Into the Light (16 page)

“Do many people come here to the office?” Trey asked.

“Used to.” Richmond evidently decided to expand on his surly two words. “People come to place ads, take out subscriptions, give us details for the obituaries or tell us something they think we should print. Sometimes they find out they missed a paper that mentioned their family or someone they know, and they come to see if they can get the back edition.”

An open door in the back wall led to a much larger room and the heart of the paper. Trey immediately understood Richmond’s dirty face. There had to be a word beyond “mess” to describe the stacks of paper, empty cartons, cans, and kegs that littered the floor.

“My wife made me keep things in better order,” Richmond said. “Since she’s gone, things got away from me, but I figure no one will buy the building until I clear it out.”

That had to be an understatement of the effect this sight would have on a prospective purchaser. Ignoring it all, Trey wove his way along the narrow trail of clear floor to the larger of the two presses and flattened a hand on the feed board. How many thousands of pages had this machine printed in its years of service?

“Is the smaller one in case this breaks down?” he asked.

“No, the Campbell prints the paper. The job press is for flyers and such. We print anything anyone’s willing to pay for.”

“And this?” Trey walked over to a tall monstrosity only a committee of drunks could design. “A linotype machine? Surely once the word gets out that you have machines like this for sale, there will be a line of newspapermen around the block.”

“We’ll see. I wrote to a few men I know, asked them to get the word out. Trouble is there’s always used presses for sale. No one can make a living from a country weekly.”

The Richmonds had made enough of a living to raise their family in Hubbell. Trey said nothing, but didn’t control his expression carefully enough.

“This town was better off before your father got too good for us,” Richmond said defensively. “He hurt a lot of people when he stopped supporting local businesses.”

“And the police and the city council?”

“No, he still....” Richmond stopped. Then said defensively, “I never printed an untrue word.”

“But you left out some true words?”

Richmond sighed. “Yes. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the only way we could do it. Sadie called it dancing with the devil, but that’s not all that’s wrong here. With her gone.... She was a better newspaperman than I am, and I didn’t realize it until she was gone. Circulation started sliding the day she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

They stood there eying each other warily for a moment until Trey said, “Show me how it works, and I’ll help you clean up. I’m good with a broom.”

Richmond gave in and laughed out loud. “That’s inveigling all right. You have a deal.”

Trey spent the next hours learning how the presses worked. By the end of the day, he was ready to approach the linotype machine. By the end of the week, he owned a newspaper.

P
ETER
R
ICHMOND AGREED
to stay as editor of the
Herald
for as long as necessary to teach Trey the intricacies of putting out a weekly paper. After his first experiences with the linotype machine, Trey vowed to do anything necessary to keep Richmond for at least ten years.

Timmerman’s clerk jumped at the offer of a temporary job sorting paper and filing several evenings a week. Cleaners scrubbed every nook and cranny of the office, but the walls resisted soap and water. Trey brought in painters, and the yellowish brown disappeared under two coats of pale green.

While they all worked, Trey read, and learned, and filled pages with notes on the problems he believed had brought the
Herald
to its current sorry state and ideas about how to fix them.

One of those ideas gave him an excuse to see Deborah Sutton again.

D
EBORAH DIDN’T EVEN
look up from her ironing when the knock sounded. Aunt Em would answer, and if a neighbor wanted Uncle Jason or Eli, send them to the back field. If wives or daughters had come along, she’d have them here in the kitchen soon, recovering from the cold November wind over coffee and gossip.

“May I speak to Miss Sutton, please?”

His voice shivered through her. Her hands and heart stilled, and her mouth went dry. She’d thought him gone. A hundred times a day she imagined him climbing the steps into a railroad car, taking a seat, the train pulling away from Hubbell.

“No, you may not. She doesn’t want to see you, so you need to get back in that buggy and go back where you came from.”

Deborah shoved out from behind the ironing board and ran. She made it to the door in time to stop Aunt Em from shutting it, then stood wordless, staring at him. The bulk of his long gray wool coat made him an imposing stranger looking back at her with Trey Van Cleve’s eyes.

She needed to hear his voice again. “Your nose is red from the cold.”

“And dripping too, since we’re being so honest,” he said, opening one gloved hand to show a crumpled handkerchief. “You’re a sight for sore eyes yourself.”

Her blue wool dress had faded to nondescript a dozen washings ago, her apron had a streak of dirt down the front, and hair straggling loose from its pins had been tickling her neck for the last hour.

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

“A job.”

“A what?”

“I wish to discuss an employment situation with you, and if I have to do it from here, I’ll freeze before I finish, and so will you.” As if for emphasis, he rocked on his feet in that way cold people had.

“Tell him to leave,” Aunt Em whispered.

“I don’t want a job,” Deborah said, “but you’d better come in and warm up for the trip home.” She had to yank a little, just a little, to get the door out of Aunt Em’s grip and open it.

The back of Deborah’s neck burned with awareness of him behind her for the few steps from the back room to the kitchen. She’d stayed too long in the cold of the open doorway, her breath came quick and shallow.

Aunt Em sat at the kitchen table, chair pushed back, arms crossed over her chest. “My husband and his brother will see your buggy and be here any minute.”

Deborah said nothing. Her uncles were working on an irrigation ditch in the back field, almost a mile from the house. Since they didn’t have a telescope or binoculars with them, they wouldn’t see the buggy, or return home before dark.

Ignoring his hostesses’ rude failure to take his coat and scarf, Trey unwrapped and unbuttoned and sat where Deborah indicated.

“I meant what I said, you know. You do look good. It’s good to see you again.”

Unable to speak for fear her voice would break, Deborah poured three cups of coffee, put a plate of cookies on the table, and sat. Hiding behind her cup, just in case, she said, “It’s good to see you too. I thought you’d be gone, traveling the country again by now.”

Good wasn’t the word. Dizzy with relief, giddy with joy, light-headed with pleasure.

“Jamie, my friend Jamie Lenahan, is starting a business and needs some help, so I stayed. Then I heard Mr. Richmond had closed down and was looking for a buyer for the
Herald
. We reached an agreement, part of which is that he’s staying on and teaching me the newspaper business.”

Staying. He was staying, but he didn’t look happy about it. Deborah watched him fiddle with his coffee cup, turning it in place on the saucer. Had Mr. Richmond cheated him? That seemed unlikely, but something was wrong. “Are you sorry you did it? Have you changed your mind?”

“No. What I did was read years of back issues of the paper. I thought, everyone I talked to thought, that after his wife died, Peter lost heart and so the paper declined. We’ve put out three weeklies since we started up again. Not only have I read the papers before and after Mrs. Richmond died, I no longer believe Peter wrote anything that appeared in the paper before his wife died. She did it all. The sad truth is if the Atlantic Ocean swallowed the entire country east of the Mississippi, Peter Richmond could make it sound so dull insomniacs would fall asleep by the third paragraph.”

Aunt Em sniffed. “The Van Cleve talent for business must be wearing thin in your generation. You’d better cut your losses and get going to wherever you’re going.”

Trey smiled, teeth white in his tanned face, and Deborah took a swallow of coffee to hide her expression. Why couldn’t he have turned out to be a spotty boy?

“I rewrote every article in the last edition, and I can keep doing that. He didn’t even seem insulted, but relieved. So that’s where we are now. He can teach me to run the presses and the linotype, and I can do the writing. I think I’m halfway decent, certainly better than he is, and I’ll get better still.”

He pulled two newspapers, folded small, out of his pocket and set them on the table. “What I can’t do is this. Mrs. Richmond was good with standard news articles, but she had a special talent with this, and I think it was a major part of what attracted readers in the paper’s heyday.”

Deborah managed to look from his face to the two papers he set by her on the table, but how could she read anything with him sitting there looking at her?

“What should I see?”

“One is a page from a paper printed a year before she died. The other is a page from last week. You can see the problem right there.”

