скачать книгу бесплатно
Then Willie Lee was at her side and tapping her thigh. “Mun-ro needs breakfast.”
Looking into his sweet face, Marilee smiled. “He does, doesn’t he.”
“I can give him my egg,” Corrine said.
“Please, make him toast, too, Ma-ma.”
“Yes, darlin’…I’ll make toast for Munro.” She looked at the dog, now eating the egg very gently from Corrine’s plate.
Marilee’s reasoning mind told her to force the children to go to school and face what they would have to face sooner or later, a regimen and self-control, and those few cruel and mean and inept people one will come across on many an occasion. Life was a tough row of responsibility to hoe, and the sooner the children, even Willie Lee, learned this, the better.
She all but took out a gun and shot her reasoning mind. It wisely shut up.
Thinking of both the principal and her new boss, who she would now ask to let her work at home, she got herself dressed nicely in a slim knit skirt and top in soft blue, accented with a genuine silver concho belt from her more prosperous days of no children and a husband who earned quite good money as a world-renowned photojournalist. She managed to talk herself into doing a thorough makeup job and brushed her hair until it shone.
Then she sat at her cherry-wood desk to telephone Principal Blankenship and secure from the woman the promise that Corrine would be kept with her grade. The principal was surprisingly agreeable, even eager, at the idea of releasing the child, whom she all but labeled troubled straight out.
“Corrine has perfect straight A’s,” the principal said. “Her grades are not a question. She is a very bright girl. That is not at all her problem in class. I’m sure we can accommodate you in order to help Corrine have the rest she needs.” Then she tacked on, “Ah…I have the name of a child therapist you might want to consider.”
For Willie Lee, the principal promised to consult his teacher about work that might possibly help him. Marilee, who had from her teenage years been unable to shake her faith in her own mental capacity, told the principal not to bother Mrs. Reeves. “I’m going to pick out a curriculum for Willie Lee.”
The principal definitely disapproved of this action, labeling it risky, but stopped short of pressing, no doubt fearful Marilee would change her mind and bring the children back to school.
Marilee thanked Principal Blankenship for all her help and hung up, sitting there for some minutes, her hand on the telephone, gazing at nothing, until she realized she was gazing at a pattern on the Tibetan rug that fronted the couch. She remembered, then, buying it in Calcutta, on one of hers and Stuart’s trips. Her gaze moved about the room, noting a painting on the wall that had been purchased in New Orleans, and a pottery vase picked up in the Smoky Mountains.
Her eyes moved to the small picture of her ex-husband that she kept, still, on her desk.
Stuart James grinned at her from the photo. She picked it up, remembering how handsome she had found him the first time she had laid eyes on him, remembering how wonderful he had made her feel when he touched her body. Stuart was a man who greatly enjoyed making love.
Into these deep thoughts came the sound of childish voices. She blinked and got up, following the sound to the back door.
Willie Lee and Corrine, with the dog between them, sat on the back stairs in the dappled morning sunlight that shone through the trees. They did not hear her footsteps, and she was able to watch them for some minutes through the screen door.
Corrine was talking to the dog, right along with Willie Lee. And she was actually smiling.
“Ma-ma…Mun-ro needs to come, too.” He spoke as if scolding her for not remembering the dog.
Marilee looked at her son and then the dog. “Okay, Munro…get in.”
As she backed the Jeep Cherokee from the drive, she gave thanks for the all-purpose vehicle. She supposed she might as well accept that the dog was destined to go everywhere with them. He could, in Valentine, America.
A new vehicle, a yellow convertible BMW, was parked in the block of spaces behind The Valentine Voice building. The top was down, and with a raised eyebrow, Marilee peered into the vehicle, noting the soft leather seats. Obviously, coming from Houston, Tate Holloway was unaware of how serious dust could be in this part of the country.
The two-story brick building that housed the newspaper had changed only marginally since it was first built in 1920. The back area of the first floor, which had once housed the printing press, had been converted into a garage and loading area. Printing was now done by a contract printer who did a number of small-town newspapers; The Valentine Voice was one of the last small-town dailies in the nation.
