“If I hear anything, I’ll dive under your car.”
“There won’t be any room,” said one of the twins. “We’ll be there first.” He wasn’t smiling.
They told her, off the record, that the baby these men had killed had been tossed in the air for target practice. No one was going to make that official, they told her. It was too horrible.
God, she was scared that night. She didn’t want to die there, not for that story, not for any story. She shuddered with the memory of the fear and the cold. She wondered if she told Debbie about that night and how frightened she had been.
Tonight she’d drive north and keep going, north, maybe northwest. She would go someplace where it was cold, where there were great chucks of empty land, few people, and television sets filled with snow. She’d go someplace where they didn’t know what The Today Show was and didn’t care.
*
“That’s the news for now,” Carter gave the audience his lips-closed, corners-curled, smile.
“We’ll be back at ten o’clock with more of the news of our state and our nation.” Jean Ann Maypin smiled wide as she spoke. Her lips were dry.
“And so,” Carter took it back, “from all of us, good evening and good news.”
Jean Ann nodded her agreement. She tightened the crossing of her ankles.
Carter picked his script and turned to her as though to smile, to chat, to relax. He tapped the script sheets on the desk.
In the control room, the director called for the wide shot, and producer Tony Santella gave a crooked smile to all those in the room.
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Piece of cake.”
In his office, in his high-backed vinyl chair, Jim Brown sat, hands folded over his belly, and stared at nothing at all.
EPILOGUE
There is a perfect view of the city from the park at the foot of the mountain. Here, sitting in your car or resting against the side of the mountain, you can see how the night begins, how the sky turns red and gold and blue and then fades to black.
You watch the city lights come on, cooling even the hottest night with their sparkling white promise. There are other lights as well, those from the cars speeding on the road below, back and forth from a thousand places. At night, it is a city of the future, of prosperity, of all you could ever dream.
There is only one problem with all of this. The park closes at dusk, the same time the city and the sky turn beautiful. Of course, you could watch the coming of the night by standing outside the park gates. You could, if so inclined, jump the fence, climb a short way up the mountain and sit and wait for the night to begin. But, more than likely, you know that inside the park or outside the gates, the view is about the same. Besides, you can see the city lights quite well from a moving car on the road below.
KATHLEEN WALKER spent ten years as a television reporter and producer covering the news for network affiliates in New Mexico and Arizona. She moved on to freelance writing after her last position with PBS in Tempe, Arizona. The Best in the West is based on her experiences in television news.
Her freelance work includes numerous articles for Arizona Highways magazine. Her two studies of the Spanish Colonial mission system in Arizona and California—San Xavier: The Spirit Endures and A Place of Peace: San Juan Capistrano—were published by its book division. Her first novel, A Crucifixion in Mexico, was published by Black Heron Press. She is also the author of a book of short stories, Life in a Cactus Garden, and a collection of humorous essays, Desert Mornings—Tales of Coffee, Cactus & Chaos.
She did her undergraduate work in Latin American History at La Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City and earned her master’s degree in Corporate and Political Communications at Fairfield University in Connecticut.
She resides in Tucson, Arizona.
