I didn’t enjoy the thought of the winters in Middle Valley, but I don’t remember there being an option. Someone had characterized the weather here as “numbing” during my interview, but she’s from Florida, so I didn’t take her seriously.
Florida would have been better. Wiser.
The number of resumes I’d sent to prospective employers rivaled the number of dead fish one might see in the middle of the mighty Chickotee River.
“Mighty” is a loose term here. “Boot repository” might be more accurate, so I hear.
It’s not that it’s polluted, they all tell me. It just isn’t what it used to be.
What did it “used to be”? What did I used to be, I guess you could ask.
Editor-In-Chief. Head of the editorial department.
A job is a job, everyone keeps telling me. Be happy and thankful.
I don’t know why I am telling you all of this, but you asked me to start at the beginning, so that’s where I’m starting. Of course, I see things differently now, but that’s where things started.
The Chickotee River Dispatch, celebrating 70 years of coverage in Middle Valley and beyond.
That’s the banner at the top of the front page. There is no beyond. I can promise you that.
So I’m in a position where I’m laying low, right? Real low. Gutter-level low. As low as one can go sitting in a wicked blizzard in a 10-year-old chocolate-brown Oldsmobile with an automatic transmission and a very questionable heater.
This was not part of the plan by any stretch. The plan was investigative journalism. The plan was be a star at … well, at any major paper.
This is not that.
So I remember, after two hours of what can only be called slip-and-go traffic, I pull into my apartment complex … and you can picture this for yourself. What do you think of when you hear the phrase The Noble Gates?
Posh entrances, large metal … gates, yes? Big, metal, protective, wildly extravagant gates that require some sort of key card to get in, or an actual key.
Well, for starters, there were no gates. Anywhere. Not on the building, not in the parking area. None.
And whether two- and three-story buildings can be considered “noble,” well, that’s up for debate.
I left the car in the lot … carport really. It wasn’t even a garage. It was a flimsy, water-logged roof at best. The underside grazed the top of my car when I pulled into it.
So I walk in and Linda – I call her “Craggy Linda,” you know, now that we’re close – sat straddling a metal office chair … even odds as to whether the chair would last the evening given that level of stress. She wore a smock, a bandanna on her head and spoke with a vaguely Southern accent.
(I’m not sure I can effectively imitate her, but here it goes …)
“You make your father dinner and I’ll be home by 8 sharp. There are three frozen meals in that freezer. If I come home and your daddy hasn’t eaten … no car privileges for a month. You hear me? … He’s earning your college, you know.”
That was horrible, but you get the idea.
“Ummm … excuse me?”
She turned toward me and knocked the solitaire game in front of her to the floor, then into the phone …
“I gotta go, little one … you heard me, right? … Okay then, see you in a little while.”
She hung up the phone and, as she did, she shoved the rest of the cards from the desk, as if to cover up that she’d been playing cards, then stubbed out the cigarette.
“How can I help you, Son?”
I told her I was just moving in, and that a mattress was to have been delivered to me in apartment 304 and did she know whether it had made it or not?
“Yes,” she confirmed. Then she handed me the receipt. “The department store people left this here, I said I’d get it to you.”
She didn’t move well, that’s for sure. She didn’t look like she spent much time tending herself. I remember her sliding the chair toward a wall lined with 50 or 60 keys, each attached to a lemon-yellow tag with a handwritten number. When she found one marked 304, she pulled it down and handed it to me.
“Here you are,” she sang as she handed me the key. “Now don’t forget. Lose your key or get it stolen, that’s a $50 charge. You’re upstairs, at the front of the north building on the left-hand side facing the road.”
I thanked her, and that was that. The smell of curry mixed with cigarette smoke was making me nauseous. Come to think of it, the empty apartment had a similar smell, only not quite as strong.
I opened a few windows, despite the snow still billowing outside, and fell asleep.
Bear with me. The story gets better. I promise.