Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

As I cursed my lack of patience, the woman in the housedress reappeared.

“What are you still doing here?” she said, spitting out the word “you” like it burned her mouth.

“I just-”

“She don’t want to talk none,” the woman assured me.

“I know, but I-”

“She don’t want to talk.”

“I just wanted to apol-”

“And I’m telling you, she don’t want to talk.”

The woman crossed her arms and glowered at me, daring me to lob up another feeble rejoinder so she could smash it back in my face. It was Olympic verbal volleyball. But while she was Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, I was the lightly regarded team from Liechtenstein.

“So what you’re saying is, she don’t want to … doesn’t want to talk?” I said.

“That’s right,” the woman said. “You best be moving on now.”

“Okay, I get it,” I said, then reached into my pocket for a business card. “Could you please just tell her I’m sorry I upset her so much? It was never my intention.”

The woman accepted my business card without comment, and I took that as my opportunity to leave with at least some shred of dignity intact.

* * *

I arrived back in the newsroom in time for a treat: a copy editor catfight.

Newspapers are full of strange animals, but the copy editors just might be the oddest of all the birds. A lot of them work a 6 P.M. to 2 A.M. shift, so they’re nocturnal. They are sometimes awkward socially, which is why they didn’t become reporters. And nearly all of them claim to be expert grammarians-and are not afraid to get into the occasional scrap over language or usage.

This one appeared to feature Marjorie, a tall, storkish woman with a voice like a foghorn against Gary, a small, nervous man with a somewhat legendary standing among his fellow copy editors. Gary was reputed to have memorized every word of the paper’s style manual, our Bible governing everything from capitalization to punctuation to spelling. Most of the copy jocks didn’t test him-except, apparently, Marjorie.

“… not the point,” Marjorie was booming as I entered. “I’m sure that’s what the style manual says. I’m saying, in this case, we shouldn’t apply the style manual.”

“You can’t argue with the style manual,” Gary countered. “It’s not called the ‘suggested’ manual or the ‘do this if you feel like it’ manual. A lot of thought was put into every entry and it’s not up to us to change it on the fly because it suits our needs.”

“It’s not about my needs,” Marjorie said. “It’s about the readers’.”

I walked over to another copy editor, a younger guy named Evan, and asked him for a translation.

“We’ve got a Buster Hays special: the fifty-ninth anniversary of the Battle of Sunda Strait, told through the eyes of some fossil from Linden who claims to have been a pilot,” Evan said in a hushed voice.

Buster Hays was himself a fossil: a cranky, crusty contrarian who should have retired eons ago, except he loved to stick around and remind the younger generations how much better things used to be. Among his specialties were World War II anniversary stories, which he did with special zeal. So, unlike most papers-which dutifully did the fives and zeros of the big ones, like D-day and Pearl Harbor-we did the threes, sixes, and sevens of just about every significant (and insignificant) military encounter of the time period. It was fairly useless from a journalistic standpoint, unless you happen to think there’s news value in the fast-fading memories of old guys rambling about details they were probably getting mixed up in the first place.

But, much as I hate to admit it, readers loved the stuff. Buster had at least a four-year backlog of future anniversary stories, all generated from reader letters he received in response to previous anniversary stories.

“So what’s the dispute?” I asked, keeping my voice down so as not to interrupt Gary and Marjorie’s blowup.

“Buster wrote the guy from Linden served in the Air Force,” Evan told me. “I don’t think they called it the Air Force back then.”

“That’s right! They didn’t!” Gary said, somehow picking up on our whispers over Marjorie’s booming. “From July 2, 1926, to June 20, 1941, it was known as the Army Air Corps. Then on June 20, 1941, it was renamed the Army Air Forces and it stayed under that name during the battle in question. It did not become the U.S. Air Force until September 18, 1947!”

“I’m not disputing that,” Marjorie interjected. “I’m saying if we put in the paper this guy from Linden was part of the Army Air Corps-”

“Army Air Forces,” Gary interrupted.

“Fine, whatever,” Marjorie said. “As I was saying, if we write he was in the Army Air Whatever, the Army part is going to confuse the vast majority of our readers who came of consciousness well after the aforementioned name change was made.”

I always wondered if readers knew how much we fought for their supposed interests. Many an impassioned argument in the newsroom was based on what was best for “the readers.” It was ironic in at least two ways: one, most people in the newspaper business have at least some disdain for readers, because the ones we hear from with the greatest frequency are confused octogenarians calling in to complain we weren’t giving enough ink to President Truman’s new jobs proposal; and two, most of the readers whose rights were being so highly cherished were going to take that day’s paper, briefly check the weather and the Yankees box score, then use it to potty train their puppy.

“So we should be factually incorrect to make it easier on the readers?” Gary said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to bend to the lowest common denominator that way.”

“Well, aren’t you just standing at the gates of Western Civilization, holding back the Huns,” Marjorie countered. “We’re a daily newspaper. We’re supposed to be written at a level eighth graders can understand. You think an eighth grader is going to care about alterations in military nomenclature made before their parents were born?”

“It’s in the style manual,” Gary replied.

“I don’t care about the style manual,” Marjorie shot back.

The air suddenly left the room. Gary looked stricken. At least three copy editors blanched. I expected one of them might need smelling salts.

“Don’t … don’t care ?” Gary said.

Marjorie looked to her left and right, saw she had lost all support, and started backpedaling like Galileo at a Vatican wine party.

“Well,” she said. “I suppose we might get calls from military historians if we just wrote ‘Air Force.’ So I … I guess we’ll do it your way.”

The other copy editors exhaled. Gary straightened slightly, making himself a fraction taller in victory.

“Very good,” he said.

The catfight over, I was just about to walk away when Evan stopped me.

“Carter, you got a second for a small question on your story?”

“What story?” I asked.

“The one about the mom in the fire.”

“That story isn’t running.”

“Sure it is,” Evan said. “It’s going A1, above the fold.”

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re about to strip a lie across the top of our newspaper.”

* * *

I charged toward Szanto’s office, knowing full well he’d still be there. It was after eight, the time by which he assured the future ex-Mrs. Szanto he’d depart. But I’m sure she knew that to be a meaningless promise. Newspaper spouses eventually learn to act as if they live on Central Time while their partners are Eastern Standard: Szanto’s 8 o’clock really meant 9.

The moment Szanto saw me steaming toward him, pained expression No. 42-which starts as a tight grimace around the eyes and spreads-washed across his face.