Copyright ©2001, ©2011

Copyright ©2019 Estate of Wes Boyd

Mike McMahon didn’t often use his office in the Spearfish Lake Record-Herald anymore. Once upon a time it had been something of a refuge from the hustle and bustle in the outer office, but in recent years he’d come to prefer being out where things were happening, where he could be more social. He now worked at a beat-up desk in the back corner of the room where the big Compugraphic phototypesetting machine had sat twenty years before. The computer in what was purportedly the editor’s office was an older one and didn’t get turned on very often; he preferred the new Pentium in the outer office.

It was running now, just sitting at an idle, a blank Pagemaker screen sitting on it as he interviewed an applicant for a reporter position on the Record-Herald staff.

The junior reporter at the Record-Herald changed often. It was just a weekly paper and located in the north woods, though some interesting things did happen here despite the out-of-the-way location. Young reporters rarely stayed, seeing the paper mostly as a couple of lines on a résumé on the way to a bigger job. Most considered it a stretch in the low minor leagues, hoping to get picked up by a bigger paper as soon as possible.

Mike didn’t resent that; he’d come to the Record-Herald with the same thought in mind over twenty years ago, and in the last half century he was one of only two junior reporters who had stayed on. His own reasons for staying were personal, and he didn’t mind the paper being used as a farm club. A couple of people Mike trained had gone on to some pretty stellar careers. Andy Bairnsfether had been the first junior reporter Mike had taken as a wet-behind-the-ears journalism school grad and turned into a good community reporter; he’d gone on to a stellar career with the Los Angeles Times as an investigative reporter, and he now covered the White House for CNN. And, much to his surprise, Mike had just heard the other day that Pat Varner, one of Andy’s successors, had just been named junior drama critic for the New York Times.

There’d been duds, of course – many more than the few winners like Andy and Pat – but that was to be expected. If a kid couldn’t make it as a reporter for the Record-Herald they weren’t likely to make it elsewhere. It was best to find out early, so they could change their careers to something harmless, like fast food or hotel-motel management.

And “dud” was the message he was getting from the current applicant, Brenda Hodunk. The girl had graduated from college last spring but had been pursuing a fast food career all summer. His impression was that she’d interviewed a lot of places without a nibble. She was stocky, if not to say downright fat, and, frankly, she didn’t seem particularly bright. Worse, she was a redhead, not bad of itself, but she seemed to have an overabundance of the stereotypical redhead’s attitude about almost everything. But Mike had been around long enough to know that first impressions could be deceiving.

Well, there was one quick test. He rummaged around in the desk drawer for a folder that had resided there for years and pulled out a page old enough that it had actually been written on a typewriter. “This is a copy of some notes from a story that really happened here several years ago,” he said. “They’ll seem incomplete, and they are, since it turned into a major story. The ramifications dragged on for a long time. But let’s play like this is a daily, and you’re on a deadline. We go to press in half an hour, and this is obviously going to be the lead for the day. Let’s see what you do with it.”

“Should I use the computer here?” she asked with a little sniff, as if disgusted that he’d given her such a freshman-level quiz.

“Might as well. You know Pagemaker, or should I bring up Notepad?”

“This is the PC version, right? I mostly know Macs.”

“There’s not much difference, from what I’ve been told,” he said. “At least for raw keyboarding.” He got up from the desk to make room for her, leaving the typewritten sheet sitting on the desk.

Brenda came around, sat behind the desk, and read over the notes. Simple enough, she thought, and that must have been one exciting afternoon in this little burg. She read them over a second time and then turned toward the machine and started to type.

*   *   *

SPEARFISH LAKE RECORD-HERALD

Reporter’s Notes

♦ Tuesday, 2:14 PM Scanner report from Central: PI and fire at Central and State Road. Full response, Albany River FD called to back up.

♦ 2:16 PM Scanner report from scene: helluva fire, gas tanker on side, other vehicles apparently involved. Intersection totally blocked.

♦ 2:21 PM On scene: tanker semi burning like mad, school bus took hit, bashed in side toward back, near fire but not involved. No sign of kids. A few firemen, couple of cops. Bus apparently eastbound on Central at intersection, tanker northbound.

♦ 2:25 PM More cops, firemen, engines. Area being evacuated. Closest can get to scene is about 250 yards.

♦ 2:27 PM Fireman says semi driver didn’t get out, bus driver did, OK but shaken, no kids on bus – heading for pickup at school. Haven’t seen bus driver, fireman said Jim Knox.

♦ 2:33 PM Terry Clark, witness behind bus, said bus had green light.

♦ 2:34 PM Mike Johansen witness behind tanker said tanker had yellow, was flying.

♦ 2:37 PM Sam LeBlanc witness making right beside tanker said light was green. Said bus driver shoulda looked before pulling out.

♦ 2:38 PM Chris Lincoln, witness behind LeBlanc, said light was red. Shouting match between LeBlanc and Lincoln.

♦ 2:40 PM EMT Turpin says that bus driver was Jim Knox; OK but being taken to hospital.

♦ 2:41 PM LeBlanc takes swing at Lincoln; is subdued by Sheriff Upton, Johansen and Clark, arrested, handcuffed. Johanson said LeBlanc must have been drinking again.

♦ 2:44 PM Fire Chief Harry Masterfield says gonna have to let truck burn down; not enough foam to put out fire and can’t use water. No chance to get to truck cab. Setting up fire line to try and protect Gunderson’s Party Store on corner.

♦ 2:48 PM Power pole burns out, falls, knocks out power. City police car hauls LeBlanc away.

♦ 2:51 PM Masterfield: “Helluva mess.”

♦ 2:55 PM Upton says thinks gas truck was from Wolfe Petroleum, Meeker, but too burned to tell from distance. Calls department, asks to confirm.

♦ 3:02 PM Tank ruptures, flames spread, party store now on fire but firemen pulling back. Bus now on fire.

♦ 3:05 PM Party store fully involved, also vehicle parked nearby. Safety line pulled back.

♦ 3:11 PM Flames from truck dying down a little. Firemen fight grass fire behind party store. Can’t see much, too much smoke.

♦ 3:22 PM Truck fire definitely smaller. Masterfield orders water on party store fire, from distance.

