Letter From Home (2 page)

He continued to hunch over the big old typewriter, eyes squinting in concentration, fingers flying.

“Mr. Dennis.” His head jerked around. Deep lines grooved the editor's round face. His mouth turned down. Greenish blue eyes glittered beneath bristly brows. He glowered. “What do you want, girl?”

Gretchen wanted to run away. But he'd told Mrs. Jacobs he had to have somebody quick. Gretchen thrust out her hand with the folder holding her clips. Her hand shook. “Mrs. Jacobs said for me to bring my clips. I'm Gretchen Gilman.”

He grabbed his pipe, took a deep puff. His thick eyebrows were tufted like an owl's. He snapped, “I told her I wanted a boy. She said nobody was good enough. So here you are.” The emphasis on the pronoun was sour. “How old are you, girl?”

Gretchen stood as tall as her five feet three inches would stretch. “I'm almost fourteen.” Well, she'd be fourteen in September. That was almost, wasn't it?

“Fourteen.” He heaved a sigh. “God damn this war.” He puffed on the pipe, pinned her with his glittering eyes. “Can you write, girl?”

“Yes.” Her answer came out clear and definite, as definite as the crack of the exhaust when Dr. Jamison floorboarded his old car, as definite as the peal of the bells from the Catholic church on Sunday mornings, as definite as the big, black headlines yesterday about the Germans fleeing Monte Cassino.

The editor studied her a moment longer, reached out for her clips, riffled through them, stopped to read one. He took so long, Gretchen knew he was reading it twice. When he looked up, his dark impatient glance swept her up and down. “Don't believe in women in a newsroom. Except for soc.” He pronounced it “sock,” his voice a rasp, reflecting a newsman's disdain for the fluff of the society page. “But there's a war on.” He tapped the sheet. She leaned forward and knew it was the story about Millard. “I guess you know that. Okay, girl. We'll give it a try.” He handed back the clips. “You can start now. Take the plain yellow desk at the back. The metal desk belongs to Willie Hurst. Sports. He retired years ago, but he's back to help me out. Willie's off to San Antonio for his grandson's wedding. The desk that looks like a tornado hit it belongs to Ralph Cooley. He used to work for INS.”

Gretchen's eyes widened. INS! She'd never known anybody who was a reporter for one of the wire services. Mrs. Jacobs had told her all about the three wire services, International News Service, Associated Press, and United Press. Nobody ever called them by those long names. They were INS, AP, and UP. To be a reporter for one of them was as magical to Gretchen as owning a flying carpet.

Mr. Dennis puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. “Used to.” His tone was dry and a little sad. “But I got to use him. There's nobody else left. Joe Bob Terrell got called up. He left last week.” The editor jerked his head. “The desk with the rose in a vase is Jewell Taylor's. Soc. Get on the phone, call the police station, ask if there's anything new on the blotter. You can come in every afternoon after school and we'll see how you do. If you work out, you'll be full time when school's out. Five bucks a week.”

As Gretchen moved past, her heart thudding, the editor glanced at her hat. “School clothes will do from now on.”

And here she was, a reporter for the
Gazette
, out on her beat. Gretchen took the courthouse steps two at a time. It seemed a long time ago that she'd first walked into the
Gazette
office. Now it was a familiar place. She still tensed whenever Mr. Dennis called her name, but he didn't glower at her anymore. Yesterday, when she wrote a story on Rose Drew's plans to go to San Diego to see her husband, a navy petty officer, before his ship left port, Gretchen almost hadn't turned it in. She'd laid the story next to her typewriter and poked in another sheet of copy paper and started the kind of story she knew Mr. Dennis expected:

Gretchen yanked out the sheet, threw it away. She picked up her first effort, pasted the three pages together, and placed them in the incoming copy tray on Mr. Dennis's desk. She went back to her desk and began typing up the list of civic club meetings, shoulders tensed, waiting for Mr. Dennis to clear his throat, the grumbling roar that usually preceded a spate of impatient instruction.

He cleared his throat. “Girl.”

She sat still and tight. Did he sound mad? There was a funny different tone in his voice. Was he going to fire her? Why had she been so stupid? She should have written it the right way. . . .

“Girl.” A bark now. “What's your full name?”

