The only person who wouldn’t be talking to Clifford was Jim Brown and Clifford wasn’t going to be talking to him. He didn’t like Brown, never did. He called him the Fat Boy, like the Fat Man in the Maltese Falcon. That’s how he saw Brown, only smaller, much smaller.
“He took my fucking story,” he chanted. “He took my fucking story.”
Now, it hurt, the memory of the trip, the whole golden, dusty light of that day on the land and the people they met. He felt raw.
“They want Tim to edit it,” Debbie told Ellen. “I don’t want that but Brown says he’s better than Clifford.”
“Who the hell knows? He is good, though.” Ellen reached for her purse and her notebook. She never fought over who edited her pieces unless it was one hell of a story and then she would insist someone like Tim Johnson did it.
“Gosh,” Debbie moaned, “I wish I could do it myself.”
“Tim will do a good job,” Ellen said, “and sometimes it helps to have a third person on the story. He sees things you didn’t see. He can make it a better story.”
“Brown said it could win an award.” Debbie looked at her hopefully. “You think so?”
“Indian story? You bet your ass, if Indians are in this year.” She left the newsroom for her first story of the day.
13
Debbie’s series hit the air the following week on the six o’clock news Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, again at ten, and ran again on the following day’s noon newscast. Each segment was allowed to stand at a ponderous two minutes plus.
“Two-five? Where the hell am I going to put that?” Tony Santella yelled. “You have got to cut it down. Cut it or I will.”
Each day brought the same threat and each day Debbie steeled herself and shook her head. She and Tim worked long hours making each piece so tight that nothing could or should be eliminated, not one shot, not one word. Each day Brown looked over the finished piece.
“Great piece,” he said each day. “Good work, guys.”
The pieces stood even with Tony throwing up his hands, pulling other stories from the lineup, and arguing with muffled shouts from behind the closed door of Brown’s office.
Every night Clifford watched the pieces as he sat in the photographers’ room. He didn’t focus on them. He glanced at them.
“Goddamn, incredible shots of that old Indian man.” Steve slammed into the room.
“Man, that’s some nice stuff.” Cappy came in with his last cup of coffee for the day. “Nice.”
“You got to get that on a résumé tape,” Jason Osner told him. “That’ll get you out of this place.”
“Did you call the network?” Debbie asked George.
He shook his head in annoyance as he tried to hear the caller promising him a good story.
“Well, could you?”
He shook his head harder.
“Darn it.” She flipped through two of his Rolodexes before finding the scribbled name and number of the man who could buy her story.
“I think I might have something for you,” she said on the call to New York. “It’s about a radioactive spill on the Navajo reservation.”
He told her to send it out.
“We’ll make some extra money if they use it,” she told Clifford. “We’ll split it. That’ll be good, right?”
He nodded.
“Johnson, too,” he said.
It was a flat statement without sarcasm or self-pity. The man edited it. He deserved his piece of the action.
That night, after the last part aired, Tim Johnson stood in the doorway of the editing room, watching and waiting.
“Night, Cliff,” he said as Clifford passed on his way out of the station.
“Night,” Clifford echoed and left the building.
*
The nights the stories on a radioactive spill ran the front-desk operator was kept busy with phone calls from viewers. The first night fifteen people called about the slight change Jean Ann Maypin had made in her hairstyle. There were ten calls about her hair the next night. On the third night, when her hair was back to normal, twelve people called to say they were glad. Two people called to say they liked the new style and wanted to know why she had changed it back again.
14
Brown leaned over Debbie, his hand on her shoulder.
“Told you, didn’t I?” he grinned. “Johnson did one heck of a job.”
“Clifford would have been good too,” she said.
“Not as good as Johnson,” he said, giving her shoulder a final pat. He made a short tug at the top of his slackes and went into his office to sit in the high-back vinyl chair.
God, sometimes he loved it so much he almost cried. He loved this business. He loved his people, loved them. He was forty-two years old and they were like his kids.
He grew up in the station, came in right out of his second year of college. He never finished, never had to. This place was his education, his school, his home. He knew he spent more hours caring about it and how it ran than he had ever spent wondering or caring about his family. He knew his work led to the divorce but he loved it.
He loved how they came to him, like Debbie, all excited and talking a mile a minute.
“They called,” she told him. “They’re going to use it. They want me to cut it down, but they’re going to use it. Next week, that’s what they said. It will be national.”
“That’s wonderful, Debbie. Have you told your father?”
He knew about her father. It was his business to know about their families, the people of his people.
“I’m going to call him. It will be on next week, that’s what they said.”
“You deserve it,” he told her.
He cared about them and they knew it. They were all so young and happy
