The Blues & Billie Armstrong 10
PAPER CORPSES
Previously in The Blues & Billie Armstrong…
I felt I had crossed an important barrier and entered the proud society of working men, where I might become tough and resilient in the face of injury and self-possessed in the face of danger and stress… and loss.
Working at the Call & Record was a bit like entering the family business.
Percival J. Terwilliger was the owner and publisher and had been all my life, but my father was the editor, and his name appeared on the masthead right under Mr. Terwilliger’s in every issue: Michael King, Editor-in-Chief (though there were no other editors on staff). And my Grandma Junia was the office manager, or as Hank once described her, “head fussbucket.” I never told him that the word was actually fussbudget. It seemed to fit her either way.
I trained for several more days over the next few weeks, and it was Hank who reminded me that my mother had also worked for the paper, writing the Community Notes column for a time—those sing-song reportings of local club news and wedding details, along with the self-important quotes from the wives of well-to-do businessmen shybragging about their recent excursions to exotic locales such as Indianapolis or Baltimore.
My mother had quit writing for the paper at some point, but I didn’t remember when and had never bothered to wonder why. In any case, now I was the fourth member of the King family to be on Mr. Terwilliger’s payroll. Ink in the blood, ink in the wallet.
Hank showed me around the front offices, with steel desks and green leather chairs that wheeled around on battered linoleum, and oak wainscoting that was coffee brown and soaked in smoke, all of it washed in the soft light of banker’s lamps. Dusty typewriters, crusted ash trays, and heavy, black rotary phones populated the desks.
“You sweep the offices and the halls, and you empty all the trash,” Hank said. “Then you straighten up and wipe down the front counter where your grandmother works. Now look, she likes it spic and span up there… and I know you know not to piss her off, ya know?”
I nodded with a fake somber grimace, and he snorted a laugh. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a metal ring with three keys on it. He held them out as if performing a religious ceremony and said, “These are your keys now, bud. Front door, side door, and the morgue. Don’t lose em, comprendo?”
“Morgue?” Perhaps Mr. Terwilliger had misled me about the place not being haunted.
“Damn! I forgot to show you the morgue,” he said, and I’m sure he saw the puzzlement on my face. “They just call it the morgue, it’s where they keep the back issues.”
He led me around a corner, down a short hallway, held out the keys again, and this time I accepted and opened the heavy, solid wood door. The room wasn’t much wider than the hallway that led to it. It was long and narrow with floor-to-ceiling shelves on both sides, sagging with old papers, the corpses of yesterday’s news.
When I was done with all the other duties, I was to wash and dry my hands, then take five papers off the stack at the end of Grandma Junia’s counter. Those were the copies of the latest issue that would be filed in the morgue. I would place them on the shelves according to month and year of publication, give the floor a once-over with the dust mop, and lock the door on my way out. He said not to forget because my father, Grandma Junia and “Old Model T” had the only other keys and would occasionally check the lock.
While he gave these instructions I walked up and down the shelves fingering the old papers and peering at some of the photos and headlines on the yellowing front pages. It hadn’t occurred to me that all this history would be kept in the building, much of it a product of my own family’s sweat and longing. And I would have nearly exclusive access to it. But it was the locked door that made it feel like treasure. Hank sort of tilted his head at my lingering. “This ain’t a library, bud,” he said and waved me out the door.
During the last days of my training, Hank followed and observed me as I went through each of the routines he’d taught me, and patiently, with his familiar teasing, he corrected my mistakes.
His years as a baseball player had left him with his own fledgling coaching style, and it translated well to the back shop of the newspaper.
I had wanted to ask him about the army. The draft was on every young man’s mind in those days. The war had already gone on for several years and it wasn’t clear that our side was winning. The news was full of anti-war demonstrations, battle footage and flag-draped coffins.
