Ellen liked Debbie Hanson right from that first day. She liked the tallness of her, the innocence, the laughter. Right from the first day in her flower-print dress with the bared arms, Debbie had been fine. The blue eyes, cornflower blue, Ellen imagined, were wide with excitement and, Ellen thought, a touch of fear.
“You came here because it was cold or wet or something back there and this is the flagship of the network and …,” she teased.
Debbie laughed.
“I wanted the job,” she said. “I love reporting. You search for the truth. It’s what I want to do.”
“Really?” Ellen asked.
“Yes,” said Debbie. “And, gosh, it’s hot here.”
“This is nothing,” Ellen told her. “Full-time reporter?”
“Yes, and they said I might get some weekend anchor work.”
“Yeah?” Ellen searched Debbie’s face for the hidden gloating or greed that usually came with that promise. She didn’t see either.
“That’s what they tell everyone,” she said. “They tell everybody they might be able to anchor.”
That wasn’t completely true. They hadn’t told her that. They didn’t need to. She was a street reporter and, as she told Carter, a good one. She came to The Best because it had all gone to hell in New Mexico. By the end of her first day at the station, she had the feeling she had probably made one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
That was over a year ago. Now she felt that it really didn’t make much difference. Here, there, it was all the same, for now.
“Same people, different faces,” she’d tell the others in the newsroom.
A couple of things shot worry through her that first day. There was Jim Brown, a big man with a soft belly and a sweet smile but whose words did not seem to match what she saw in his face. There was the harried George Harding who had no time for anything but a quick upward glance at her before reaching for the phone. There was Jack Benton asking her for a date.
“Good party Saturday night. How about going with me?”
“Aren’t you married?”
Carter told her about his preference for married male reporters.
“Yeah. So what?”
“I don’t go to parties with married men.”
“What are you, a prude?” He laughed. “Hey, Ferguson, we got ourselves a prude.”
Great start. A few minutes later, the photographer with the baseball cap and the sloppy wet unlit cigar yelled at her.
“You don’t drive my fucking van,” he shouted when she asked him if the photographers usually drove. In Albuquerque the reporters sometimes did the driving.
“Well, I didn’t mean …,” she stumbled to explain.
“Nobody drives my fucking van but me. You got that?”
“The last thing I want to do is drive your fucking van,” is what she should have said. Instead, she said nothing.
“What’s wrong with your voice?” Carter demanded after her first story hit the air. “I didn’t hear that thing before.”
“What thing?”
“You talk through your goddamn nose. You talk like this,” he twanged in a high nasal imitation.
“I don’t think so.”
“Yes, you do, missy.”
“Well?” She was at a loss.
“Sounds like shit.” He stomped away.
She was Brown’s choice, not his. He got to another Brown choice early on as well. Two years ago a strawberry blond from Des Moines had somehow been hired for reporting and that possible weekend anchor slot.
“What’s wrong with your nose? It’s a real beak, isn’t it,” he laughed at her.
She swallowed hard. She was twenty-six. She needed this job, that’s what the agent said. If she paid her dues at The Best she had a chance at the top markets. She needed that weekend anchoring.
“You ain’t going nowhere with that beak, missy.”
After one year, she took her vacation days and had the job done. The nose came back shorter, thinner.
“You’re not good enough, not good enough for The Best,” Carter told her after her one fill-in at the anchor desk.
“Maybe you could anchor in a smaller market,” he told her. “But, not here.”
Jim Brown cocked his head and clicked his tongue in sympathy when she finally asked to be taken off weekend reporting.
“I’d like to at least have my Sundays free,” she told him.
“No can do right now,” he said.
“But that’s not fair. I’ve been on weekends for more than a year.”
“I know, I know, but that’s the way it has to be right now.”
She resigned and went to a station in South Carolina, somewhere around the ninety-fifth market. Carter smirked over that. He was right all along. Shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.
Ellen Peters didn’t change anything. The voice stayed the same, sharp, nasal and, often, loud.
“So, why did you come here?” Debbie returned the question.
“Needed a job,” Ellen said.
“How long have you been here?”
“For fucking ever.”
The newsroom began to fill with reporters and photographers. Monday noon marked the time for the weekly staff meeting. Debbie would be introduced as Ellen had been, as they all had been.
“Grab anything. They are all terrible,” Ellen said of the pile of plastic-wrapped sandwiches from a downtown cafeteria.
“No such thing as a free lunch,” she muttered.
Jim Brown walked to the center of the room. He hitched up his pants and smiled, including all of them in his good mood.
“We’ll try to make this short. I want us to take a look at a few tapes from last week and I have a few announcements to make.
“But first, Tom, you have a few things you want to talk about. Right?”
“Yes, I do,” said Carter who moved next to him. “We’ve got a real problem here and I want it corrected and I mean now.”
Most of those in the newsroom came to quick attention. The row of photographers standing near the back door folded their arms across their chests in unison.
