Oregon Hill (29 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Custalow after he was through.

“You remember Coach Epps?” he asked me.

Who could forget Coach Epps, who tortured and terrorized us through our high school football careers? He was ex-VMI, a former Marine who spent a year in the jungle during the Vietnam War, a chain smoker and creative curser.

“Remember what he said, about telling what you were going to do?”

I knew, but he said it anyhow.

“ ‘Don’t tell me what you’re going to do,’ is what he always told us. ‘Tell me what you did.’ ” Actually, I think Epps used the word “fucking” at least twice in that oft-repeated aphorism.

It occurred to me that a little bit of Coach Epps was living inside me, too.

It’s a problem, being a journalist, if you hold back information. Spilling our guts is what we get paid to do.

Sometimes, though, you can make out better holding something back, stashing it away in your self-interest savings account.

Today could be one of those times.

I make a call to Glenn and Jeanette’s to make sure Andi’s OK, and assure them and her that I’m going to straighten this out soon. Then I get dressed and prepare to meet my publisher.

I go to my desk first. I log on, and someone’s already sent a list of the nine people who’ve gotten the ax so far. Jackson told me eight of them earlier.

I write what I came here to write and print it out. I take whatever I really want to keep (damn near nothing). I didn’t bring my beat-up satchel with me, and I leave my sports jacket on. If I’m ushered out of the building, I don’t want some HR asshole to inform the whole newsroom of my demise by picking up my stuff, the way they did with Jackson.

Then, I ascend to the fourth floor.

It’s kind of a ghost town up here. Tumbleweeds blowing down the hallway. When they built the new building about a decade ago, they were counting on growth, not shrinkage. They could rent out this whole floor and move everyone who’s left up here down to share the third floor with what’s left of advertising; but I’m sure some corporate MBA asshole somewhere decided that wouldn’t look good.

I walk into the anteroom, where Sandy McCool sits like a guard between Grubby Grubbs and the outside world.

“Willie,” she says, smiling professionally. “Mr. Grubbs is waiting for you. Please go on back.”

Somehow, “Mr. Grubbs” sounds more unnatural coming from her than it does when I say it. Sandy had a son in high school by the time Grubby came here as an intern.

I ask her about her family, and she says something neutral. I try to make eye contact and fail. This does not bode well.

The weather report worsens to 100 percent chance of termination when I see that Grubby’s not alone. Sitting in the other chair facing his desk is Leon from HR. Leon’s only college degree is one he got mostly from correspondence courses, but he’s not the one with his head on the block, so who am I to sneer?

Grubby stands up, so Leon does too. They both seem intent on shaking hands with me. Me, not so much. I sit down, they retrieve their hands and sit down, too.

You’re making it easy for me, Grubby’s eyes seem to say.

“Willie,” he begins, “we’ve made some personnel decisions around here. I’m sure you’ve heard about some of them already.”

“We’re adding to staff?”

He doesn’t bother replying. Leon is shuffling the papers that spell out the terms of my departure.

“We’ve been having some bottom line problems,” he continues. “We’re having to consolidate some positions and . . . eliminate others.”

I wait for it.

“We have no problem with your performance, but we’ve decided to go in another direction.”

Actually, they’ve decided that I’m going in another direction: out the door. Grubby is so unctuous, he makes you yearn for the golden days when the cigar-chomping boss calls you into his office, sans HR goon, and says, “Black, you’re fired.”

“Am I fired?”

Grubby can’t bring himself to say it. Sitting there, with the sun sneaking in between the slits of the blinds behind him, I am fascinated by his pink, translucent ears. I imagine his whole body being like that, not substantial enough to block out sunlight.

After a short silence, I turn to Leon, who is waiting for his cue.

“Leon,” I say, “will you please step outside. Mr. Grubbs and I need to have a few words in private.”

Leon, whose last job might have been bouncer in a strip club, isn’t going anywhere unless “Mr. Grubbs” says the word.

“This will go a lot better if it’s just you and me,” I tell Grubby, then turn to Leon.

“Frisk me if you want to, Leon. I’m not packing.”

Leon starts to do just that when Grubby stops him.

“That won’t be necessary. Willie’s an honorable man.” And he motions him out the door. Leon scowls at me as if he does not share his boss’s confidence.

He closes the door. I can imagine him sitting in the waiting room, with Sandy McCool ignoring him.

“OK, Willie,” Grubby says. “What is it? I’ve got another appointment in ten minutes.”

Which means he’d allocated fifteen minutes for ending my quarter-century of employment. There no doubt are more heads waiting to roll.

“Well, Grubby, I’ve got a deal for you.”

I can tell he doesn’t like it when I use the nickname, even if it’s just me and him. In his mind, he’s “Mr. Grubbs.”

“We’ve already made our decisions, Willie. It has nothing to do with your performance, as I said. It’s just business.”

“Well,” I reply after a pause, “you might want to rethink this one.”

He seems to be afraid to ask the next question.

“Why?”

“Because you’re about to screw up the story of a lifetime. I’m this close to giving you something that’s going to make us all look good to those dickheads across the street in corporate.

“If you ‘go in another direction’ right now, I swear to you that I will peddle what I’ve got to the
Washington Post
, freelance.”

“I assume you’re talking about the Ducharme murder. Give it up, Willie. We’ll take it from here. Baer can handle it.”

“Baer can handle my dick.”

