Private affairs : a novel (11 page)

Matt's shoulders stiffened. As he stood, with Elizabeth beside him, the room was divided into two groups facing each other across his desk. Matt gazed at the uninvited staff, thinking of asking them to leave. Then, mentally, he shrugged. What the hell; it was a small paper; they were all involved. "Since this has become a staff meeting," he said evenly, "we'll discuss the first item now, then continue with the regular Friday meeting in the newsroom, where there are chairs for everyone."

No one spoke. "Cal, I assume you know you're fired. I'm damned if I can figure out why you pulled that half-assed trick after I'd expressly forbidden it, and I'm sorry, because you're a good reporter, but you can't work for me—for us—and do your own thing as if we don't exist. This staff takes orders or it doesn't work here. Clean out your desk; I want you gone by ten."

"Matt." Barney Kell looked like a worried father. "Would you take a few minutes to think this over? We don't want—"

"I've thought it over," Matt said curtly. "Elizabeth and I have talked about nothing else since we saw yesterday's paper."

"God damn it," Herb Kirkpatrick sputtered, "can't you see that we're standing with Cal? We won't allow an arbitrary firing—"

"Not that way," Barney warned Kirkpatrick. "Matt, of course Cal shouldn't have done it; he knows it and he's ready to apologize and promise it won't happen again. But we don't want anyone fired."

"It worries us," added Bill Dunphy earnestly. "If you fire one of us, who's safe? We work better, you know, when we feel secure."

Axel Chase chimed in, "Everybody should get a second chance, right? Shouldn't penalize somebody for one slip—"

"It was more than a slip," Barney objected.

"Whatever," Kirkpatrick said. He challenged Matt. "We all go if Cal goes."

"I don't . . ." Barney began, but then he stopped, uncomfortable, but standing with the others. Artner gave Matt a triumphant look and Elizabeth saw Matt's rigid back begin to give way: not a slump, but close. She put her hand on his arm, noticing that her fingers were trembling— Well why not? We could lose everything —and said to him, as if they were alone, "We're going to be busy, putting out the Chieftain by ourselves until we hire a new staff."

Artner's eyes slid from Matt's face to hers. She looked at him contemptuously. "You disobey an order, you violate a sacred ceremony, and then you encourage others to destroy a newspaper. You get a tin star, Cal. I hope it makes you feel proud and grown up."

"Good job," said Wally McLain under his breath.

"Bullshit," Artner spat. "You couldn't turn out a one-page flyer without us. Who's kept this rag going all these weeks while you two've been playing editor?"

"Cal, stop it," Barney ordered.

"Good advice," said Elizabeth. "Don't you talk to us like—"

"Fuck it, lady, you fired me, right? I'll talk any way I goddam please. You two babes in the woods had a chance to make this the best paper in New Mexico and you blew it. If you'd made me managing editor when Engle left, this place would be running like a fucking steam engine. That was my job! I waited five years for it and then those bastards sold out to a couple of spoiled, rich ignoramuses—married, for Christ's sake! Lovey-dovey, necking in the office, taking the whole show for themselves—and when they get bored, bring in somebody from the outside. Right? Not somebody who's waited five fucking years—"

"Shut up, Cal." Kirkpatrick looked at Elizabeth. "He's saying we don't like the idea of outsiders taking jobs we've worked up to."

"I heard him," Elizabeth replied curtly. "The paper was dying; we

decided it needs a managing editor who has nothing vested in the past, who can change everything if necessary." Matt was watching her and she took a deep breath. "We're not rich, we're not taking the whole show. We've dreamed of owning a newspaper for a long time and we're trying to build this one up without much money or experience—you're right; we have a lot to learn; we told you that when we first got here. But we're not ignorant or stupid; we know what we want to do and we're pretty sure how we're going to do it. And nobody here is going to stop us or destroy what we've started." Her breath came faster. "Every one of you can walk out of here this minute, but it won't shut us down. We'll put out a two-page newsletter if that's all we can manage—it doesn't matter as long as it's called the Chieftain —and we'll keep publishing every week until we hire another staff and go back to full size, because you may be willing to let this paper die, but we're not."

"Terrific!" exclaimed Wally. "By God—!"

"Terrific?" echoed Kirkpatrick sarcastically. "For firing the entire staff of a newspaper?"