The front half of the first floor was pretty much as it had been built. The original bathroom had been enlarged and a small kitchen sink area added. Several offices had been made by adding glass partitions, one of which had dark-green shades all around and a door with a dark-green shade. The name on the glass of the door read: Zona Porter, No Relation, Comptroller. Everyone respected that Zona preferred privacy. One could go in and speak to Zona in the office, but Zona rarely came out. Had a bathroom been installed off her office, Zona would not have come out at all. She had her own refrigerator, coffeemaker, cups, glasses, tissues. She did not care to touch things after other people.
E. G. Porter’s original office remained at the right, with tall windows that looked out onto the corner of Main and Church Streets.
Entering through the rear door, Marilee felt a little like she was leading a parade, with the children and the dog Munro trailing behind her.
Leo Pahdocony, Sr., a handsome dark-haired Choctaw Indian who wore turquoise bolas, shiny snakeskin boots and sharply creased Wranglers, was pecking away at the keyboard of his computer and talking on the telephone at the same time, with the receiver tucked in his neck. He gave her a wave and a palm-up to Willie Lee.
His wife, Reggie, a petite redhead who handled news in the schools, churches and most of the photography, popped out of her swivel chair and came to greet them with delight. Reggie, who had for the past five years been trying to conceive another child, extended her arms to capture the children in a big hug. Corrine managed to sidestep her way to Marilee’s chair and sat herself firmly, but Willie Lee, always loveable, let Reggie lift him up and kiss him.
“You gave us a scare, young man, running off,” Charlotte told him, coming forward with messages for Marilee.
Willie Lee said, “I did not run off. I was coming home.”
“Uh-huh. Good thinking.” Charlotte turned her eyes on Marilee. “Tammy phoned. She’s got a horrible toothache.”
Marilee saw that Charlotte was thinking the same thing she was: that Tammy had a job interview elsewhere. Without Miss Porter’s money pouring in, no one expected the newspaper to continue much longer than a year, if that.
A pounding sounded from the office of the publisher. Marilee looked at the closed door and noticed that Muriel Porter’s name plaque was gone, leaving a dark rectangle on the oak.
Pounding again.
“He’s hangin’ pictures,” said Imperia Brown, smacking her phone receiver into the cradle. “It’s drivin’ me crazy. I’m outta here.” She grabbed up her purse and headed for the front door.
Charlotte strode over to the large, gilded frame of the newspaper’s founder’s portrait now propped on the floor against the copy machine, and said to Marilee, “He took down Mr. E. G. first thing.” Charlotte definitely disapproved.
“Might be one of us next,” Reggie said.
Marilee and Charlotte cast each other curious glances, and Reggie said she wondered if Ms. Porter might not be feeling her skin crawling at the removal of her daddy from the wall.
“I’ve been halfway waitin’ for the wall to cave in, E.G. having his say from the grave,” she said.
“The walls are apparently holding,” Charlotte said, “and he’s hanging them with all sorts of pictures. He has one of him with President Nixon. I don’t know why he’d want to advertise it,” she added.
“He has one of him with Reba,” Reggie put in with some excitement. “He did a feature piece on her for Parade Magazine.”
Reggie had every one of Reba McEntire’s albums. She suddenly grabbed up a pen to hold in front of her mouth like a microphone and began singing one of Reba’s songs. This was something she often did, pretending either to be a singer or a television commentator. Reggie was every bit pretty enough to be either; however, she could take clowning and showing off to the point of annoyance, as far as Marilee was concerned. Right then was one of those points, and Marilee felt her temper grow short as Reggie kept jutting her face in front of Marilee’s and singing about poor old Fancy.
“Reggie, would you keep an eye on Corrine and Willie Lee for me?” she said, thus diverting the woman to more quiet childishness, while Marilee went to their publisher’s solid oak door and knocked.
The sound of hammering drowned out her knock, and she had to try again, and when still no answer came, she poked her head in the door. “Mr. Holloway?” She was unable to address him as Tate, being at the office.
He turned from where he was hanging a picture. “Marilee! Come in…come in. Just the person I’ve been waitin’ for. You can come over here and help me get this picture in the right place.”