♦ 3:35 PM Unidentified woman wonders how long is going to take, needs to get to hairdresser.

♦ 3:42 PM Hear over cop car radio that Wolfe Petroleum has truck up this way, can’t raise on radio.

♦ 3:44 PM Party store roof collapses.

*   *   *

Mike headed for the refrigerator in the back room to get a Coke before he went to his real desk in the big office, and Kirsten followed him out. “So what do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “There might be a community journalist buried there somewhere. She doesn’t have the most thrilling credentials I’ve ever seen. I’ve got her working on the gas truck crash story. If she catches some of the bear traps I set in it and gets the right focus on the story, well, maybe.”

“I still think you should try the Anissa route. You know, find someone local who’s likely to stick around, maybe a couple part-timers, and not have to come up with a junior reporter every few months.”

“Could be,” Mike told his wife. “It used to be I never had to look too hard to find someone willing to come here and work for a year or so to get some experience. But God, the job has been sitting empty for four months now, and every time I open the Press Association bulletin it’s filled with ads from newspapers looking for bodies. Maybe that’s why this kid scares me a little. Why hasn’t someone else snapped her up?”

“Well, it’s your call, either way,” Kirsten said. “You have to work with her. On the other hand, you’re also the one who has to keep sitting through meetings every night if you don’t find someone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike agreed.

He followed Kirsten back out to the front office. Through the glass, he could see the Hodunk kid pounding on the keys steadily. Well, she could type anyway, he thought. In this computerized age, he was amazed that there were actually kids in journalism who couldn’t find their way around a keyboard. It hadn’t always been that way; back in high school, he’d had a major set-to with the administration and typing teacher before they would allow him – a boy! – to take typing class. Back then, typing was a girl’s class, and they apparently figured the only reason he wanted to be in the class was to sniff around the girls. But it had been worth the trouble; if he’d made a list of the life skills he’d taken out of high school, the year spent in that class would have been at the head of the list – in seventy-two-point boldface, at that. George was still a two-finger typist, after all these years, but then he didn’t write much anymore either.

He hoped this kid would work out. Going to a bunch of evening meetings, sometimes two an evening, when you were a kid was one thing, but he’d burned out on it long ago, and having to do it the last four months had been tough. He’d skipped a lot of them that he’d have sent a junior reporter to, only going to the ones he expected real news to come out of, but he knew he’d missed some things that really should have been in the paper. At least it was summer, so things were slow, and the junior reporter didn’t have to cover sports now as well. When fall sports were in full swing, that would have taken care of any free nights, and then some.

Mike had given more serious thought than he’d indicated to Kirsten’s suggestion that he try to find someone like Anissa, who did school sports reporting, to fill in the junior reporter slot, and he’d looked around. The problem was that the only Anissa equivalents who went to all the government meetings were a couple of old gals who went just to pick nits and make trouble. And all the meetings and crap were getting old, so if the Hodunk kid did halfway decently, he figured he’d give her a shot at it.

One potential problem was that she hadn’t come in response to an ad, or as a recommendation from a school, but at the suggestion of Greg Mears, down in Camden, who was apparently some kind of a shirttail relative. Mears was a friend, but he was a beer salesman and didn’t know squat about journalism. If Mike turned her down or she didn’t work out, he might have Greg pissed at him. In all likelihood it might not matter. Greg would probably understand.

He looked up at the Hodunk kid through the glass. She was scanning through the story, making a couple changes. Well, good or bad, she was fast, and that counted for something. He turned his attention back to the computer screen and the feature story he’d been playing with. That was another nice thing about having new kids around; they could get a fresh angle on familiar stuff, and the autumn color feature was about as dry as you could get. But he didn’t have to stare at the screen very long; the office door opened, and the Hodunk kid stuck her head out. “Ready when you are,” she said.

“OK,” Mike said, getting up and taking his Coke with him. He went back to the desk and told the computer to print the story out on the office laser printer. It was one of the old HPIIIs, semi-retired now and not very fast, but it had been a wonder that totally changed the way things were done when it was first installed in the office a few years before. Mike grabbed the copy as soon as it landed in the tray and read the story over.

 “Not bad,” he said. She’d skipped the libel bear trap, and a couple of things that weren’t germane to the story. She had included a minor point, but as a bit of color, so it worked. She had the focus of the story where it belonged, on the fire. “These days, I’d probably let you get away with the fire chief swearing, at least what he said, but we couldn’t say that when the story was written. It was a hell of a mess. What would you have written if he’d said, ‘This fire has everything fucked up’?”

“I wouldn’t have used that word,” the kid admitted. “Maybe if it had been an important quote, but that was more color than anything else.”

“Not here,” Mike smiled. “Maybe some places, but not here.”

“Well, yeah,” she said.

“I like the way you didn’t try to draw a conclusion as to the cause of the accident but said that witnesses disagreed. That was a long time getting settled. There’s actually a lot of lessons to be learned from that story. Tell me some of them.”

“The obvious one is that even eyewitnesses disagree,” she said. “There were four witnesses to the accident, and they each had a different story. There was no way I could judge from the notes who was right. If you don’t know something, it’s best to say that you don’t know, or not mention it in the first place.”

“Good point,” Mike said. “It was never totally settled, even in court. There were three different lawsuits over that accident as it turned out. Tell me another lesson.”

“There’s a lot that’s not in those notes that a reporter would remember from being there. Like the bit about the party store being a pile of rubble,” she said. “I figured if the roof fell in, that’d be an adequate description.”

“Well, yeah, that might be stretching the point a little,” Mike agreed. “But it’s not an unfair description. Tell me more.” He was fishing for something the girl had already caught, since it was in the notes but not in the story. It was the most important lesson, and she hadn’t mentioned it.

“You must be talking about the fight, and the one guy’s comment about the other guy having been drunk,” she said. “That’s opinion, and it’s hearsay, and it might have been libel, at that.”

Mike smiled. She’d almost gotten it. Close enough, anyway. “What would you have said if I’d included in the notes that Sam smelled like booze to me?”

“Probably nothing,” she said. “It’s still opinion.”

