Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

We no longer had our own movie critic. Theater reviews were farmed out to freelancers. The courts bureau had been shut down, and only the most newsworthy trials got covered, provided we happened to know they were on.

But the most alarming indicator of our decline was sending reporting jobs offshore. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but when the Russells heard about how a paper in Pasadena had pulled it off, they couldn’t move quickly enough. They started with something as simple as entertainment listings. Why pay someone here fifteen to twenty bucks an hour to write up what’s going on around town when you could email all the info to some guy in India who’d put the whole thing together for seven dollars an hour?

When the Russells found how well that worked, they stepped it up.

Various city committees had a live Internet video feed. Why send a reporter? Why even pay one to watch it from the office? Why not get some guy named Patel in Mumbai to watch it, write up what he sees, then email his story back to Promise Falls, New York?

The paper was looking to save money any way it could. Advertising revenue was in freefall. The classified section had all but disappeared, losing out to online services like Craigslist. Many of the paper’s clients were becoming more selective, banking on fewer but costlier radio and TV spots instead of full- or even half-page ads. So what if you hired reporters to cover local events who’d never even set foot in your community? If it saved money, go for it.

While it wasn’t surprising to find that kind of mentality among the paper’s bean counters, it was pretty foreign in the newsroom. At least until now. As Brian Donnelly, the city editor and, more important, the publisher’s nephew, had mentioned to me only the day before, “How hard can it be to write down what people say at a meeting? Are we going to do a better job of it just because we’re sitting right there? Some of these guys in India, they take really good notes.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of this?” Jan asked, hitting the intermittent wipers to clear off some light rain.

“Yeah, sure, but I’m beating my head against the wall with Brian.”

“I’m not talking about work,” Jan said. “I’m talking about your parents. I mean, we see them every day. Your parents are nice enough and all, but there’s a limit. It’s like we’re being smothered or something.”

“Where’s this coming from?”

“You know we can never just drop Ethan off or pick him up at the end of the day. You have to go through the interrogation. ‘How was your day?’ ‘What’s new at work?’ ‘What are you having for dinner?’ If we’d just put him in day care, they wouldn’t give a shit, they’d just kick him out the door and we could go home.”

“Oh, that sounds better. A place where they don’t actually have any interest in your kid.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Look,” I said, not wanting to have a fight, because I wasn’t sure what was going on here, “I know most days you get off work before I do, so you’ve been doing pickup duty, but in another month it won’t even matter. Ethan’ll be going to kindergarten, which means we won’t be taking him to my parents’ every day, which means you won’t have to endure this daily interrogation you suddenly seem so concerned about.” I shook my head. “It’s not like we can take turns dropping him off at your parents’ place.”

Jan shot me a look. I regretted the comment instantly, wished I could take it back.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was a cheap shot.”

Jan said nothing.

“I’m sorry.”

Jan put her blinker on, turned in to my parents’ driveway. “Let’s see what your dad’s done now.”

Ethan was in the living room, watching Family Guy . I walked in, turned off the set, called out to Mom, who was in the kitchen, “You can’t let him watch that.”

“It’s just a cartoon,” she said, loud enough to be heard over running water.

“Pack up your stuff,” I told Ethan, and walked back into the kitchen, where Mom stood at the sink with her back to me. “In one episode the dog tries to have sex with the mother. In another, the baby takes a machine gun to her.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “No one would make a cartoon like that. You’re really turning into your father.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re wound too tight.”

“It’s not The Flintstones anymore,” I said. “Actually, cartoons now are better. But a lot of them are not for four-year-olds.”

Ethan shuffled into the kitchen, looking tired and a little bewildered. I was surprised he wasn’t asking about food. Mom had probably already given him something.

Jan, who had come in a few seconds after me, knelt down to Ethan. “Hey, little man,” she said. She looked into his backpack. “You sure you have everything here?”

He nodded.

“Where’s your Transformer?”

Ethan thought for a moment, then bolted back into the living room. “In the cushions!” he shouted.

“What’s Dad done this time?” I asked.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Mom said, taking a pot from the sink and setting it on the drying rack.

“What?”

“He’s out in the garage. Get him to show you his latest project. So, Jan, how was work today? Things good?”

I walked through the light rain to the garage. The double-wide door was open, Dad’s blue Crown Victoria, one of the last big sedans from Detroit, parked in there. My mother’s fifteen-year-old Taurus sat in the driveway. Both cars had kid safety seats in the back for when they had Ethan.

Dad was tidying his workbench when I walked in. He’s taller than me if he stands up straight, but he’s spent most of his life looking down-inspecting things, trying to find tools-so that he’s permanently round-shouldered. He still has a full head of hair, which is something of a comfort to me, even if his did start going gray when he was barely forty.

“Hey,” he said.

“Mom said you have something to show me.”

“She needs to mind her own business.”

“What is it?”

He waved a hand, which I wasn’t sure was a dismissal or surrender. But when he opened up the passenger door and took out something to show me, I realized he was going to share his latest project.

It was several white pieces of cardboard, about the size of a piece of regular printer paper. They looked like they might be the card sheets they slide into new shirts. Dad saved all that stuff.

He handed the small stack to me and said, “Check it out.”

Written on each one, in heavy black marker, all in capitals, was a different phrase. They included TURN SIGNAL BROKEN?, STOP RIDING MY ASS, TAILLIGHT OUT, HEADLIGHT OUT, SPEED KILLS, STOP SIGNS MEAN STOP, AND GET OFF THE PHONE!

They looked like the cue cards you used to see the crew holding up for Johnny Carson.

Dad said, “The STOP RIDING MY ASS one I did with bigger letters because they’ve got to be able to see it through my rear window, and I’m up in the front seat. But if they’re tailgating that close, they’ll probably see it.”

I looked at him, at a loss for words.

“How many times you seen some jackass do something stupid and you wish you could tell him? I keep these in the car, pick out the right one, hold it up to the window, maybe people will start to realize their mistakes.”

I’d found some words. “You installing bulletproof glass?”

“What?”

“You flash these, someone’s going to shoot you.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Okay, so let’s say it’s you. You’re driving down the road and someone shows a sign like that to you.”

Dad studied me. “That’d never happen. I’m a good driver.”