It was a picture of him with Billy Graham, black-and-white, as all the photographs appeared to be. He placed it against the wall and waited for her instructions, which she gave in the form of, “Higher…a little to the left…a little lower. Right there.”
Having, apparently, a high opinion of her ability to place a picture, he marked the spot and went to hammering in a nail.
In a flowing glance, Marilee, wondering how an accomplished journalist of Tate Holloway’s wide experience would manage in tiny Valentine, took in the room. The sedate, even antiquated office that had belonged to Ms. Porter was gone. Or perhaps a more accurate description was that it was being moved out, as pictures and books and boxes full of articles, a number of them antiques, were in a cluster by the door. Next to that, in a large heap, lay the heavy evergreen drapes, which had been ripped from the long windows, leaving only the wooden blinds through which bright light shone on the varied electronic additions: a small television, a radio scanner, a top speed computer and printer, a laptop computer, and one apparatus that Marilee, definitely behind the electronic times, could not identify.
The major change, however, was to the big walnut desk, which had been moved from where it had sat for eons in front of the windows, facing the wall with E. G. Porter’s portrait. Marilee had always had the impression that Ms. Porter would sit at the desk and look at her father on the wall and worship him. Or maybe throw mental darts at him.
Now the desk sat in front of that wall, looking away from it, and behind, where E.G.’s august portrait had hung, was an enormous black-and-white photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the famous shot with her dress blowing up.
After eyeing that for a startled moment, Marilee’s gaze moved on to the clusters of photographs already hung—the ones of Tate Holloway with Reba and President Nixon, and ones of him receiving awards, and with soldiers, and a curious one of a boy plowing with a mule. She stepped closer for a better look at that one. Next to the faded snapshot of the boy and the mule was one of a lovely blond woman in the front yard of an old house, her arms around two boys.
“That’s my mother,” Tate told her, coming up behind her. “With me and my brother, Hollis. I’m the older, skinnier one.”
“And that’s you, plowing with a mule?”
“Yep. Farmin’ in East Texas in the fifties. My mother took that picture. Mama liked to take pictures.”
He had come to stand very close behind her. Close enough for his breath to tickle her hair.
“This is Mama in front of the house me and Hollis bought her.” His arm brushed her shoulder as he pointed at another photograph. “And this is how my daddy wound up.”
He tapped a photograph of a mangled black car stuck to the front end of a Santa Fe Railroad engine.
“I like to see where I’ve come from and how far I’ve journeyed and remind myself where I don’t want to go,” he said with practicality. Then, the next second, “You smell awfully good, Miss Marilee.”
That comment jerked her mind away from the horror of the mangled car. She turned, and her shoulder bumped his chest, because he didn’t move but stood there gazing at her with a light in his clear, twinkling blue eyes that just about took every faithful breath out of her lungs.
His gaze flickered downward, and hers followed to stop and linger on his lips.
The next instant she stepped quickly away from him and said as casually as possible, “And just what does that picture mean in your journey?” She gestured at the photograph of Marilyn Monroe.
“Well—” he sauntered to the desk and laid down the hammer “—I like the touch Marilyn gives the place.”
“What touch are you going for, exactly?”
“Oh…I think a photograph like that sets people off balance, for one thing.” He folded his arms, and his strong shoulders stretched his shirt. “And it is lively. I might come in here feelin’ a little too serious about myself and things in general, and I’ll look up there at that beautiful woman—” he looked up at the picture and grinned “—with a laugh like that and those legs goin’ to heaven, and it makes me remember the true secret of life.” He gave a little wink.
Marilee took that in and took hold of the solid walnut back of the visitor chair, feeling the need to have the chair between herself and Tate Holloway.
She looked at him, and he looked at her in the manner of a man who was intent on having what he wanted. It was both flattering and unsettling.
Breaking the gaze, she said, “I need to discuss my job here.”
His eyebrows went up, “Well, you go ahead, Miss Marilee…as long as you aren’t about to tell me you’re gonna quit.”
Marilee reacted to this with a mixture of gratification and annoyance. There was something very commanding in the way he spoke, as if he would not allow her to quit.