Mike was satisfied. This kid would do. She still didn’t seem very personable, but she was at least careful, and she could write both competently and fast. But he might as well finish the lesson. “As it turned out, Sam was written up for DUI, with some godawful blood alcohol level,” Mike explained. “That became an issue in court, as his credibility had been attacked. Sam’s dead now. He was a jerk, and he knew what to do with a bottle in his hand. But, as near as anyone can tell, he was the closest to right. The consensus of opinion was that while the truck driver was pushing the light, the bus driver pulled out as soon as the light changed, without looking up. The truck driver tried to miss him and died trying. Like I said, it was a messy one, parts of it were years getting settled, and you’ll still find people who think that Knox got railroaded, because people think that all truck drivers are jerks, and that school bus drivers can do no wrong.”

“They have to think like that to put their kids on them, after all,” she said. “Not surprising, I guess. That wasn’t the impression I took out of the notes.”

“And it’s not the one that you put into the story,” he said. “The thing I was trying to get you to say is that there’s sometimes – hell, there’s often – a big difference between what you know or what you think and what you can print. Sometimes we have to print opinion, but we should always label it as such. We always have to be ready to recognize those limits and be careful of them, more so in a community setting like this. Back when I was sitting in the chair you’re in and George Webb was sitting here, he gave me a big lecture about the fact that we have to see the people we’re writing about every day. I’m not going to bother lecturing today, but you’ll hear it from me again and again, if you still want the job.”

*   *   *

(Draft, September 18, 1997)

FIERY TRUCK, BUS CRASH KILLS ONE

Flames filled the sky at the corner of Central Avenue and the State Road Tuesday afternoon when a loaded gasoline tanker slammed into the side of a school bus about a quarter after two. The fire that resulted totally destroyed the tanker, the bus, and left Gunderson’s Party Store a mass of rubble.

No children were on the bus at the time of the accident, according to firemen at the scene. EMTs at the scene said the bus driver, Jim Knox, was taken to Spearfish Lake Hospital but was apparently not seriously injured. The driver of the gas truck, believed to be from Wolfe Petroleum of Meeker, was apparently dead as a result of the accident, but no identity could be confirmed.

The semi apparently hit the bus in the side, near the back of the bus, then skidded out of control into the parking lot of the party store.

Witnesses at the scene could not agree whether the school bus had a red or green light at the time of the accident. One witness, Mike Johansen, said that the semi driver “was flying” through the intersection.

An argument over the color of the light led to a fistfight among witnesses, resulting in one of the witnesses, Sam LeBlanc of Spearfish Lake, being taken from the scene in a police car.

The flaming gasoline caused the Spearfish Lake Fire Department to evacuate a wide area around the site, as orange flames and heavy black smoke billowed into the sky. Flames from the accident burned a power pole, leaving much of Spearfish Lake without power, and later caught the party store and a vehicle parked nearby on fire.

Spearfish Lake Fire Chief Harry Masterfield indicated that it was too dangerous for firemen to get close to the burning tanker, so they could only fight the party store fire by pouring water on from a distance. “It’s a helluva mess,” Masterfield commented. In addition, assistant chief Joe McGuinness reported that the fire department didn’t have enough foam to fight a gasoline fire that big.

The danger from the burning tanker caused several evacuations, with the safety line eventually pulled back several hundred yards from the fire.

*   *   *

Brenda got back into her rusty Olds Cutlass and headed for home, a little more heartened than she’d been when she’d first driven into Spearfish Lake. She hadn’t had a lot of hope for this job, but at least it was a real newspaper and better than pushing burgers. It wasn’t the job she’d dreamed of having, and the pay was frankly lousy, but it included a free apartment located above the Record-Herald office, in what had been the layout room back when there had been a printing plant in the building.

It really wasn’t a great apartment, but it would do, and it would be better than living with her folks, like she had done all through college. That had been a drag for a long time; she suspected her mother would be happy to have her out of the house, and her father would be glad to have an end to the constant bickering between them.

Commuting to college hadn’t been the way she’d wanted to go to school. As far back as middle school she’d looked forward to the break from her family – but the funds just hadn’t been there to send her away to a good four-year college, considering her grades and the lack of aid she’d had available as a result. Her degree was from Weatherford, but most of her classes had actually been at Riverside Community College, not far from her home, so her degree was mostly an extension degree. She’d tried to do the best she could, but the commuting and the hassles with her mother had kept the college experience from being a totally happy one. She had gotten involved in a couple of campus clubs, role-playing games, mostly, and the Macintosh users club, but those had mostly been excuses to get out of the house.

Brenda had often wished she hadn’t been an only child, if for no more reason than it would have given her mother someone else to pick at and share the load. She’d lost track of the number of times her father had had to step into the middle of some argument. She’d back down to her father, who could reason with her, but he’d often said that the main problem between Brenda and her mother was that they were too much alike. They had the same hard head, the same tough, hard-to-break spirit, and both of them tended to be bossy without liking to be bossed around; neither of them knew how to back off to avoid hassles. Brenda hated being compared with her mother in any way, but at times admitted to herself that her father may have had a point.

It had been especially tough after she’d gotten out of college. Despite the degree, and despite the long lists of want ads, the only job she’d been able to find was flipping burgers at a fast food grill. She hated it with a passion, hated every minute of it, and the only compensation was that it was a job at all. She looked forward to a couple hours from now when she’d have the pleasure of telling the manager where she could stuff every goddamn hamburger she could find.

It irked her that she’d had to hear about the Record-Herald job from her uncle Greg, and not from the job counselors at the school. Those worthless scum didn’t give a shit whether she found a job or not. After all, the school already had her money, what did they care?

It had been very frustrating. She knew she had a half-assed degree from a jerkwater college, but damn it, she knew she could write, knew she could do the job. But despite all the résumés she’d sent out, there’d been damn few replies and even fewer interviews, and only the interview that she’d had with McMahon had gone well. Even that hadn’t gone well until after he’d given her those story notes to work on.

Mike and his wife, Kirsten, had been polite, but even they’d seemed patronizing, as if her jerkwater degree and the fact that she was a girl meant that she didn’t know what she was doing. As always, people didn’t believe what she said about herself, and she had to show them she meant business. That never seemed to happen to guys, or to pretty girls. Every time she’d tried to do something, she’d had to prove herself, and it didn’t matter if it was some dumbass paper in some class or a game at one of the clubs. Everyone took one look at her and figured she didn’t know or couldn’t do shit, and she had to show everybody that she was better than they thought to even get across that she was at least average, or maybe even better.

