Harvestman Lodge (7 page)

“I met Jake Lundy’s uncle down at Harley’s just now.”

“Bufe?”

“That’s him.”

“Bufe and Jake are a lot alike. Not so much in looks as in how they behave.”

“That’s what Bufe told me.”

“That Bufe’s a mess. So’s Jake.” Ruby chuckled and shook her head and chuckled. “I remember one time when …” The phone rang, cutting her off. “Well, I’ll tell you some other time.”

The phone call occupied Ruby’s attention for a minute, and when it was done another immediately followed. Eli used the interruption to thumb through his portfolio, making sure all was in order, and wondered whether David Brecht would be more interested today in his graphic or editorial skills.

Ruby spoke again. “Did you notice the purple hair on Mr. King when you come in?”

“I did. I’m not sure it was full-out purple, though, or just kind of violet or lavender.”

Ruby chuckled. “I’ve seen it way worse than that.”

“How’s it get that way?”

“He dyes it. I don’t think the dye is supposed to come out the color it does, but on him, it does, at least half the time. One time, and I swear on the Bible that this is true, he came in and his hair was straight-out turquoise. No lie. I don’t think he notices it himself. Funny. You’d think that somebody who dyes their hair would keep a watch on what it looked like.”

Eli glanced at Ruby’s dark roots. “You’d think so.”

“Mr. King is a nice man. I like him. Most do. There’s a few hereabouts, though, who can’t get past the fact he never married, never has had a girlfriend anybody can remember, and has always been interesting in what a lot think of as sissy things. He raises the prettiest rose garden in Upper East Tennessee. People assume he’s … well, you know.”

“Okay.” The relevance of that information was lost on Eli, so he let just it pass.

The door dividing the lobby from the rest of the building rattled and opened. A dark-haired man, just a dash of gray mixed in, peered out and saw Eli. “Eli Scudder? David Brecht. Come on back! Ruby, if you would, take messages on any calls I may get for the next half hour or so. This gentleman and I have some talking to do.”

“CALL ME DAVID,” BRECHT SAID as Eli sat down on a contoured vinyl-bottomed chair inside the editor’s glass-walled office. Brecht adjusted the blinds to provide some interview privacy, cutting off Eli’s view of a typical small newsroom – notebook-cluttered desks, word processor terminals atop them.

On the bookshelf built into the wall behind Brecht’s desk, Eli noticed something else that pleased him: a copy of his novel,
Farlow’s Trail
. Eli had not sent it as a writing sample to Brecht, so either this was a publisher-provided review copy or Brecht had taken the trouble to buy it himself.

Brecht’s shirt was creased in a blocky pattern that indicated he had put it on straight out of the store package, un-ironed. Brecht wore no wedding ring and had not shaved in a couple of days. Obviously an established bachelor. There was a framed photograph of a poised and attractive woman on one corner of his messy desk, however.

Brecht sat behind his desk and leaned forward on his elbows. He had an intent, slightly on-edge manner, and brown eyes that pierced like augers. “Eli, I was very impressed with your resume and work samples. And I’d already read and thoroughly enjoyed your novel even before I received your application. When I heard there was a new book out set in our own area here, I had to read it. We carried a review in the paper. I reviewed it myself. A very positive review. Book’s on the shelf behind me.”

“I noticed. Thank you. Writing that novel was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life, even though its release was a mostly invisible blip on the screen of publishing. Paperback originals don’t gain attention. I’m hopeful of advancing as a published author over time, expanding my range and moving up into hardcover.”

“Well, whatever kind of cover is on it,
Farlow’s Trail
is an excellent read, revealing a talented author. It certainly lent strength to your job application when I noticed your name and made the connection. Well, forging on: I’ve spoken to two of your references already and feel no need to call the third. Now what do you have there? More samples?”

“Yes, sir. These are mostly graphic work … what you had through the mail were primarily editorial samples, you’ll recall.”

“Absolutely! And impressive ones! I’m taken with your writing style, Eli. Much more deft and articulate than most of what I get from my reporting staff. But I’d have little right to expect better from them. A paper our size tends to hire mostly entry-level types, typically not from the top of their graduating classes and certainly not seasoned as writers. Young people still writing by memorized j-school rules rather than experience and instinct. When they turn the corner, as you obviously already have done, and move to the next skill level, that’s when I usually lose them to a bigger paper somewhere. I had two go to the
Knoxville News-Sentinel
just last year, and one to Chattanooga. The best writer our staff has ever had, though, Sally Ogle, a young woman from Sevier County, left us a few years back to go work for a little rag of a shopper put out by a local ne’er-do-well. Please don’t repeat that I said that. I’m simply being candid with you. She was fed a lot of promises about how successful the thing would be, how her pay would increase rapidly, how a shopper was a sure-fire prospect in Tylerville. And I think she might have been wooed by some more, uh, personal considerations in addition to the professional ones. She and the man running the thing found one another mutually intriguing on an interpersonal level, shall we say.”

“Let me guess,” Eli said. “The shopper is already out of business.”

Brecht aimed his index finger at Eli. “Bingo. It was a mistake in judgment on Sally’s part to make that move. I could have told her what would happen, but naturally she wasn’t talking to me about being on the prowl for a different job. So we lost her, to my regret. I still hold some hope she might come back, and if she does, I’ll take her, despite the fact she left before. She’s that good a reporter. She works at the Silver Dollar City theme park over in Pigeon Forge since the shopper went south and the scoundrel who ran it broke up with her.”

“Theme park PR office?”