She twisted in her chair. “Gretchen Grace Gilman, sir.”

“Okay.” He bent back to his work.

When the first copies of the paper came out of the press-room, he tossed one toward her, then clapped his panama on his head and strode out of the office, heading for Victory Café and coffee. She unfolded the paper and there on page 1, just below the fold, was her story:

 
G. G. Gilman
. . . Gretchen clutched the newspaper. She burst out of the
Gazette
office and darted across the street, not caring that the light was red and a battered pickup honked at her. She pulled open the screen door of the café and ran to the kitchen, skidding past Mr. Dennis, who was settled at the counter with Dr. Jamison and Mayor Burkett. As she pushed through the swinging door, she shouted, “Grandmother, Grandmother, look!”

Her grandmother, yellow coronet braids a little disheveled, plump face red with exertion, wiped floury hands on her big white apron. She took the newspaper, peered nearsightedly as Gretchen pointed.
“Wunderbar, mein Schatz, wunderbar.”
She spread the newspaper on the wooden counter near the refrigerator. “We shall cut it out, put it up for everyone to see.
Wunderbar
.” Gretchen caught her grandmother's hands and pulled her into a circling dance around the wide linoleum-floored kitchen.

And now, here she was at the county courthouse, which looked almost like a small castle, built of big red chunks of sandstone. The courthouse crowned the slight rise in the town square, green lawn falling away in every direction. The American flag and the Oklahoma flag snapped on their poles. Dark green wooden benches were placed every so often along the sidewalks that led to the entrances on all four sides. A gazebo nestled beneath two huge cottonwoods near the corner of Cimarron and Broadway. The main steps of the courthouse, wide and shallow, faced Main Street. The county clerk, county assessor, county commissioners, and county treasurer's offices were on the first and second floors; the courtroom, court clerk, county judge, and county attorney were on the third. She'd check with the court clerk, see if any lawsuits had been filed today, then go down to the basement to the sheriff's office. Behind his office a dingy green corridor led to the barred door and three jail cells.

Gretchen reached for the big bronze door handle. She smoothed out her face. It didn't do to be proud; that's what Grandmother always said. She couldn't tell anybody what it meant, seeing her name on the story. She felt like she'd climbed onto the back of a big black stallion and was galloping up a rainbow, riding higher and higher. She glanced at herself in the smudged windowpane as she pulled the heavy door. There. She looked serious, almost stern.

The door opened into a wide corridor. The floor was a speckled marble, greenish with dots of gold. In the basement, the floor was a dark green cement. The still air in the courthouse smelled like people even when there was nobody in the hallways. There was an acrid dryness of cigarette smoke, old and new, and an undertone of varnish—the walnut walls had recently been redone—and the tickly scent of ammonia as the custodian mopped.

Gretchen's sandals slipped a little on the wet floor. She was reaching for the heavy bronze knob of the county clerk's office when a siren wailed outside. She swung around, skidded across the wet marble. She ran to the end of the hall and the landing in the stairway. She pushed up a creaky window, poked her head out. A black and white patrol car, its red light whirling, the siren rising and falling, pulled out of the parking lot next to city hall and swung onto Cimarron Street, going west. The tires squealed as it turned right onto Crawford. She lost sight of the car behind a row of elms. The city had two patrol cars: Sergeant Holliman in Car 1, Sergeant Petty in Car 2. Everybody was still shocked about Sergeant Petty. Nobody had ever heard of a woman policeman. But Chief Fraser jutted out his red chin and demanded to know what he was supposed to do with every able-bodied man in the county in the service. As far as he was concerned, if women could weld bombers, they could patrol city streets. To be sure, Sergeant Petty, a lanky raw-boned woman with a long face, had always had day duty, which made Kenny Holliman grumble, but after all, there was a war on.

Gretchen returned to the lobby, used the Cimarron Street exit. Despite the heat, she broke into a run. At the street, she waited for a horse-drawn wagon to clop past. Lots of wagons were in use now with tires and gas so hard to get. A single-story brick building housed the police station, fire station, and mayor's office. The door to the police station was closed.

Gretchen burst inside, swept the long room with a glance. There were several desks behind a wooden counter, a little like the
Gazette
newsroom, but the only sound was a muted radio and the wooden desks were neat and orderly, papers stacked, not strewn. The door to the chief's office was open. The office was dark.