It wasn’t fair, and really, the fact that she had to take a half-assed job at a little country weekly wasn’t fair, either. If she’d been pretty, if she’d had a degree from State, say, she’d have been able to walk into some place like the Camden Press and they’d have been happy to hire her, but no, once again, she had to prove herself the hard way. And, on top of that, it’d be a half-assed line on a résumé, and when she did get out of there, she’d have to prove herself all over again. At least it got her out of the house and on her own, finally.

But God, Spearfish Lake was out in the sticks! There were a hell of a lot more deer around than there were people, and more damn trees and swamp than anything else. It was probably more interesting in the summer, but as soon as Labor Day was past, they really rolled up the sidewalks and put them away until spring. She’d have to drive clear to Camden to find a halfway decent bookstore, one that stocked more than trashy romances, and there probably wasn’t a halfway decent oriental restaurant that could do Japanese closer than Camden either. McMahon had told her that the computer connections were pretty good, although only a 56k dialup, but that would at least allow her to keep some contact with civilization and her online friends. Maybe some people liked it up in the north woods, like her dad, but to her it seemed cold and snowy and far from anywhere.

And lonely, too. But she’d gotten used to handling lonely. Maybe she’d even come to prefer it. Well, she’d damn sure find out, and the sooner the better.

She thought about it as she drove south toward Camden. This was Thursday. She could pack her stuff in the car tomorrow and be back up in Spearfish Lake on Saturday. That would give her most of the weekend to get settled in her apartment.

*   *   *

One of the decent things that could be said about living upstairs from the Record-Herald office was that the commute was pretty simple, Brenda thought. It wasn’t a bad apartment, nothing special but certainly adequate. Utilities were included, though, and she did have her own phone, which Mike had said he’d have turned on when she’d agreed to take the job.

She’d gotten back to Spearfish Lake around midday on Saturday and faced a huge job of hauling stuff up to the apartment. She called her father to let him know that she’d gotten there all right and then called Mike, who had told her that he’d help her carry her stuff up the stairs.

Mike showed up not long afterward, bringing with him a tall, gangly, pimply kid who looked a lot like a younger version of him. It proved to be his son, Henry, and three of them would make fairly quick work of emptying her car and dumping stuff in the middle of the apartment floor.

“You do Macs, huh?” Henry commented as he carried a monitor up the stairs.

“I think they’re better than PCs, especially for gaming,” she told him. “I do some neat online games.”

“I haven’t been able to work with Macs much,” he said. “I’d like to play around with one sometime.”

“Well, you can come up and try mine out when you’re free,” Brenda offered as they headed back down the stairs for another load.

Before long they had the car empty. “I’d invite you over to dinner tonight,” Mike told her, “but we’ve got a prior engagement I can’t duck. Maybe some night in the coming week.”

“Just as well,” Brenda said. “I’m going to be most of the weekend just setting up housekeeping.”

“If you need anything just call,” Mike said. “It might be something that Henry could help you with if we’re not around. We should be around most of the day tomorrow, though. Beyond that, why don’t you show up downstairs an hour or so before normal time on Monday morning? We have to hit the ground running on Mondays, and that’ll give me time to get you started without a hundred interruptions.”

“What time?”

“Say, around 7:30?”

“Sure, that’s no problem,” Brenda told him.

It really didn’t take her as long as she’d thought to get the apartment set up, and Sunday was a little dull. She’d thought about getting online, but realized that she didn’t have a local dialup account yet, and she didn’t want to have to log on at home long-distance and run up the phone bill. That made the day go slowly, as none of the books she’d brought held her interest very well. Just for something to do on Sunday afternoon she got in her car and drove around town a bit, trying to learn her way around, but that didn’t take long in this little burg. She found herself getting anxious for Monday morning to come, just to see what would happen. She was waiting on Monday when Mike drove up.

“So how was your weekend?” he asked as he unlocked the front door.

She admitted that it was kind of dull, especially since she didn’t have a dialup connection.

“We should have set that up Thursday before you left, but I didn’t think of it. After we get back this morning, call up Mark at marlin.com, tell him you’re the new junior reporter here, and you get a discount. He’ll have it up and running by this evening.”

They went inside. Mike turned on some lights and got the coffeepot going. “You do coffee?” he asked.

“Once in a while,” Brenda admitted.

“Well, throw some change in the kitty once in a while to help out,” he said. “If you want pop, that’s in the refrigerator in back, a quarter, honor system. If you like something that isn’t there, tell Kirsten. She stocks it. You want a cup of coffee when it’s ready?”

“Sure,” she said. “Black is fine.” While Mike went to get it, she looked around. Already, there was a lot that she didn’t understand. She was more computer oriented than most, and knew she could handle the writing, but she hadn’t really understood how much computers were involved in publishing these days, even in a little paper like the Record-Herald.

Mike brought the coffee back to her desk and set it down. “Anyway, the drill for the next couple days is going to be that I’ll take you out on the rounds you’ll have to cover, introduce you to the people involved, and show you what needs to be done. You’ll have to take the notes and write the stories. We’ll take off out of here, go check the city police station and the jail first, then swing by the courthouse to see what filings there are and check what’s on the schedule, and we’ll also touch a few other bases.”

Brenda pulled out a pad and began to make notes as Mike continued, “You can go by yourself tomorrow, or I can go with you again, your call. We don’t usually do it every day. I recommend doing that round on Friday morning to clear up anything we missed that’s come in during the week, then again Monday morning to get the weekend arrests and bookings, then again on Tuesday for the last-minute stuff. If I’m busy on Tuesday, sometimes I just call over, but I know the people there well enough that I can do that. You’d better figure on going in person for a while, anyway. Most of the stuff just goes in the paper’s police report column, but there are usually two or three things there that will demand longer stories. One of the trickier things is covering trials. Most of them are pretty open and shut, but you can waste a lot of time if you don’t know which ones to go to. You can get a feel from the staff at the courthouse which ones might be interesting, but the best way to find out is to be at the jail checking the bookings at 8:30 on Mondays.”