"We're not firing anyone but Cal," said Elizabeth. "If the rest of you leave, you'll do it on your own. And the two of us will—"

"Three!" Wally burst out. "I'm staying!"

Behind the desk, Matt's hand found Elizabeth's and they stood close together, their hands gripped for support. He smiled at her, then turned to Wally. "We're glad to have you with us. The rest of you have until ten to clear out."

"Matt, don't be a fool!" Barney growled.

"The fools are the ones who quit because of Cal." Matt scanned their faces. "You don't like worrying about the future? I don't either. We put everything we have into this paper—we sold a good company and mortgaged our house, we're in debt up to our ears, and we work twenty hours a day to keep from going under. But you don't like worrying about the future. Well there's a way to take care of that. You can work your asses off the way we do, and protect your jobs by making the paper a success. If you can't handle that, we don't want you." He looked at his watch. "It's close to ten. Get going. Elizabeth and Wally and I have work to do."

No one moved. Bill Dunphy cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, I'd like to stay. Even a newsletter needs photos."

Matt nodded. "Who shot the photo of the Nambe dance?"

"I don't know, Matt. Nobody told me about it."

"Okay, I'll believe that. I'm glad you're staying."

"Well." Barney shuffled his feet. "I don't want to leave, either. Where would I go, at my age? Anyway, I like your style, Matt. You and Eliza-

beth. The thing was—you know—solidarity. But of course on any paper someone has to be in charge, ..."

"You shit," muttered Artner.

Barney's shuffling had carried him across the office. "I'd like to stay, if you'll have me."

"That would please us," Matt said quietly.

"Mmmm," Kirkpatrick hummed awkwardly. "Perhaps I'll—"

"Herb, God damn it!" Artner burst out.

"You'll need top political coverage," Kirkpatrick went on. "I wouldn't deny you my skills, since you do need them."

Matt and Elizabeth kept straight faces, squeezing each other's hands. "Good of you," Matt said.

One by one the others followed. Only Axel Chase was silent. His agonized face told Elizabeth he'd been in on it; as pressman, he'd be the likely one to help Cal paste up the new page. But they had no proof, and they needed him.

But Chase didn't wait to be fired. "I'm with Cal," he said defiantly. "You can print your paper without me. I don't like people kicked out after years of service—"

"Save your breath," Artner snorted. He looked at Matt. "You fucking bastard, I'll get you some day." Matt returned his look in silence. "I don't forget what people do to me," Artner flung at him, then strode from the office. Chase followed, disappearing into the pressroom. The others, shocked by Artner's venom, watched him yank open his desk drawers and throw into a carton papers, pencils, photographs, a coffee mug, a battered pair of shoes—until Elizabeth, feeling she was prying, turned away. "We should have our staff meeting now," she said to Matt. "If everyone can find a place to perch. ..."

They found places on the frayed couch and leather chair, the two folding chairs, and the deep window ledges in the adobe walls. From a corner of Matt's desk, Elizabeth looked about. They were terribly short-handed; no managing editor, no pressman, only three reporters. But at the moment, none of it mattered. Because, she thought, for the first time this newspaper is truly ours.

Their long days became longer. Peter and Holly divided their time between their grandparents' home and their own, while their parents were at the newspaper office until midnight or later, doing their own jobs, sharing the managing editor's job, filling in for Artner's reporting and Chase's management of the pressroom: Elizabeth helping with production and Matt printing the paper.

"Thought I'd gotten out of this business," he said ruefully to Elizabeth the first Thursday after Chase's departure. His hands and shirt were smeared with ink, his eyes, like hers, were red-rimmed from exhaustion, and the paper was two hours late, keeping the drivers waiting impatiently in their delivery trucks at the loading dock in back. "At least I know how to do it. I guess I should be grateful. This is one time Dad would be proud of me."

"He'd be proud of you for everything you're doing," Elizabeth said. "And so is everyone else. Look at them."

He did, and saw what she meant. The newsroom looked as if someone had speeded up a film, with everyone trying to do everything at once. By plunging in themselves, instead of waiting for others to do it, Elizabeth and Matt had galvanized the staff. Elizabeth had left her features desk to stand for hours at a counter pasting up the paper, learning as she went along how to visualize a full page before she began to paste stories, headlines, and photographs, and at the same time plan ahead to the inside pages where the stories would be continued and had to fit neatly together with more headlines, more photographs, and display advertisements. Matt had left his glass office to run the press, even making mechanical repairs that were second nature to him, after sixteen years with the Lovell Printing Company, but unfathomable to the rest of the staff.

