Begin to Exit Here (19 page)

I got out my dictionary and saw that it was spelled with the e before the i.

“The old rule doesn't apply,” I said. “Because today's Friday, the new rule is ‘i before e except on Friday.'”

“Thank you, Kurt. You're unbearably helpful,” Marta said.

Distractedly, because that's all I was good at then, I wondered about doing a follow-up on the kindergarten story, saying no charges could be filed because the district attorney saw no genuine criminal threat in telling children you were going to suck their brains through their ears. It was rude, but not criminal. First, I distractedly studied Perrault's new memo:

Reporters invariably deal with sensitive, upsetting subjects in the community, such as rape; incest; child abuse; pederasty; sex with farm animals; prominent homosexuals; Satanism; lesbians who want sperm; property taxes; and cock fighting. Always we need to exercise our utmost care and prudence in selecting a story that's newsworthy and in writing that story in a way that's both factual, balanced, correct, responsible, tasteful, and follows the basic tenets of sound newswriting.

Sometimes a reporter, aided by an inattentive editor, deviates from sound journalism, as in the recent story on the unfortunate children in St. Beaujolais
who were led to believe that their kindergarten teacher would suck their brains out. Doubtless, the story was somewhat newsworthy, since an apparent threat against innocent children was made. But in my experienced view, the lead of the story placed too much emphasis on brain-sucking and failed to name a specific, tenable criminal offense in a more abstract manner, such as assault. The reporter also might have been taking liberties in his writing style by inserting fatuous information from a neurologist announcing the slight likelihood of anyone sucking out a child's brain.

The story could have been far more precise and readable had the reporter simply stated the basic facts and avoided extraneous musings and implied humor about something so serious as a child's brain. Perhaps we need to re-examine our mission to provide the public with concise, unadorned facts that aren't wantonly interpreted by unmindful reporters.

Normally you could ignore Perrault's memos. I'd been told to regard him as a pompous figurehead, a former reporter and editor who, if he ever had much extraordinary skill in journalism, found no occasion to display it anymore. His advice was never wanted and was followed—if at all—begrudgingly. While he sat in his distant office in Hampton, drawing an unknown salary to match his concealed
worth, other editors actually ran the paper, and Perrault fired memos at everyone like a retired general fucking around with the artillery and striking his own troops. His newest memo was far longer than normal, and instead of blathering tediously about his latest annoyance and then shutting up, he seemed to have found a more volatile source for his suspicion and hostility. Me.

Everyone else in the bureau told me to ignore the memo anyway, like I always did.

“Maybe you should go to Hampton and suck his brain through his ears,” Harmon said.

“I wonder why he suddenly doesn't like me,” I said. “I've been trying to write in my style and violate every tradition he believes in for about two months. Is he just now noticing?”

“Could be,” Rebecca speculated. “Or maybe somebody complained about your story, and Perrault, who otherwise doesn't notice anything, was forced to realize you exist.”

“Could we tell him to stop reading the paper?” I wondered. “I know what. I'll send him a memo saying what his staff writes is none of his business.”

M
y story in the morning paper, which I assumed at least several thousand people read for their general well-being, said, “Criminal charges won't be filed against a woman who said she would suck the brains out of kindergarteners' ears because brain-sucking can't be regarded as a credible threat, District Attorney Susan Crewes said Friday.”

I liked it. It was true, concise, and exceedingly strange. Lisa worried about my prose style, though. She said I could have written a more harmless lead such as “District Attorney Susan Crewes says no basis exists for filing criminal charges against a St. Beaujolais kindergarten teacher
who threatened a bizarre punishment for noisy children.”

“Child abuse is a sensitive issue, Kurt,” she said as we talked in her office.

“You mean
brain
-sucking is a sensitive issue,” I said. “Although how do we know? It's never happened before, so no one has any opinions on it. I know what you really mean. You don't like my lead because it faithfully repeats the grotesque threat of sucking children's brains out, as if we're supposed to report the truth without
saying
the truth because it's upsetting. If my writing style is upsetting it's because the world is upsetting.”

She didn't particularly want to say I was right.

“I could have rewritten your lead if I'd wanted to,” she said.

“Yes, and thank you for not doing it.”

“Why can't you be a normal reporter and write serious, straightforward, abstract crap that doesn't show any trace of irony or comprehension of how strange your job is?”

“I'm not that way.”

“Why can't you just be an ordinary, muck-raking reporter who wants to tell the truth in a highly imitative style that's indistinguishable from the style of ten thousand other reporters?”

“Being ordinary is a disease.”

“Would it kill you to write like everyone else and be a dutiful AP clone?”

“I don't know. I'll never do it.”

“Well, here's something to think about,” she said. “Perrault.”

“What about Perrault?”

“I'll tell you about Perrault. Everyone thinks he's just this harmless old man remote from everything and pleasantly unable to have an effect on the paper anymore, but I don't know. He still has the luxury of power, and you've pissed him off.”

“I know. I worry about that. Do you think he'll do anything other than remain pissed off and write snotty memos?”

“Well, it's not something I'm going to
ask
him, Kurt. But what I worry about for you is that Perrault, like most editors, is pretty much an orthodox traditionalist. That is, he thinks
all
stories should be written however it was he got used to writing them him
self
back whenever it was that he was most successful and started getting promoted. I don't know what most journalism schools are teaching now, or what they taught when Perrault was a student, but a basic axiom that I don't think will ever be changed is that, in fact, I think the axiom was in one of your notes on the bulletin board: Dare to be the same. I'm pretty damn sure that Perrault honors that axiom, and when someone like
you
comes
along, defying the great sameness of the world and sneering at every tradition, he's going to want to kick your ass, you know.”

“I know.”

