to do it.”
“Walker, you can’t let him get away with that.”
Walker leaned forward. “Pardner, you need to know it ain’t the only ammo he’s got. He did a count of every reporter’s bylines for the last year. You didn’t rank so high. And no blockbusters, either.”
“Of course not. I spend most of my goddam time doing roundups and local inserts. To get a blockbuster, you need a real story.” I thought a moment. “Where’d I rank?”
“They way he tells it, dead last. Matt, here’s the deal. The publisher wants more obits in the paper and I can barely get Bullock to crank out one each night. I got six reporters in the newsroom who come to work every day disguised as empty desks and just as much newshole as ever to fill. The publisher’s lookin’ to cut even more to make up for Jeffries. You’re already on his Most Wanted list because of the public works story. This ain’t the time for you to be checkin’ on some long-shot investigation. Besides, the trail has been dead for years. People forget. People move on.”
“Not in Hirtsboro. In Hirtsboro, nothing changes.”
“Matt, you’re a good journalist. Someday, you might even be a great one. As good as your daddy or your granddaddy. But you’ve never done a big investigation before. I don’t know that you’re ready.”
“Walker, I’ve already done some work. I’ve been down there. If it’s there, I can get it.”
“You don’t seem to appreciate that we’re both already in hot water. You screw up and the publisher’s gonna nail your hide to the wall for sure. And I’m not all that inclined to break a habit I’ve gotten used to in order to save you. It’s called eating. Developed it as a kid.” He slouched back in the chair and rebalanced the Ticonderoga on his upper lip.
“Give me two weeks,” I pleaded. “Two weeks to go down, take a proper sniff. And then I’ll come back, we’ll look at what I’ve got and make a decision then.”
“If we have nothing, we stop.”
“Then, we stop,” I agreed.
He closed his eyes and I knew what he was thinking. Positives: good story, remote chance of a great one. Negatives: old story out of the circulation area, staff shortage, and crap from the publisher. “It’s risky, Matt,” he said. “Your career can’t take a failure.”
“Walker, two weeks.”
“I’ll think about it, Big Shooter.”
“Please. I need this story.”
I showed up for work the next day desperate for a byline and with my stomach churning over Walker Burns’s pending decision. The notice that the newsroom Discipline Committee needed to convene put an immediate dent in the byline hopes, although the meeting did have Live Toad potential.
The Live Toad Theory, developed by Walker, held that if you did something terrible the first thing every day, like swallow a live toad, the rest of the day would invariably go better. There was no way it was going to get worse.
At one time the Charlotte Times disciplined newsroom employees like everybody else: management decided who screwed up and what the consequences should be. Bowing to staff complaints that the process was inconsistent and favored some groups of employees over others, management established an employee-run Discipline Committee to hear evidence in disciplinary cases and make recommendations as to the appropriate outcome. While the recommendations weren’t binding and management retained the right to do whatever it wanted, it seldom overruled the committee. Staffers rotated on and off the committee and, as it happened, this month I was in the barrel along with three others. The process was often petty and humiliating and, if nothing else, it was time away from what we were paid to do: report, edit, take pictures, or design pages. Given my standing in The Great Byline Count, it was time I couldn’t afford to lose.
“Who is it now?” I asked Walker.
“Bullock,” he said with a shrug.
We gathered after first edition deadline in the dark-paneled boardroom beside the publisher’s office on the third floor, away from the prying eyes of the newsroom where there were reporters who could read lips through glass conference room walls. The lighting was low and indirect. I sat at a long conference table, swallowed up in a huge, black, high-backed chair. I felt small, as if I were a kid playing executive.
The other members of the committee were already seated and Walker had just taken his place at the head of the table when Ronnie Bullock walked in dressed, as usual, in khaki pants and a khaki shirt. He looked like a cop. His creased, ruddy face, big hands, and stocky frame gave the appearance of someone who worked outside. He was sixty and although his forehead had expanded a little, he still kept a thick head of reddish-brown hair. I thought of him as a short John Wayne. Newsroom lore said he carried a gun. Bullock nodded to members of the committee and took a chair.
John Hafer, the company’s director of human resources, entered. Always smiling and attentive, Hafer did his best to come across to all employees like he was their understanding advocate and friend. But everyone, including Hafer, knew that the publisher signed his paycheck. I was surprised to see him and I could tell my colleagues were, too.
“John’s here because he is the one who’s ringing the fire bell,” Walker said quickly. Walker was not part of the committee but served as the moderator. “John, let’s get to it.”
“As you know, this involves Ronnie,” he said, nodding at Bullock.
“Again,” huffed Carmela Cruz, the Times’ s diminutive front-page editor known equally for her page-design skills and her general contempt for local news and sexist behavior. No one followed up. The black-haired, black-eyed Carmela was mercurial and most found it best not to engage her.
Hafer knew it, too, and quickly plowed ahead. “It happened yesterday and I felt it best to report it to Walker. It seems we have a new assistant librarian who is, uh . . .” Hafer’s face twisted as he struggled for the right word. “She is, uh . . . She’s very . . .”
“She has a nice ass,” Bullock interrupted helpfully.
“Ronnie, you can’t say that stuff,” Walker said calmly.
“Why not?” said Bullock. “It’s verifiably true. Look at her. How can you not be allowed to say something that’s true?”
“You can think it,” Walker said. “You just can’t say it.” He turned to the committee. “I think what John’s trying to say is that Ronnie found the new assistant librarian very appealing. Would that be a good way to put it?”
“Yeah,” said Hafer, relieved at finding a way to avoid expressing a personal value judgment based on appearance.
“Bullock would find mud appealing if it had breasts,” Carmela hissed. The assistant sports editor chuckled. Carmela shot him a dagger glance and he smothered the laugh into a cough.
“Save the commentary,” Walker sighed. “Go on, John.”
“Well, apparently she was walking through the newsroom yesterday delivering some clip files and she caught Ronnie’s eye. He picked up the phone and called my office and asked me a question which is so offensive I’m not sure I can repeat it.”
“We can handle it, John,” Walker advised.
Bullock interrupted. “Hell, I just asked him a question about my pension.”
Hafer took a deep breath. “Ronnie said he understood that he would certainly be fired if he got up out of his chair and attached his mouth to the left breast of the new assistant librarian. His question to me, as the director of human relations, was whether it would affect his pension.”
The assistant sports editor cackled madly. Walker howled and I even