He tapped the papers one after the other and took a swallow of coffee. When Deborah didn’t pick up the papers, he explained further.

“Christenings, weddings, anniversaries. She didn’t just give the bare facts of who the event was for and who attended. She mentions ladies’ hats and dresses, little personal touches. Look at this one where she describes the way the baby reacted when he felt the water at his christening. I’d say he cried. Peter wouldn’t mention it at all. She describes the expression on that baby’s face, the
way
he cried and the way he waved his arms and legs. The whole item is only two paragraphs, but you read them and an hour later you remember that christening as if you had been there. I want that back in the paper, and I can’t do it.”

What he was saying, rather than the miraculous sight of him right here in Aunt Em’s kitchen, finally struck Deborah. She heard the rest of his words as if from far away.

“I need a lady reporter, someone who can stand at the edge of events like that, notice details, and report them. Someone with ties in town who would hear what’s going on with Hubbell families. If the paper is going to regain circulation, I don’t think long articles that come across the wire about what’s going on in Europe, or in Washington for that matter, will do it. People who live in Hubbell read the Hubbell paper to find out what’s going on in their town. I want to tell them, and I want them to find it interesting.”

She didn’t wait for him to ask. “No. No, I can’t.”

“I think you could. I’m not asking a favor. I’m offering a respectable position, and I’ll pay what it’s worth.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“You....” He didn’t finish whatever he’d been about to say but got to his feet and buttoned his coat. “I thought a woman who likes books might like working for a paper. If you change your mind, let me know. I’m not going to find someone who can do what I need easily. Thanks for the coffee, and.... Take care of yourself.”

Aunt Em all but herded him out, her expression one of grim satisfaction.

The sound of the door closing almost but not quite hard enough to be called a slam spurred Deborah into frantic action. She grabbed the two papers Trey had left sitting on the table and stuffed them in the pocket of her apron. By the time Aunt Em returned, Deborah had the coffee cups in the dishpan.

D
EBORAH HID THE
papers under the mattress of her bed. Every night she pulled them out and pored over them, studying not only the brief descriptions of social events Trey had mentioned, but every word. The differences between the older paper and the new glared from the page.

Could she do what Mrs. Richmond had done? She scribbled descriptions of Miriam’s wedding and the christening of Judith’s son in the margins of both papers until every bit of paper not covered with print was covered with tiny handwritten words. Thinking about it was ridiculous. She had no more talent than Mr. Richmond.

Shoving the papers back under the mattress, she picked up her current book, then sat staring blindly at the page until a tap on the door brought her out of her trance. She called out, expecting to see her uncle. Aunt Em would never knock on a door so gently.

Her aunt and uncle both walked into the room and sat on her bed. As if that weren’t surprise enough, Uncle Jason took Aunt Em’s hand in his and kept it.

“The two of us have had some long talks about you and Mr. Van Cleve,” he said. “We want you to know that no matter what you do, you are a daughter of our hearts and always will be.”

Deborah’s eyes pricked. She tipped her head back to keep the tears inside.

“I don’t know him enough to dislike him,” Aunt Em said. “What I dislike is his name, and I know that’s not fair. He may be as honest as his father is dishonest. And I know that you want to take his offer. I didn’t miss how those papers disappeared from the table. In fact something is crackling under me right now as I sit here.”

Heat rose in Deborah’s cheeks, and she couldn’t help but smile at her fierce aunt. “We never did get away with hiding much from you, did we?”

“Your sisters didn’t.”

“We just wanted you to know,” Uncle Jason said, smoothing over that awkward truth, “that you can take the position he’s offering without upsetting us. And if you don’t like it, you can come home again, or you can try something else.”

She loved them both, loved them enough to tell them the unvarnished truth for once. “No, I can’t. When he came to the church I told him we couldn’t be friends because it would upset you, but that’s not the truth. I always knew you’d get over any upset. The truth is I don’t have the courage. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. You are sitting on those papers, and part of me wants so much to try, but I’m afraid, and I can’t.”