“Now, I want to know what the hell is going on here at night,” Carter demanded. “I want to know and I want it stopped.”
No one made a sound. Each person wondered what it was they had done to bring this on. Slowly, the glances were passed, from reporter to reporter, producer to producer.
What went on at night was reporters and photographers copying tapes to send out to other stations. It was silent, furtive work, looking for another job, pirating their own work in order to get one.
“I want to know,” Carter gritted his teeth, “who the hell has been playing around and leaving spots on the sofas and chairs around this place.”
Heads shot up. More wide-eyed looks were exchanged with exaggerated shrugs and grimaces.
“I know something is going on here at night. I know it. And, I want to know who the hell it is who thinks he or she can come down here for a little fun and games at night.” He turned quickly, including all of them in his glare.
Ellen looked across the room to Chuck Farrell who was pulled down low behind the chest-high partition of the producers’ area. All she could see of him was his tousled red hair and his brown eyes as they peeked over the cloth-covered panel. Suddenly one eye winked at her and she knew she was going to burst out laughing.
“You think it’s funny, missy?” Carter swung on her.
She shook her head, holding back the smile.
Jim Brown slowly munched at his sandwich.
“I want it stopped and I am going to make sure it is,” Carter said. “I am having these chairs and couches taken out.”
“Ah, Tom,” Richard Ferguson moaned. “It’s the only place we have to sit around and eat lunch.”
“I don’t give a damn about your lunches, buddy. I am not going to have that filth going on in here.”
Richard Ferguson put up a hand as though to hold back the words. It didn’t really matter to him one way or another.
“Turn those goddamn things off,” Carter yelled as the charter and squawks of the police and fire scanners broke through his audio time. “I can’t hear myself think.”
“So, what else is new?” came Charles Adkins’s stage whisper.
“Ah, Tom,” George Harding looked up from his desk, “the problem is if we turn them off we miss the stories.”
“What we need is a dispatcher,” a voice came out of the photographers’ row.
“We aren’t going to have any goddamn dispatcher,” Carter spat out.
“And that’s why we miss the stories,” another voice called out from the line of men.
“What Tom means,” Jim Brown cut in smoothly, “is that the people Back East don’t think we need that right now. After all,” he smiled, “we never miss the big stories.”
“And there’s something else,” Carter jumped on the silence Brown’s statement created. “About these flash flood warnings or alerts. What the hell are they, Art?”
Art Novak took a step forward.
“Flash flood warnings, Tom. That’s different from flash flood watches,” he said happily.
“Don’t tell me. Tell them,” Carter ordered.
“Well, you see we live in a desert and with heavy rain desert areas are prone to flash floods.”
“They know that,” Carter snapped. “What about the warnings?”
“So,” Art Novak continued without losing his smile, “the National Weather Bureau sends out a watch when this sort of thing could happen. It comes across the wire and we are supposed to get the message to the audience.”
“Which we didn’t do on Saturday,” Carter said with a sneer. “If you recall.”
Weekend producer Nancy Patterson flinched.
“You’ve got to get that on the air,” Jim Brown added.
“It’s a regulation or something,” Carter said.
“What do we do, Tom?” Chuck shouted from behind his eye-high wall. “Do we interrupt programming or run a crawl or what?”
“You get it on the air,” Carter yelled.
“What you do, Chuck,” Jim Brown’s voice soothed, “is run a crawl as soon as you can. When you get a chance, you can cut some audio, but that’s not the real problem, is it?” He nodded to the weatherman. “The problem is the flash flood warning.”
“You bet your ass,” Carter cut it. “On Saturday we had a flash flood warning and everybody else had it on the air before we did. If you see that thing come across the wire you break your ass to get it on.”
Nancy Patterson stared at the floor. She had already heard the speech.
“That has to go on the air almost immediately after we get it,” Jim Brown continued as though he had not been interrupted.
Ellen watched the faces around her for signs of her own boredom. Once again, she caught Chuck’s wink.
He called out, “So, what you mean, Tom, is that we get it on as a crawl and then, as soon as we can, we interrupt programming with somebody on-set with the info?”
“That’s what I mean,” Carter said. “And you sure as hell do it fast. I don’t want the goddamn FCC crawling down my neck on this one. We’re talking about saving lives here, boy, lives.”
He paused for the effect and smiled the smile the viewers so loved.
“A few minutes could mean somebody’s life. We could and should be saving lives. That’s our job. Right, Jim?”
Jim Brown nodded.
“What if there is a commercial on, Tom?” came Chuck’s happy voice. “Should we interrupt a commercial, Tom?”
“Well…well…,” Carter hesitated. He didn’t know the answer. “No,” he said firmly. “We don’t interrupt a commercial. I mean, a minute or two isn’t going to make that much different. Right, Jim?”
Ellen sighed and stared across the room. Beside her Debbie stiffened. Day One.