We sat quietly for a few seconds, as if allowing me to be noiselessly in trouble and begin wondering how I might change myself to become ordinary. It would never happen.

A
meeting was held in the bureau to discuss the newspaper's policy on shit.

“You've seen this,” Lisa said to everyone, holding a copy of Perrault's newest memo.

“Oh shit,” Harmon said. When he was interviewing a university student about attitudes toward the role of the military in achieving a president's political goals, Harmon asked why the student felt it was fine for George Bush to send twenty-some-thousand soldiers to Panama and overthrow a government. The student's answer, which got printed in the paper, was: “Sometimes the greatest good for the greatest number is achieved by kicking the shit out of someone.” We did get a few disagreeable phone calls
from incensed readers who wouldn't say “shit” over the phone, and we were too polite to say “shit” either, so we just had to guess that shit was the subject they so despised in the paper. Perrault despised it, too. His memo said: “There plainly has been some uncertainty among our staff on the
News-Dispatch's
policy about vulgarities and obscenities. This is our policy: Don't use them.

“The definition of a family paper is one that contains reading matter suitable for a prude, and that's who you should assume you're writing for: a prude.”

“We're just writing for one person?” I said. “We need more subscribers than that.”

“It doesn't matter how many liberals in Vermilion County read communist homosexual novels written by gay lesbians who think the s word is a commonplace expression,” the memo said. “Other papers can wallow in the s word if they want to. Ours won't.”

“Is the policy clear?” Lisa said wearily.

“If you're interviewing Miss Manners and she says shit, can you use it?” Harmon said.

“You probably won't be interviewing Miss Manners,” Lisa said.

Theresa raised her hand and said, “I have a question. Kurt asked me to ask if we're just writing for one prude, could you tell us what his name is so we could refer to him by name in all of our stories? I'll bet it begins with an
s
.”

“If you have any further questions, write them down
on a piece of paper and save it until you forget you have it,” Lisa said, turning and walking indifferently toward her office. The meeting was over.

“Let's go across the street and have a beer,” Theresa said, looking at Harmon and me.

“Okay, but no more than three or four. I'm watching my weight,” Harmon said.

“Other people are watching your weight, too,” I said.

“Eat me.”

“I don't eat pork.”

Harmon raised a fist toward my face, playfully, it seemed. “Someday I'm gonna kick your ass.”

“You couldn't raise your foot that far,” I said.

“Don't fight in the bureau. Go to Stanley's and do it,” Theresa said.

Across the street after Theresa and Harmon ordered their beers and I ordered a Coke, Harmon said, “I don't think I've ever seen you drink a beer or wine or bourbon or anything traditionally associated with this dissolute profession.”

“
All
reporters drink,” Theresa said in her girlish, mocking voice. “You'll ruin our reputations if people see you at the bar drinking a Coke.”

It was terrible when people didn't know they were cheerfully hurting you. And to tell them would only hurt you more.

“I already had some dry sherry,” I said.

“Today?” Theresa said.

“Five months ago,” I said. “I quit drinking sherry because it begins with an
s
. And then I quit drinking altogether. I don't drink any alcohol with vowels or consonants in it.”

“Good Lord,” Theresa said with amazement or something. “How can you go for five months without a drink?”

I wanted to know that, too.

“It's not good to stay sober too long,” Harmon said. “Sober begins with an
s
, too.”

Please be quiet.

“Do you drink at all?” Theresa said in a simply curious tone.

I shook my head no and said, “Like a gila monster, I get all my liquids from eating reptiles and rodents.”

“
Stop
it,” she said.

“I guess you don't like zoology,” I said, sipping my Coke. “I see why you wouldn't. We work for one of the biggest reptiles in the business: Perrault. He's not really a reptile, though. He's a dick. That's a different phylum.”

“Speaking of Perrault,” Harmon said, “it's your fault we're getting all these snotty memos now. He never cared about anything until you came here and started pissing him off. He used to just write memos that had nothing to
do
with anything we wrote. But now I'm afraid he's actually reading our stories.”

“I think you're right,” Theresa said. “It seems like all
his memos used to just be these sort of remote little things about journalism in general, like the time he told us to always double-check our spelling of the names of Chinese Communist officials, even though we never write about Chinese Communist officials. But since
you've
been here,” she said, looking at me, “all his memos seem kind of harshly directed at whatever we do.”

“Whatever
I
do,” I said. “Why does he need me for an enemy if he never needed one before?”

Theresa smiled with her eyes wide open. “Well, Kurt, he never needed an enemy before because you weren't available.”

S
ometimes I was a snarling wolverine of the free press, prepared to reveal troubling developments in society that I kept learning no one really cared about, such as The Next Estate.

The Next Estate was a happy project in the wilderness of Wellington County in which happy developers purchased more than seven hundred acres on which they would build an enormously expensive eighteen-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. Splayed out around the golf course, within the ancient, hardwood forests, would be more than eight hundred condominiums and private homes. The cheap residences would cost about three hundred thousand dollars or more. The bigger ones would
cost around half a million dollars or a lot more. People who lived there would be a homogeneous social group known as the wealthy but more emphatically as the really goddamn rich. Some of them probably would buy a condominium or a house to stay there just for a day or two at a time so they'd have a charming place to stay while they were in the area to watch a football or basketball game at the university. Along the entire perimeter of The Next Estate would be a wall or fence of some sort, and the entrance gate to the community would be constantly watched by uniformed guards to keep out distressingly unfortunate creatures such as myself. Not long after The Next Estate was started and it was the duty of the press to write about it, my project was to write a series of leads that I knew wouldn't be printed. One lead was “More than three centuries after Europeans moved to America to escape the oppression of an autocratic society ruled by the rich and elite, The Next Estate is being built near St. Beaujolais as a sanctuary for the rich and elite.”