On my birthday, we’d had a small family celebration—really more acknowledgment than celebration, as it came in the shadow of my mother’s death—and when talk briefly turned to the war, Aunt Laurette had taken a bold stand. “If this war’s not over in a few years, I’m taking Archer to Canada myself,” she said. My father and Grandma Junia had side-by-side, matching fits of indignation and condemnation. In Laurette’s words, “They both had a cow!”
I wondered how I would do if I was drafted into the army. Hank would probably be some kind of John Wayne hero and come back with medals weighing down his uniform, but I wasn’t so sure about myself.
When I was eight years old, I got into a shouting match with a neighbor kid, right in front of our house. The kid punched me in the face and bloodied my nose. I ran inside whining to Grandma Junia, who was babysitting that day. She said, “We don’t run from a fight in this family, young man. Now, you march back out there and stand up for yourself.” She pushed me out the front door and locked it behind me. I stood on the porch, sobbing in fear and shame until the other boy laughed and walked away up Fourth Street.
In early December, I’d seen the latest issue of LIFE Magazine on the coffee table in our living room, the one with the story and photos of the massacre at My Lai, where U.S. soldiers had murdered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese women and children in some sort of twisted rage. Dead babies. No heroes. There seemed to be a legitimate and frightening question whether our guys were still the good guys.
Hank and I didn’t discuss My Lai, or the army or the war. Hank liked to talk about girls more than anything, and I didn’t have much to say about that yet. So we talked cars. Or baseball. The underdog New York Mets had confounded the experts by winning the World Series in October, and baseball fans were still chattering about it that winter. And now that I’d turned thirteen, this spring would be my final season of Little League. Next year I’d be required to move up to Senior League—bigger, better and faster players, regulation-size field. I was already intimidated by the prospect, although Hank assured me it was “no big whoop.”
We played catch in the street on our breaks, with the Mustang’s tape deck blaring oldies: Hank’s tape collection was stuck in 1964—Elvis, the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys.
Sometimes he would drop into a catcher’s squat and give me tips on my pitching motion, and every time I threw a strike he would shout, “Bullseye!” It became his nickname for me. I liked it and it kind of fit with my first name. I’d never had a decent nickname. I hated to be called Archie, but Bullseye was okay by me.
Eventually I did get to ask Hank about the fourteen home runs he hit in his last Little League season. He acted surprised that anyone remembered, and he popped the trunk on the Mustang, rummaged around in an old equipment bag and pulled out a bat. “This is my bat from that year,” he said and held it out to me. “I guess I won’t need it where I’m going. Too small for me now, anyway. Maybe you can get some use out of it.”
“I can have it?”
“Sure, Bullseye. Might be a few more home runs in there.” He winked.
At one point during one of our breaks, he finally did talk about his future. He stood in the middle of the street with his arms open, the baseball in one hand and his Wilson glove on the other. He looked around, his eyes scanning the rooftops in a way that took in the whole town, and he sighed like a kid who’s outgrown the neighborhood tree fort. “I know it’s crazy but I’m gonna miss this place,” he said. “I’m not supposed to say it but I don’t know about Vietnam. I ain’t saying I’m scared. I’d just rather stay in town and work for the paper, know what I mean?”
But we both knew that wasn’t an option. Hank wasn’t going to run to Canada or declare himself a conscientious objector. If anything, he was a conscientious acceptor. There was really no question what the country, our families and the community of Lupoyoma expected of Hank or any of the other young men eligible to serve. And no question what most of us expected of ourselves. Regardless of Aunt Laurette.
Hank’s father, Police Chief Lloyd Timmons, drove him to Oakland Army Base on the twenty-eighth of December in a blue and white patrol car with a cherry on top. From Oakland, he would be shipped who-knows-where for basic training. The Mustang was left parked in front of the Timmons home, a two-story pseudo-colonial out on Lakeshore Boulevard.
Later that winter, I rode my bike out there on a cold sunny day and saw the red car shining and lonely in the circular driveway as I pedaled by.
I wondered if the same guy would ever come back to Lupoyoma to cruise Main Street.
The Blues & Billie Armstrong is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance of the fictional characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
© All Rights Reserved