“Why’s that?” The break gave her a chance to catch up on her notes in the face of the flood of information Mike was dumping on her.

Mike smiled. “One of those sneaky reporter tricks. Judge Dieball usually drops by about that time to bum a cup of coffee from the dispatcher, and to see who got booked over the weekend, so he’ll have some idea of what he has to deal with later. Once you get to know him, you can ask him where you should spend your time. He’s a pretty neat guy, worth knowing, as he can save you a lot of running around. Anyway, typically you’re going to spend a day or so a week at the courthouse. Some weeks, not that, but once in a while you’ll just have to pretty much write off the whole week to it, and you’ll have to coordinate with me so some of the rest of your work can get done.”

“Like that accident story you gave me to write?”

“Yeah, that’s a good example. I spent a lot of time in the courtroom over that one. Fortunately, we don’t have that sort of thing happen very often, just the routine DUIs or spouse-abuse things that we can mostly write what we need for the paper off of the court blotter. Like I said, I’ll help you get a feel for how you need to schedule things.”

“Sounds like a fair amount,” she said.

“It’s not that bad,” Mike said. “You just have to learn where to spend your time. The next biggest thing is government meetings. The big ones to be concerned with are school board, that’s the third Monday evening each month, county commission on the second and fourth Mondays, and the city council the first and third Tuesdays, which means that you and I are going to council tomorrow night. They haven’t been doing much recently, so you ought to be able to handle it by yourself after that, but if they had a hassle going, I’d keep covering it till it blows over. There’s other meetings and township meetings, but for the time being, I’ll just sound people out and figure out which ones you absolutely need to go to. After a while, you can be the one to decide, since there’s no way to get to them all. As time goes on, you’ll have to call the township supervisor or township clerk to find out what’s going to happen or what did happen, and judge accordingly.”

“It seems like a lot,” she said.

“It is a lot, and it blows up a lot of evenings,” he said. “Just be glad you don’t have to go to all the school varsity games, too. That can ruin what’s left of your social life. Anyway, beyond that, I’d like two or three features a week, at least every other week one of them big enough to lead the section, although occasionally Carrie or I will write one, or sometimes it’ll come in over the transom from someone else in the community. I’ll point you at a few stories to get you started, and they don’t all have to be big ones.”

Mike glanced at his watch; time was passing, and they had to be getting over to the jail. “That’s about it in terms of your beat,” he said. “There are some other chores, like you have to figure on spending half to all day Wednesday helping with the mailing, unless there’s something like a court date you can’t miss, and there’ll be some other office chores.”

“Wow, it’s really starting to add up.”

“I’m afraid it often can. Oh, and the other big thing is to keep your ear on the scanner. There’s one in the apartment, so make sure it’s on all the time you’re there. Ninety-nine percent of it is gabble, junk, but the one percent that isn’t is usually front-page news, so the drill is that if it’s outside office hours and you hear something that needs to be responded to, grab a camera and go to it if you can get free. If someone else from the office hears about it and you see them on the scene, you can work out then whether to stay around, and once in a while a fire or a PI, that’s police investigation, turns into an all-hands, like that gas truck crash. Everybody up front in the office works the same way, since not everybody hears the scanner. The last big fire we had, only Sally, the ad manager, heard the call. If you’re in the office, you’re the primary responder. As time goes on, you’ll learn how to discriminate what is worth your time and what isn’t. And still, sometimes you’re wrong, after the fact.”

*   *   *

It was a busy Monday morning for Brenda. “Is it always like this?” she asked Mike once they were back at the office, her notebook already filled with pages of notes.

“Actually, it was a fairly slow weekend, considering,” he replied. “You’ll be able to do the rounds a little quicker once you know what to look for,” Mike told her. “We took extra time introducing you to people, and you’ll find in the long run it’s worth your time to stop and shoot the bull with people once in a while, so don’t figure on taking a lot less time than today. Again, you’ll soon learn when and where to spend your time. Why don’t you get what you’ve got written up while I get some of my work done?” He showed her how to set up a story, what filenames and directories to use, and showed her the format for the paper’s police report.

By now, things were bustling. Mike had half a dozen phone calls to return, and more to make, and about half of them involved a story or part of one, and he obviously didn’t have a lot of free time. When she ran into a question, she found herself asking a slender, tan, brown-haired fiftyish woman who sat at a nearby desk. The woman proved to be Carrie Evachevski, whose title was “social editor,” but she handled a wide range of things, mostly items that had been brought in, like club meeting notices and obituaries, wedding and engagement notices, and a lot of other miscellaneous stuff. She was a gentle, motherly woman, and Brenda soon learned that she had five kids, all grown, and that she’d worked at the Record-Herald since Compugraphic days. She seemed an island of serenity in the madness of the morning.

“My husband Gil used to call it the Monday morning initial burst,” she said. “People sit around stewing about something all weekend, and then make the call to do something about it the first thing Monday morning.”

It was getting on toward midmorning before the rush slowed some and Mike had time for her again. “Did you call about your internet service?” Mike asked.

More than a little buried in the rush, Brenda admitted she hadn’t even thought about it. “Best do it before they head to lunch over there,” Mike said. “It’s 0542, I think.”

“Put an 823 in front of that,” Carrie said. “Every number in town starts with that, and we have to use it for all calls, but most people just use the last four digits when they give you a number.”

Setting up an account proved to be easy. “You’re at the Record-Herald?” the man at the other end of the line said. “I gotta run over that way in a few minutes. There’s some paperwork you’ve got to sign, and I’ll bring it with me.”

“Mark is pretty good to us,” Mike commented once the call was over. “Why don’t you help Carrie out with keyboarding some of that mountain of stuff she’s got. Maybe she can put you to scanning some pieces.”

It was getting along toward noon before things slowed to a tolerable level, and Mike came over to her desk. “Getting the hang of it a little?” he asked.

“There’s a lot to do,” Brenda conceded.

“Don’t let it worry you,” Mike said. “This is a fairly easy day for a Monday, and once you get used to it you’ll be carrying your share of the load.”