“Do you want a raise?” he asked before she could speak. “I can spare twenty more a week—okay…I’ll go to thirty.”
“I don’t want a raise…but I’ll take it.”
“I won’t force it on you, if you don’t want it.”
“I want it. I only meant that a raise wasn’t what I was going to discuss, but now that you’ve offered, I will take it.”
“Well, since it isn’t a question of a raise, there’s no sense in talkin’ about it.”
“But we are talking about it now, and I’ll take it. My workload has greatly increased since Harlan and Jewel left.”
“Okay, twenty dollars a week it is.”
“You said thirty.”
He cocked his head to the side and regarded her. “What was it you wanted to discuss about your job, Miss Marilee?”
Keeping her hands pressed to the chair back, she told him of her decision to remove her children from the final weeks of school and therefore her need to work from home. That she had been so bold as to take the raise before explaining this, and the glint in his eye that showed admiration, gave her courage.
She explained that until this year, when she had enrolled Willie Lee in school, her arrangement with Ms. Porter allowed her to often work from home, and she had managed very well.
“I have made arrangements with a high school girl to help me in the summer,” she told him, “but until school ends, I will only have her occasionally in the evening hours.”
“Well now, I don’t see any problem at all with you workin’ from home,” said her new boss and publisher. “I already have laptop computers coming for everyone, and we’ll be installing a networking system so that any of us can work from anywhere in town, or in the nation, if need be.”
Marilee thought that The Valentine Voice was suddenly on a rocket, being blasted into the twenty-first century.
Moving purposefully, her boss went to stand behind his desk, placed his hands on it and leaned forward. “I want you to keep this to yourself for a few days. I’ll tell everyone shortly, but for now, I’m just telling you.” He paused. “We’re going to have to cut the paper to a twice weekly.”
She took that in.
He said, “I don’t imagine that comes as any shock to you.”
“No…it doesn’t.” It saddened her, but it was no surprise. Everyone knew that Ms. Porter had been subsidizing the paper for years, and Marilee, having taken over for Ms. Porter, had consulted a number of times with Zona and knew the great extent to which that subsidizing had run.
Tate Holloway eyed her with purpose so strong that he leaned even farther forward. “It is my intention to get this paper to be payin’ for itself. I’m out to build somthin’ here, Miss Marilee. And I’m going to need your help to do it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“I’m countin’ on that, Miss Marilee…. I sure am.”
Gazing into his twinkling baby-blue eyes, Marilee kept tight hold on the chair back, as if holding to an anchor in the face of a rising, rolling sea.
Six
Maybe She’s Human
Marilee came out of Tate Holloway’s office and closed the door firmly, then held on to the doorknob for some seconds. Behind her, through the door, the low tones of music began—Charlie Rich singing from Tate Holloway’s stereo.
Pushing away from the door, Marilee wrestled with high annoyance at her new boss. Tate Holloway was way too full of himself.
The next instant Reggie was sticking a pen in front of her face, saying, “Tell us the news, Ms. James. Are we all goin’ to be swept out to make way for new employees to go with the new publisher?”
This had been a major worry of Reggie and Leo’s, both being employed at the same place. Mainly it appeared to be a great worry of Reggie’s, since Leo wasn’t given to worrying over steady employment. Before coming to work at The Valentine Voice, he had held various positions in automobile sales, insurance, cattle brokering, photography, trucking and a half-dozen others, several for no more than a week or two before either quitting or being fired. While Reggie defended her husband as trying to find himself and being a victim of too much feminine attention, it had been fact that he had not been able to keep a job of any secure endurance, until he had landed the one of sports reporter at the Voice. He proved excellent at it, and the one time he had shown any inclination to quit, Reggie had come in behind him and finagled a job of her own, thereby being on the scene to make certain he kept his position.
A part of Marilee’s brain tried to be sensitive to all of this, but seeing everyone’s eyes, even Willie Lee’s and Corrine’s, turned in her direction made her very irritated.
“Don’t put that thing in my face, Reggie. I need both my eyes.” She pushed Reggie’s hand aside and strode to her desk and began shuffling through files to take home.
“Okay. So are you pissed off because you do not want to tell us that we are all about to be fired?”
