by JEDAH MAYBERRY
Windows
I have led a long, yet productive existence. That said, any impact I’ve had on the outside world has been decidedly fleeting. Alas, this is the fate of a newspaperman. My first day at The Bulletin, the city editor, Ed Bergen, felt obliged to pay me a personal visit. He engaged every member of his staff precisely three times during each of our tenures: your first day at the paper, the first time you screwed the pooch, and your last day at the paper (or his, depending who survived whom).
He offered a wee bit of advice that first day, the same I imagine he dispensed to all his first dayers: “Smoke cigarettes, inhale as much ink laden dust from the newsprint as your lungs can withstand, and hope to the heavens that your final column beats your obituary to print.”
He turned to walk off then added matter of fact, “Write your own obituary. You don’t want to leave your legacy in the hands of any of these feckless hacks.” He flung his arm in the direction of an arrangement of exposed cubicles. A few wary heads popped up meerkat-style, fingers poised above their keyboards, eyes blinking nervously to determine whether his arm flinging had been meant to single out any of them. One after the next, the meerkat federation submerged again inside their cubicles, back to the business of producing copy for the next morning’s edition.
Ed continued about the perils of leaving my obituary in unfeeling hands. “Ned Turner: upstanding this, that, or the other, member of whatever, survived by blah, blah, blah. All meaningless platitudes,” he bellowed. He leaned in and looked me in the eye, the stench of cigarette smoke and fallen newsprint dust closing the space between us. “Don’t tell me how a man died. Give me the things that made this man’s heart beat. That’s how to make it as a newspaperman.”
He used the word newspaperman like he was referring to a new kind of superhero, defrocked of his cape, but capable of tremendous influence if he set his mind (and pen) to the task. In one fell swoop, Ed’s lecture shifted from the pedestrian fate that might befall my obituary, to a patented formula for making it in the world of local journalism, one I have used to great effect in the intervening thirty-eight, thirty-nine years.
“We don’t make the news,” he lectured me. “It is not our job to influence the newsmakers. It is our task to take the news they make and offer an account, spiced up or dumbed down, depending on the shifting attitudes of the reading public.”
I miss it immensely. Nearly as much as I miss my Abigail, one of the precious blah, blah, blahs Ed Bergen saw fit to include in the mock obit I should wish to never see written. I hope to join her presently.
My week started out again hot on the heels of Haitian drug dealer, Luscius Brand. There was a time when black, white, or Hispanic would suffice. Nowadays, all of them are mixed together, with a little Native American descent thrown in to boot. Just the other morning, the city desk received notification for the police blotter of a half-Puerto Rican man, mixed with black, found murdered. A year ago this time, the body of a half-black man, mixed with Eastern Pequot, turned up on the pathway to Indian Leap. And before that, a half-Eastern Pequot, mixed with Puerto Rican, was killed. It would appear the color wheel has begun eating its own tail, a tail that too closely resembles my skin tone to take any comfort in the prospect of a circle of ne’re-do-wells annihilating one another.
My conscience bites at the base of my skull. ‘You see them as no different from yourself, yet you do nothing to save them.’
“It is not my job to save them,” I respond, again channeling Ed Bergen. “It is my job to report that they cannot be saved.”
I have done all I can for these bastards. Committed my career to looking in on them, have watched with a heavy heart the things they do. I cannot alter their ways. The most I can do is provide a window into their world in hopes of warding a new generation of little bastards away from the same destructive path.
Forgive my candor, but my days of political correctness are well behind me. I call them as I see them– Luscius Brand is a reported drug dealer. To state that he is of Haitian descent is of no greater consequence than reporting on his favorite color or which hand he uses to sign his name. Some claim that he is my white whale, one last conquest to make.
I have drummed up a new lead to track down – a kid detained close to a murder scene on his way through Fort Shantok, but my right front tire feels squishy. With another snowstorm brewing, it’s high time I do something to rectify the situation.
I pull into one of those shops that claim to specialize in tires alone until some pushy salesclerk proceeds to peddle all sorts of added services your way.
“I have a tire that won’t hold air,” I explain to the technician once he motions me over to his standup workstation.
“Which tire did you say is flat?” he asks.
“I didn’t say the tire was flat. I said it won’t hold air.”
“Ah, slow leak. Got you, got you. We’ll take care of it, no problem. No problem whatsoever.” The technician repeats himself, like he isn’t sure of what he’s said until his inner-self has registered it a second time. The entire world could benefit from a regular round of copy-editing.
After a forty-five-minute wait, the source of my slow leak is traced to a screw lodged close to the inner sidewall, too close evidently to plug. The technician points me to a range of all-season treads, recently placed on sale, a full replacement my only option. “This will do you just fine, just fine,” he assures me, again repeating the words to satisfy some urge lodged within his inner-self.
Another forty minutes pass before the technician returns to tell me that the tire has been mounted and balanced (mounted and balanced – on repeat). He recommends a four-wheel alignment at a range of prices including ninety-day, twelve-month, and lifetime warranties.
“The car’s lifetime or mine?” I ask. He and his inner-self appear at a loss for words. I opt for the ninety-day warranty. It will prove far more than adequate.