And from the receptionist to Herb Kirkpatrick, they were won over by their new bosses; with no more reservations, they drew together, cooperated more generously, became a community.

"Axel did it, bless his heart," said Matt after the first wild week. "We're almost a family."

"You did it," Elizabeth said, but Matt countered, "No, you did," and it became a private joke. And even when they hired a new pressman and Matt went back to his office and Elizabeth to her desk, no one forgot the picture they had made: Matt Lovell, their ink-covered editor-in-chief, and Elizabeth Lovell, features editor, standing at a counter, pasting up stories while the rest of them went home.

"They came through," they all said whenever anyone brought it up. "They did fine. They really came through. Like pros."

The Nambes and their lawyer had consulted and found acceptable the Lovells' offer of a front-page apology plus a story by Elizabeth on one of their leaders. In fact, they found the idea fascinating and it took only half a day of discussion to withdraw the threat of a court case and arrange an interview with Edward Ortega, whose Indian name was Soe Khuwa Pin, "Fog Mountain."

Ortega was a friend of Peter's—one of the Indians who drove him to and from the pueblos after school and on weekends when they had business in Santa Fe—and so Peter went along when Elizabeth interviewed him in his home. He listened, squirming, as his mother probed and persisted in her questions to uncover the private Ortega behind the public one. "Those were personal questions," he told her as she drove home.

Elizabeth nodded. "Did you notice how he skirted the ones he didn't want to answer? But he told me enough. Sometimes, you see, a picture isn't worth a thousand words. Sometimes only the best words, put together in the best way, can show readers what a person is really like."

But later, when she sat at the kitchen table where she had set up her typewriter, no words came. For years she'd written smoothly and easily for others; now, writing for herself, she tightened up, head pounding as her thoughts darted back and forth, searching for something to say, trying out phrases, discarding them, trying others, before she even touched the typewriter keys.

It was late; everyone had gone to bed. Earlier, Peter and Holly had tiptoed into the kitchen to wish their mother good luck with her first column, then disappeared down the hallway to their bedrooms. Matt finished the work he had brought home, read the day's New York, Denver, and Albuquerque newspapers, asked Elizabeth if she wanted to talk, and, when she thanked him and said no, he too went to bed.

Elizabeth sat alone at the scrubbed pine table and ordered herself to relax. Pine cabinets and countertops of buff-colored Mexican tiles reflected the light from the wrought-iron chandelier; in the deep window seats Holly's collection of Kachina dolls sat in rows, round black eyes watching her critically. In the typewriter, a blank sheet of paper waited to be filled.

At three in the morning, Matt came in, tying his bathrobe, and found her frowning as she Xed out a sentence. He filled the teakettle and put it on the stove. "Stagefright?" he asked.

Elizabeth gave a small laugh. "Something like it. All these years I've complained about not being able to do my own writing in my own way. And now I'm terrified."

He kissed the top of her head. "That's why you're better than most writers. You respect writing; you don't dash it off."

"That makes it harder," she commented ruefully. "I never realized how comforting it was—I can't believe I'm saying this—to work for someone else who was responsible for deciding whether my work was good enough to print."

"Something like my discovery that it was comforting to have the secu= rity of the Lovell Printing Company, and my father, behind me."

They exchanged a look in the circle of light around the table. Elizabeth's frown disappeared, and in a minute they were laughing. "Both of us," said Matt, pouring boiling water into the teapot. "Scared of having to prove ourselves in the big world." He touched Elizabeth's cheek. "I wouldn't even have tried, without you."

She held his hand against her face. "Neither would I. We keep propping each other up when we get scared. But, Matt, this time I'm alone: just me and a typewriter and words tumbling in my head. And I can't seem to do anything with them."

"Listen to me." He poured their tea and sat opposite her. "I'm telling you, as your editor, not your husband, that you are one hell of a writer. You can make words dance and sing; you can make people and places seem so real I swear I can touch and hear them. There isn't anything you can't do with words, as long as you trust yourself. Now stop worrying about whether you can do it or not; let the words come from whatever mysterious place inside yourself they're born, and just start writing. If you want to be scared, wait until tomorrow, when you show me your story and I tell you what I think of it."