Mrs. Morrison, her plump, placid face beaming, pushed back from her desk. “Hello, Gretchen. Here to check the records? I'll get the book for you.”

“I heard the siren.” Gretchen reached the counter and set her sheaf of copy paper on it, pencil poised. “Is there a wreck?” There was a curve as Highway 66 swung out of town and only a little stretch of shoulder before the ravine.

Mrs. Morrison carried the ledger to the counter. “No. Just a call out on Archer Street. But you won't want that. The
Gazette
doesn't carry domestic disturbance calls.”

Archer Street? That was her street. A half dozen small square frame houses straggled along the gravel road. Gretchen knew everyone in each house.

Gretchen bent to look at the list of citations. Four of them. Two speeding, one driving under the influence, a larceny. Her eyes brightened at the latter. Mr. Dennis would be interested to know somebody had stolen a scarecrow from the Hollis farm. Now that could make a good story. Why would anybody steal a scarecrow? As she printed, she frowned. “I don't see anything about Archer Street.”

“That call just came in, but like I said”—Mrs. Morrison reached beneath the counter, lifted up a box of hard candy—“Walt don't carry that kind of news. Families with troubles, well, no sense in making things worse.” She held the box out to Gretchen.

Gretchen smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Morrison.” She picked a sour cherry ball even though it would make her mouth feel puckery. The candy reminded her of the cherry phosphates at Thompson's Drugs. She didn't go there during the daytime anymore, not since Millard's ship was torpedoed off Tarawa. The kids all met there on Friday night, but she used to go every afternoon. She pushed back the memory of Millard, with his tight red curls and round face, correcting her in his precise voice when she'd ordered a cherry “fausfade.” Funny, no one in the world knew of their joke and now only she knew. She hadn't written about cherry fausfades in her story about Millard. She'd written about how he'd tried so hard to take the place of his big brother when Mike went off to war, how Millard had learned to make black cows and hobokens, how he'd played the tuba in the band and done chemistry experiments in the shed behind the Thompson house and how he'd loved stars and music and finding arrowheads. She didn't write about how much he'd loved a senior girl and why he'd left to join the navy. That was maybe the best story of all, but that one she would keep in her heart. With the cherry fausfades.

Gretchen sucked on the candy and finished her notes on arrests. She turned her folded sheet over, looked at Mrs. Morrison. “Even so, I better get the information. Mr. Dennis says, ‘Ask and you shall receive.'”

Mrs. Morrison's sweet high laughter pealed. “Don't that sound like Walt! That man has no shame. Well, it's one of those things. We got a call from Mrs. Crane that there was shouting and screaming next door at the Tatum house. Well, no telling what's wrong, but everybody knows Clyde's back for a furlough before his unit ships out and everybody sure knows Faye's not been sitting home nights since he's been gone. It may be that Clyde's heard tell of her doings. And I can't think she's set a good example for that girl of theirs.” Mrs. Morrison's thin penciled eyebrows rose and her usually kindly glance was bleak as a February sunrise. “Oh, well, the war's hard on everybody, but a woman has to learn how to be alone.” She turned toward her desk.

Gretchen barely heard Mrs. Morrison mutter, “Says she's just dancin' but the devil loves slow tunes.” The Tatum house was three doors from Grandmother Pfizer's house. Gretchen had grown up running in and out of the Tatum house. Barb was just enough older that she treated Gretchen with casual disregard, sometimes welcoming Gretchen's wide-eyed admiration, other times brushing her off. Last year was Barb's first in high school. All the classes, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, were in the same big red brick building, but there was a divide wide as the Arkansas River between junior and senior high. Barb had gone out for cheerleader and she ran around with the older girls now. Gretchen remembered when Barb was skinny and could skip rope a hundred times without stopping. She wasn't skinny now and everyone noticed her when she came into a room. Gretchen felt a pang of envy. Barb's hair was a rich reddish brown and it curved in a perfect pageboy. Barb wasn't really beautiful, but she was interesting looking, with deep-set eyes, a regal face with high cheekbones, a way of throwing out her hands as if she were inviting the world to be her friend.