I slide my chair close enough that I can put my elbows on Grubby’s desk. He moves back a few inches and looks like he’s about to call Leon.

“In two days, I will give you the kind of story you always wish you’d read in this rag. The readers will eat it up. The wire services and TV will be all over it. Press awards, Grubby, maybe even a Pulitzer, who knows? The suits will love you.”

I know it’s the last part that really makes Grubby hard.

I’m overselling like hell, but this is no time to be meek. And I don’t feel like begging, anyhow. I feel like I used to feel before I’d fly into some Hill asshole, depending on my aggression to make up for twenty pounds.

“Two days,” I repeat. “It’s Tuesday. By Thursday, you will have the biggest story this paper’s had in years, Grubby. And nobody else has it. Nobody knows it but me.”

Grubby says he thinks I’m bluffing. I think he’s bluffing.

Finally, he blinks.

“Let’s wait, then. We can always change the date on your, uh, papers.”

“It isn’t going to be that easy,” I tell him. “I want something. Tit for tat. Quid pro fucking quo.”

He leans forward.

“What?”

“I want Jackson’s job back.”

He gives me a blank look.

“Jackson? Enos Jackson? You know. The guy you sent in a different direction yesterday. The guy who taught you how to cover a goddamn city council meeting before you were toilet-trained?”

What I want, I tell him, is a three-year contract for Jackson.

“Tell you what: I’ll make it easy on you. Stick him on the end of the copydesk. Hell, we’ve been two down over there for six months. It’ll be a cut in pay, but that’s just the kind of generous bastard I am.”

Jackson won’t last three months without a job, and I’m sure he’ll jump at anything Grubby offers, even if it does mean a $10,000 a year pay cut.

“This has already been decided,” he says. “It won’t be easy. We’ll have to cut somewhere else.”

The way he says it, I know I’ve won already.

“Jesus Christ, Grubby. You’ll sell enough papers, get enough juice out of this to more than make up for one tired-ass sixty-one-year-old editor’s pathetic salary.”

“All they look at is the bottom line,” Grubby says, “this month’s bottom line.”

Grubby doesn’t very often used the pronoun “they.” He’s more of a “we” kind of guy, a real team player. I get a tiny glimpse, like looking at sunlight through Grubby’s ears, of what a one-time semi-promising journalist endures to sit in the big seat.

“Well,” I say, “sell ’em. Earn those big bucks, Grubby.”

“If we let Jackson stay on,” he says, back to the first-person plural, “what about you?”

I’m feeling my oats now, going way farther than logic would indicate I should.

“If you’re not happy with what happens in the next two days,” I tell him, “you can fire my ass. Just, for God’s sake, don’t start talking about ‘going in another direction.’ ”

“Let me see what I can do.”

I stand up.

“Here’s what you can do. Sign this.” I hand him the piece of paper I printed out earlier.

He reads it and shakes his head.

“I can’t do this. They’ll . . .” He lets it trail off.

Grubby needs some spine Viagra.

“Sign this,” I tell him. “Then go across the street and tell ‘them’ that it’s essential. Tell them that the bottom line will shine like polished brass if they keep Enos Jackson on, because he’s the key to this whole story. Without him, there isn’t a story.”

Jackson doesn’t have a clue about what I’m about to spring on our breathless readers, but the suits don’t have to know that.

Grubby hesitates.

“OK,” he says.

I figure he must have some tiny bit of capital in the goodwill bank at corporate. He doesn’t like to use it, being a naturally stingy SOB, the kind of guy who used to borrow quarters and not pay them back. But that tiny sliver of journalist that’s still alive somewhere inside him wants the story I hope I can deliver.

“Get Sandy to come in,” I tell him. “She can notarize it.”

This seems to bother him almost as much as agreeing to let Jackson stay on, but he finally calls her extension.

So James H. Grubbs signs a three-year contract for the editing services of one Enos Jackson, who will work at the position of Copy Editor II for $54,000 per year. I know Jackson can live on $54,000 a year.

Sandy notarizes it, makes a copy for me and leaves.

“One more thing,” I tell Grubby. “Nobody else knows about this, especially Jackson.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “This isn’t near the top of my list of things I want known.”

I get up to go, even shake Grubby’s hand.

He looks me in the eye, which he doesn’t do very often.

“If you don’t deliver,” he tells me, “you are the most fired person in Richmond. You won’t get a penny beyond your last paycheck. I’ll find a way to fire you for cause. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

True. If they’d wanted to “for cause” me, they could have done it many times over the years. Drinking on the job. OK, maybe drunk on the job once or twice. Inappropriate relations with staffers who were more or less under me. That unfortunate incident with the company car and the hooker down in Florida.

There’s only one way to go from here. No backtracking. Just wriggle through this tight little tunnel I’ve put myself into and go for the light.

I’ve always done my best work on deadline. If this isn’t a deadline, I’ll kiss your ass.

As I’m leaving, I see that Leon is still in the waiting room, reading
People
magazine. His lips seem to be moving. He looks up at me and scowls.

As I’m about to close the door, something makes me look back. Sandy is staring at me. This time, our eyes do meet.

From where she’s sitting, Leon can’t see her right hand on top of her desk. She turns the hand ninety degrees and gives me a thumbs-up.

“Have a nice day, Willie,” she says.

The day’s still young, but so far, Sandy McCool has made mine.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN