bic down. "You've convinced me. I'll see you there."
"Well, naturally," he said, and broke the connection.
"Mail for you, Jen." Carly the copy editor was standing at my right shoulder, fluttering a meager fan of number ten envelopes.
"Hey, thanks." I took them, then made a snatch as a shorter, classier envelope slid free, catching it before it hit the floor.
"What's this?" I asked, putting the other letters on my desk and turning the thick, textured square over in my hands. My name was written in full cursive on the front: Jennifer Anne Pierce, it said; and Guest.
I looked up at Carly. "You getting married?"
"No such luck," she said and tapped the envelope with a square forefinger. "You're going to like this one. The Twins are throwing a party."
"The Twins are throwing a party?" I repeated in stark disbelief. "Has anyone told them it's winter ?"
Carly shrugged–a gesture that draws the eye to her most prominent features. "Read and weep," she advised, and sashayed away, Earth Mother hips swinging.
I slid my finger under the flap and opened the envelope.
The Wimsy Voice is owned by John and Jerry Talbot–Jay-Two, Tee-Two, as they are known to certain of their fond employees–who reside in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, and make three or four lightning trips to Maine every year, always during the summer. They acquired the newspaper from Barbara and Tilden Rancourt, who had never been further south than Portland until they retired, sold the paper and moved to Miami on the proceeds.
Since we were now officially embarked upon winter, the Voice should have been safe from the Twins until at least May.
You are invited, read the pretty silver script, to a Christmas party to be held at the Mill Hotel on Friday, December 15, from eight until midnight. Black tie. Open bar.
"Black tie?" I demanded incredulously and heard Carly give her trademark "Hah!" of laughter behind me.
"Don't you have a black tie, Ms. Pierce?" That was Bill Jacques. I spun my chair to face him, across the aisle and down.
"There's peyote in the tap water in Phoenix."
"Could be," Bill allowed judiciously.
"How can they think anybody's going to come to this thing?" I demanded, waving the card for emphasis. "Black tie? Most of the guys in the press room are doing well to have a tie. Period."
"They'll come all right," he said, looking at me over his half-glasses. "You get to the part about 'open bar'?"
I sighed, hard, and glared at him. "Why?"
"Now, that," said my editor, "is a home question. We'll make a reporter out of you yet."
"I'm going to win the lottery," I told him loftily. "And live a life of ease and comfort. In the Caribbean." I spun around to face my desk.
"I think it's nice," Sue Danforth said softly from my right. She had pushed close to the half-wall that separated our desks, and was looking at me seriously. "I mean, the Twins have owned this paper for almost five years and they've never made any effort to–to get to know the staff, or to–to find out what people think, how to improve things…" She smiled at me, nervously. "Maybe they've turned over a new leaf, you know? Decided to–take an interest."
"I guess it's possible," I said, since, theoretically, anything is.
She nodded vigorously. "I think that's it. They've decided to get more involved with us here–make a difference. And they've decided throwing a Christmas party is a good way to–to…" she floundered.
"To soften us up," I finished. She looked doubtful, but nodded again.
"That's right." She pushed her chair back. "I think it's a good sign," she said firmly, and stood up.
"Well, I hope you're right," I said, while privately considering a black tie affair at the swankiest establishment in town the least efficient way of softening up the Voice's staff. A pizza-and-beer party at the local sports bar, now…
I smiled up at Sue. "Have a good night. Say hi to Molly for me."
"I will. Thanks for taking care of that story."
"No problem."
" 'Night," she said and was gone.
Shaking my head, I began to open the rest of my mail.
*
As predicted, the Comprehensive Plan Committee's recommendations were dull as ditchwater. I dutifully took notes in between knocking back two Styrofoam cups of truck-stop coffee lightened with non-dairy powder, then went out into the frigid windy blackness of eight p.m. and got into my car.
The car is new–a replacement for the one I totaled, back in mid-October. A black Camaro, genus Z28, with the five-point-seven liter V8 engine. Electronic automatic transmission. Rear-wheel drive. Platinum-tipped spark plugs. Anti-lock brakes. Stereo CD player. Plush red bucket seats.
You'd have to work a bit to produce a stupider car for slogging through a Maine winter, and I loved it like my own child.
I pulled the seatbelt tight, turned the key, brought up the lights and rolled silently out of the dark lot. I drifted through downtown at precisely the 25-mile-an-hour limit and pulled behind the police station, slipping between two Town of Wimsy cruisers.
Ken Aube lifted a hand as I came in.
"Nice night," he offered, over the squawk of the dispatch box.
"If you like freezing wind," I agreed. "Anything new on the log?"
"Nothing much. This time of year, the town just sort of settles down to freeze." He moved his massive shoulders. "It'll get busy nearer to Christmas, New Year's. Then we'll all go to sleep again 'til spring."
Small town life. Wimsy's cop log hardly ever ran longer than a dozen events, and a murder or rape was front page news that got everyone exclaiming and excited. Far different from the paper in my home town, which had simply stopped reporting rapes: Too common; too tedious.
I went over to the dispatch station, weaving around the computer boxes that had been stacked in various not-really-out-of-the-way spots for the past three months.
I nodded to the earphoned dispatcher, who pushed the log book toward me without raising her eyes from the paperback romance she was reading.
"You got anybody to install these things yet?" I asked Ken over my shoulder, flipping log pages until I came to the pencil tick showing where Milt had stopped that afternoon.
"Matter of fact, we do," said Ken, as I wrote down that Barry Grenier had been summoned on a charge of assault. I looked over my shoulder.
"Who? If you don't mind my asking."
It would be some so-called pro out of Portland, I thought. It always was. A pro out of Portland had gotten them into this mess in the first place, ordering up a bunch of expensive network computers for the cop station–and disappearing when it came down to the nitty-gritty of actually installing the idiot things. It was my own private opinion that the computers would be found to be seconds or random fire-sale discards when opened, and not an integrated network at all. Which would be just too bad: The Town had spent a lot of money on this system, not to mention the consultant's fee.
"New guy in town," Ken was saying, taking a swig out of his Big Apple Convenience Store plastic mug. "Heard he was from Texas." He put the mug down with a sigh. "Foxwell, I think his name is."
Well, why not? I thought. The Town of Wimsy might as well pay Fox as a fraudulent pro from Portland.
"I hope he can make some sense out of it for you," I said to Ken.
He shrugged. "Don't know what we need the damn' thing for anyhow," he said. "Got along without it this long."
"Welcome to the twentieth century," I said with a grin. "The Information Highway has just put a ramp into Wimsy."
"Just what we need," Ken grunted. "More speeders."
I laughed and went back to the log, noting a High Street resident had reported a boy throwing stones at her parked car and that a woman on Spring Street had been playing her stereo too loud.
"Well," I said eventually, dutifully checking off the last entry I had noted and flipping my notebook closed. "That's that." I threaded my way through the boxes to Ken's desk and dawdled there a second until he looked up.
"Know anything about the hit-and-run up by the high school?"
He shrugged. "Not my shift."
And no scuttlebutt, I added silently. Or none that Ken was willing to share.
"OK," I said equitably. "See you later."
"Stay warm."