*   *   *

Brenda raced upstairs, threw together a sandwich, and grabbed a bottle of juice, then came back down to the office. Sally, the advertising manager, apparently had the front office duty, and Brenda followed Carrie toward the back of the building, through the empty layout room, and to the room behind it. There were several tables there, and some machinery; a garage door led outside. Since it was a nice day, the door was open, letting in outside air and light and street sounds, as well.

There were two women around the table who Brenda hadn’t met before, though she’d seen them in the office when she’d been there the previous week. “You must be the new junior reporter,” the older one of the two said. Brenda guessed she must be in her thirties, a plain-looking, small woman with glasses and long, straight brown hair that reached well below her waist. “I’m Janine Wychek. I’m the bookkeeper.”

“Janine also handles circulation, billing, and, most important, payroll,” Kirsten explained. “You and Mike had already left when she came in.”

“Hi,” the other woman said. “I’m Debbie Elkstalker, the token minority. I sell ads.” She was a lot closer to Brenda’s age, and was a dark-skinned, dark-haired, heavy-set gal with a broad smile, and as she learned had a gift of gab. Brenda soon found out that she was Native American and grew up on the reservation well to the west of town.

Lunch proved to be an interesting bull session. Much of the talk was about people and things Brenda had no idea about, and the people around the table managed to pull from her a little bit of her own story. It was fun, and everybody was friendly, but Brenda figured it would be a lot more fun when she wasn’t so new to the place.

As the afternoon wound down, Brenda looked forward to the day being over so she could unwind a bit. It would have been nice if she’d known someone, since it promised to be a lonely evening. But then, an opportunity arose.

“Hey, Brenda,” Debbie said as she shut off her computer. “I don’t know about you, but I could stand a beer and a bar burger.”

It sounded wonderful. Brenda wasn’t much of a drinker but she’d been thinking that a beer would taste real good – but there was no way she was going to a strange bar in a strange town by herself. “Fine with me,” she said.

A few minutes later they were in The Back Street Bar up the street, a nice neighborhood bar, nothing special. “How do you like it so far?” Debbie asked.

“Stuff kept coming at me so fast I hardly knew what to think,” Brenda replied. “I suppose after a few days it’ll start to make sense. But at least everybody seems nice.”

“It is a good group of people,” Debbie said. “Easily the best I’ve ever worked with. For something I never figured on doing, I got lucky.”

“You didn’t plan on working at a newspaper?”

“Never crossed my mind,” the dark girl admitted. “I was waiting tables in the morning at the Spearfish Lake Café, out by the railroad tracks. Mike goes out there for breakfast most mornings. Well, I liked that job, I could bullshit with the customers, sass them a little, tell stories and like that. Breakfast customers are usually pretty glum. Well, anyway, one day Mike said to me that anybody as smart and full of shit as I am shouldn’t be waiting tables. I asked him what he thought I should be doing, and he said I ought to go down and interview for the ad sales job. I knew very little about computers, and not jack shit about advertising, but Kirsten and Sally said they didn’t know anything about advertising when they started there, either, and they thought I could do the job. Let me tell you, it beats the hell out of waiting tables. The money’s better and I’m not on my feet so much.”

“I was the grill girl in a fast food joint until last week,” Brenda admitted. “I got damn tired of standing on my feet and flipping burgers. It was the same job I had my last couple years of college. I hated it, but I was a while finding newspaper work.”

“I’d liked to have stayed in college,” Debbie said wistfully. “I’ve been taking some evening and online courses, but it’s not the same.”

“What were you studying?”

“Just general stuff. I wanted to be a RN, they’re in demand and make good money, but I never got in the program. Now, I’m doing all computers and graphics and marketing, stuff I can use. God knows why I ever wanted to be a RN in the first place. Just something to do, I guess. Now, someone’s going to have to make me a real good offer to get me out of the Record-Herald. I gripe about the pay, but it’s actually pretty good compared to anything else I could be doing, and the whole system is designed so it gets better the longer you stay there.” She changed the subject. “You aren’t married or have a boyfriend or anything?

 “Not really,” Brenda replied. She did have some online friends who happened to be guys, but it wasn’t the same thing. “There were a couple guys I went out with for a while, but they turned out to be jerks, and I broke up with them. I guess I don’t have too good of an eye for men.”

“I hate to tell you this, but the pickings are gonna be slim up here. I’d sort of hoped that Mike would hire a guy for the junior reporter job, and I might have a chance. That’s what happened with him and Kirsten. She was an ad salesman, and he was the junior reporter, and they’re not the first or the last to get paired off like that, or so Carrie says, anyway.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Brenda smiled.

“No big deal,” Debbie laughed. “But seriously, I’m not real picky. All I’m looking for is a nice guy with a steady job who I can click with, doesn’t drink much, and doesn’t think he has to use his fist to communicate with his wife. But every guy I find is either married or otherwise engaged, too young, some kind of nut, or a drunk, or trouble, and often as not some other gal has already thrown him back in the lake for the same reason. But, who knows, maybe someday. I’m not real anxious.”

“I wouldn’t mind finding a good man if I could,” Brenda said. “I’m just not all that anxious right now either. Finding a guy up here might mean I’d have to live here instead of going back to Camden or somewhere. I’m pretty much a city girl, and I don’t know how well I’m going to like it here in the woods like this.”

“I suppose it’s what you’re used to. Now, me, I couldn’t stand living in Camden. Too many people, too many cars. I don’t mind running down there for the papers when it’s my turn, or maybe driving down and doing the mall trip once in a while, but living there, no thanks.”

“This is all pretty strange to me,” Brenda said. “What do you do in your spare time?”

“Not really a whole lot,” Debbie said. “Work on the online college courses or drive down to the community college at Meeker for my classes, but that’s only Tuesday and Thursday this semester. We can’t stay here late tonight, I got a paper I’ve got to get ready for tomorrow night.”

Just then the waitress showed up with the burgers and asked if they’d like another beer. “Go ahead if you like.” Debbie said. “I said one beer and I meant one beer. But I will take a small Coke.”

“Guess I’d better pass, too,” Brenda said. “Just a glass of water for me.”

They got to eating. The Back Street Bar’s burgers were large and juicy and didn’t bear any resemblance to the little pieces of cardboard that Brenda was much too familiar with. “I consider myself something of an expert on burgers,” she said, “and you know nothing beats a good bar burger.”