Brecht shook his head and grinned very slightly. “Selling sandwiches served on cheap plastic plates shaped like a prospector’s mining pan, as I hear it. Total waste of journalistic talent, her doing a job like that. Unfortunately for us, she can probably make almost as much money doing that as she could working for us. And living at home again, she pays no rent. So we have little chance to lure her back, though I wish we could.”

“I’m sure staff turnover is a problem at every small paper,” Eli said.

“Definitely. A paper our size simply can’t pay what we wish we could, even for our best people. And as an afternoon daily, we’re bucking a national trend toward morning papers. But we have no intention for this newspaper to go away. Not in my lifetime, anyway. But let’s put that aside and talk about what we hope to have you do for us. By the way, no need for ‘sir’ or ‘mister.’ Just David.”

“Whatever you say, David.” Eli mischievously wondered what the reaction would have been if he’d called him Davy Carl.

“Well, Eli, down to brass tacks, to coin a phrase. You already know the basics: Tylerville and Kincheloe County celebrate their common bicentennial next year, with the celebration culminating in a parade and downtown festival and local holiday on October 12, the actual bicentennial date. A month before that the
Clarion
will release a large one-time magazine titled
Tylerville at 200
as our contribution to the bicentennial observance. It will be provided free of charge to all subscribers, given for special distribution to the various historical societies across the state, and used in other ways we will no doubt think of over the next several months. Of course we’ll enter it in the appropriate Tennessee Press Association contests, and I have no doubt we’ll win big in that arena. This is going to be a quality item, no tossed-off tabloid on newsprint. It will be a heavy-duty, slick magazine, perfect-bound, full size, comparable in physical quality to anything you’d buy at the magazine rack in a high-end bookstore. Down the road we may even reprint the thing in book format, if the response is as strong as I hope it will be. We’re outsourcing the print job because our press isn’t made for this kind of work. My intention for your involvement is to ensure that the quality of content is equal to or even better than the packaging. Which is why we have created the special projects editor position you’re applying for today. Any questions so far?”

“Will this be a strictly history-focused publication? Stories about the founding of the community and so on? I focused a lot of my proposal in that direction. By the way, I should probably go ahead and give that to you.” He pulled the document from his bag and passed it across the desk into Brecht’s hand.

Brecht continued: “A lot of history, yes. But not exclusively, and not all from the founding days. Certainly not dry, formal, academic history in any case. Nor will it be tea-parlor, provincial, ancestor-worship history that communities such as ours tend to drift into. You know how local history, and historians, can be.”

“Oh yes,” Eli said. “I grew up near Knoxville, and there were always plenty of local ‘historians’ around who were ready to lynch anyone who dared see their favorite forebears as anything less than minor deities, free of all transgression. They are glad to make idols of them, but not to concede that those idols were in reality as human as any of us. Occasionally it must be the role of an honest historian to take the air out of a few balloons.”

Brecht frowned, causing Eli to shut up abruptly and wonder if he’d just said something he shouldn’t. “Let me clarify,” Brecht said. “It is my intention that we publish a look at local history and heritage that is accurate and truthful … but not that we be self-consciously and purposefully iconoclastic while we do it. We’re not – I repeat,
not
– charging out like knights to destroy beloved perceptions for the sheer delight of doing so. That simply is not our goal.”

Brecht’s harping tone aroused Eli’s first moment of doubt. He had no intention to suggest the magazine be “self-consciously iconoclastic,” but he also had no wish to ignore the best practices of research to promote local legends that might have no solid foundations. His name would be on the masthead of the magazine, after all, and probably be seen at some point by those university professors for whom he’d worked as a researcher. He wanted it to be something he could be proud of.

So he decided to ask a question that might be risky. He had to know what he was getting into here, even at peril of rudeness.

“David, tell me straight: is
TYLERVILLE AT 200
going to essentially be a smiley-face puff piece for benefit of the Chamber of Commerce?”

Brecht almost came out of his chair, making Eli think he was angry. But oddly enough, Brecht started to grin. “I’m so glad you asked that question. It’s a blunt but valid query. The answer is, no. No, no and no again. Not a ‘puff piece’ by any stretch.”

“Glad to hear it.” That, apparently, was that.

It wasn’t. Brecht kept talking. “But a promotional publication, yes. That must be clearly understood. Promotional in the sense of being aimed at illuminating the most positive parts of the heritage of the local community and revealing those as foundational to the best aspects of the Tylerville and Kincheloe County we know today. This community has been shaped by its history, from its founding on through the difficult years of the Civil War and beyond that into the 20th century. I want to illuminate that history, and how it has made us who we are. If along the way we encounter historical issues that are, uh, unusually delicate – slavery, for a ready example – I will be the final arbiter of if or how we address those matters. You will have a high degree of control and oversight of the publication, but I am who and what I am, the editor, and as such I hold final editorial control over this newspaper and any associated publications it might create. Including
TYLERVILLE AT 200
.”

Full editorial control of his own had not been asked for or expected by Eli, but Brecht’s dictatorial tone annoyed him. He had to remind himself of the old dictum that freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns the press.

“I wouldn’t anticipate anything else,” Eli said evenly. “You are the editor here.”

Brecht nodded. “We will encapsulate and record the heritage of this county and town, from start to present, in a manner that does it full justice, and which is easily accessible to the average reader. But just as you, in creating your resume and work samples to apply for this job, have presented a truthful but positive picture of yourself, so also we want to present a truthful but positive picture of our community. We’re going to put our best foot forward.”

Eli understood Brecht’s point. Even so, surely a community’s honesty in looking at itself was in itself a positive aspect of that community. It crossed his mind … but not his lips. This was a job interview. Prudence demanded he not be argumentative or confrontational.

So all Eli said was, “I think we can create a fine publication.”

“Glad to hear it. I agree.”