“Ain’t it the truth?” Debbie agreed. “Don’t know why that is, either. So what are you doing with your time?”

“Oh, not a lot,” Brenda said. “I’ll probably spend some time online. I’m involved in a couple of extended role-playing groups, and I’ll put a little into that. Maybe watch a little TV, maybe read a book. After today, I think I want to get to bed early.”

“Yeah, Tuesday is hump day around the old shop, most weeks, anyway. We usually get it wrapped by quitting time, except for the Tuesday night council meeting, but you know you’ve been there and done that when the day is over with. I’d say, let’s do it again tomorrow night, but I’ve got class and you’ll have council.”

“Another time,” Brenda agreed. While there were people at the Record-Herald she liked a lot, in Debbie, she was surprised that she’d found the beginnings of a friendship

*   *   *

The shadows were growing long as Brenda climbed the stairs to her apartment over the Record-Herald. It had been a long day and a busy one, a day that wasn’t much like she’d envisioned her first day on a real newspaper job would be. There was an awful lot to learn, but she felt confident that it wasn’t out of her reach.

She went upstairs, turned on the scanner, and began to unwind. It felt good to get out of her office clothes and into some shorts and a T-shirt while her Mac was booting up.

But before she could get down to business, there were some issues to deal with – she sent an e-mail to her dad at his work address, mostly to let him know what her new e-mail address was. She sent somewhat longer e-mails to some online friends she’d never met, with mostly the same aim, then decided she didn’t want to deal with her familiar game tonight. She turned on the TV, went over to the easy chair, and flopped down in it. She wasn’t paying much attention to the show and all the newness of the day overcame her, so soon she found herself falling asleep.

A piercing noise startled her for a moment, until she realized it was the scanner. “Spearfish Lake, Central” a woman’s voice came over the speaker. “Report of a structure fire at 5241 Lakeshore Drive. Caller advises it’s through the roof.”

“Central, Spearfish Lake. Copy on the structure fire at 5241 Lakeshore Drive,” a male voice came back over the speaker. “Roll Albany River.”

“Copy your request for Albany River,” the woman replied.

No time now for screwing around, Brenda thought. This had to be covered, and she was pretty sure she knew where Lakeshore Drive was.

*   *   *

Brenda was hardly dressed to go out, but she didn’t have time to waste. The dirty shorts from earlier and a T-shirt would have to do. She slipped into her shoes without socks and sped down the interior stairs to grab a notepad and the digital camera. She had no idea of where the place was, but Mike had given her a map earlier. She raced out and hopped in her car just as a fire engine came by, and she figured that would solve the navigation problem, anyway.

It turned out that Lakeshore Drive was the road that went north out of town along the lake shore – well, duh, Brenda thought – and the fire was in a summer cottage along the lake. The cottage wasn’t large, and it was definitely burning when she first saw it.

Earlier in the day Brenda had seen the page in the Reporter’s Notebook about covering fires – it was about the second page in the book, and she remembered thinking at the time that it was good practical advice that she’d never even heard mentioned in journalism classes. Following its advice, she parked her car a couple hundred yards away and well off the road and hiked down to where she could get a better look at the burning house.

The fire had indeed burned through the roof, and flames were coming out the windows at the back of the building. The firemen were just getting hoses set up and starting to put water on the fire, and Brenda could see them in the firelight as they ran a feeder line down to the lake for more water.

It was sort of a futile exercise, she thought. She could see that the building was full of fire, and even if they did get it out soon the place would at best be a burned-out shell. Remembering the digital camera slung around her neck, she switched it on, found a nearby tree, rested the camera up against the trunk to steady it for low-light conditions, and took a couple of shots of the flames reaching up into the trees.

“Oh, you heard it too, huh?” she heard a half-familiar voice behind her. She turned around and saw that it was Henry McMahon, Mike and Kirsten’s son, who’d helped her move into her apartment on Saturday. He had a film camera slung around his neck.

“Yeah,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Mom and dad were watching TV,” he said. “I told them I’d come. I was bored, anyway.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Hell, yes, I was being carted to fires even before I was in school. I was sort of the junior-junior reporter all summer, too. I see you brought the digital. I better grab a few shots as long as I’m here. Sometimes the digital does goofy things at night.”

“The previews looked good,” she said.

“Yeah, but you get them up on the screen and they’ll sometimes be all out of focus,” he replied, bringing the camera up to his eye and leaning against a tree, much as Brenda had done. He took a few shots and told her, “I think we can get closer if we stay out of the way.”

“Fine with me,” she replied, following him across the road and into the yard of a closer cottage, where a few neighbors stood.

“Anyone inside?” Henry asked the little cluster of people.

“Oh, hi, Henry,” a woman replied. “No, it was closed up for the winter. They left for Florida on Labor Day.”

“Whose place was it?” Brenda asked, pulling a notebook from her pocket.

“Partees,” the woman said. “Brad and Linda. They’re retired.”

“I’m from the Record-Herald,” Brenda said. “I suppose I’d better get your name.”

“Oh, you’re the new reporter?” the woman asked. “I’m Lisa deLine. Glad to meet you.”

They stood talking for a few minutes. Mrs. deLine seemed like a friendly woman, but Brenda’s attention was more on the fire, and so was Henry’s. “Let’s try for a shot from the lakeshore,” he suggested. “Someone might still have a dock in.”

“Good idea,” Brenda told him. “See you later, Mrs. deLine.” She followed Henry between some cottages along the lakeshore, and then down in front to where they could get a different view of the fire.

As it turned out, there weren’t any docks in the water that would give them an over water-shot – though Brenda could see that it would be a heck of a photo if it could be done – but they did take a couple shots anyway.

“This angle just isn’t as good,” Brenda told Henry.

“Yeah, but we had to get away from her,” he said. “If she’d got going, it would have taken her a while to wind down.”

“Huh?

“You haven’t read about her yet? Mrs. deLine is one of the bigger pains in the ass in this town,” Henry said. “Her daughter, Cindy, is in my class. Cindy is OK, but her mother is always working the school administration and the board for special favors. It embarrasses Cindy, but there’s not much she can do about it. If you’re going to be covering the school board, you’ll meet her again and find out what I mean. I’ve heard dad bitch about her for years.”

“You sound like you know a lot about her.”

“Well, I was pretty much brought up around the Record-Herald,” Henry snorted.

“Going to stay in journalism?” Brenda asked.

“I don’t know,” Henry said honestly. “On even numbered days I sometimes think so. On odd numbered days, I keep thinking I ought to do something else. I’ll probably take some journalism in college, but it may be a minor.”

“You’re a junior, right? Got any idea where you’re going to college?”

“State, most likely,” the tall young man replied. “That’s where dad went. But I’m going to spend some time looking at other ideas too. Maybe a major in marketing or business ad, or maybe information systems. I’m not all that big on being a reporter.”

Brenda could understand if Henry wanted to do something besides the family trade. At his age, she’d been sure she wanted to be a newspaper person, and she’d kept her eye on the goal ever since. But she knew a lot of kids who hadn’t been near as decisive. “You play basketball?” she asked.

“I was on varsity last year, and usually started,” he said. “It won’t be enough to get an athletic scholarship at State. Dad was as good as I am, but he couldn’t even get into practices, so he did volleyball instead. But maybe a scholarship at a smaller school if the next two years go well. That’s why I’m not absolutely tied to State. Did you do sports?”

“No,” Brenda admitted.

“Where’d you go to college?” he asked.

“I graduated from Weatherford,” she said, not wanting to admit that most of her credits were actually from a community college.

“You like it there?”

“It was OK,” Brenda said, hoping to change the subject.

By now, the pumper from Albany River had arrived, and a second line was being run into the lake. Much more water was being pumped on the fire, which was visibly dying down. “Well, we’ve probably got our spectacular photo, if any of them come out at all,” Henry said. “Night fires are a bitch to get photos of. We might as well think about getting out of here. You’re going to have a bitch of a day tomorrow, and I’ve got school.”

“Well, I’ll hang around a little longer, just in case,” Brenda told him. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose if we stick around a little we might get Masterfield or McGuinness off to the side for a second, once they get it knocked down,” he said. “That’d save you a little time tomorrow.”

“Who are they?”

“Harry Masterfield is the fire chief. He drives a fuel oil truck, and he’s tough to get hold of for a quote. Joe McGuinness is a bookkeeper, McGuinniss Accounting. He’s the assistant chief. He’s usually easier to get on the phone, if he’s not tied up with a client.”

Brenda shrugged in the firelight. “You’re probably right,” she said. “I wouldn’t know either of them if they bit me in the butt.”

“Easy enough to find here,” Henry smiled. “They’ll have on turnout jackets with ‘Spearfish Lake Chief’ or ‘Assistant Chief’ on them. We’ll give things a few minutes to die down, and then go hang around the Spearfish Lake pumper until one of them comes around.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before.”

He smiled. “I covered my first fire solo for the Record-Herald when I was in fifth grade. It’s been the family business for a long time now.”

“Do you do anything besides go to fires and play basketball?”

“Oh, I mess around on the ’net some, hang out with friends, watch TV, and like that. Spearfish Lake is a small town, and there’s not a lot to do. You probably think it’s pretty dull in a small town like this.”

“It’s different,” Brenda admitted. “I haven’t been here long enough to figure out whether I like it or not.”

“You’re from Camden, right? I figure you’ll probably find this place pretty slow after that.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Brenda admitted. “I’m a city girl at heart.”

“I want to give city life a try,” Henry admitted. “It gets damn slow up here at times. But I wonder how much I’ll like it.”

“I’m sure it’s just what you get used to growing up.”

They stood and talked for a few more minutes about nothing much in particular as more water was poured on the fire and it began to burn down. Finally, Henry suggested they find Masterfield or McGuinness.

The chief was standing by one of the fire trucks, smoking a cigarette and talking lazily with one of the Albany River firemen. Henry marched right up to him and said, “Hi, Chief. What’s the deal?”

“Let’s face it, we ought to have brought the hot dogs,” Masterfield said. “Fire code says we have to put it out, though.”

“What do you think was the cause?” Brenda asked in a businesslike manner.

“Too early to tell,” the chief replied. “Electrical, at a guess. Probably a mouse.”

“A mouse?”

“Yeah, a lot of these older places have fabric insulation on the wiring, and when it gets old enough and soft enough, mice will try to make a nest out of it if it’s in the wrong place. Sooner or later a mouse gets fried, and there’s all the mouse nest stuff.” He frowned and added, “Are you Henry’s girlfriend?”

“No,” Henry replied before she could say anything. “I should have introduced her. This is Brenda Hodunk, the new junior reporter at the Record-Herald.”

“I thought you looked a little old for Henry,” the chief smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Brenda. With any kind of luck, I won’t have to meet you like this very often.”

That was a strange thing to say. “Why’s that?” she asked.

“Firemen don’t like fires,” he smiled again. “That’s why we’re firemen.”

“Makes sense,” Brenda replied. “Some other time, then. You figure on being out here long?”

“Probably take all night to drown everything,” the chief admitted. “Maybe not quite that long since we don’t have to haul water.”

“Guess I won’t hang around then,” Brenda told him. “I’ll call you in the morning for the details.”

“I’ll try to remember to call them in,” he said. “I’ll likely be pretty bushed, but I know what Tuesday is like for you.”

Brenda and Henry walked back to their cars. “Thanks for coming out, Henry,” she said.” I learned a lot.”

“Didn’t know if you’d hear the call,” he said noncommittally. “It beats the hell out of sitting around watching Dateline or dinking around on the ’net. See you around, Brenda.”

“See you, too,” she replied. “And thanks again.”

Brenda went back to her car and headed back toward the little apartment over the Record-Herald. It had been a long day, and not an easy one. But all in all, for a first day on a new job, it had been a good one. Spearfish Lake may be out in the sticks, she thought as she drove back down Lakeshore toward downtown, but it seemed to be a pretty good place. Already it seemed as if she’d made some new friends, and after she’d been on the job for a while, this might turn into a place where her career could be off to a good start.

Yes, this job might not turn out too bad at all, she thought. I wonder what tomorrow is going to bring?

*   *   *