The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 22/Number 2/The Geniuses of the Sun
THE GENIUSES OF
THE SUN
BY OSCAR LEWIS
After years in the turmoil of metropolitan journalism, a man goes back to the country paper of his youth in search of a job, a restful atmosphere, and—a girl.
HE swinging door of the city editor's office creaked half open and Henshaw's tow-haired copy kid stuck his head out into the city room. "Stratton!" he called, and the occupant of the seat by the window dropped the paper he had been pretending to read and shuffled to his feet. His gaze roved about the all but deserted city room; its few occupants were busy and none looked up, which fact caused Stratton to smile faintly. They were good fellows, he reflected—none better—and he was thankful to them for pretending to be unconscious of his humiliation, though their deception fooled no one.
They knew what was coming; knew it as well as Stratton himself. Since that day, a week before, when the stockholders, dissatisfied with their last semi-annual dividend checks, had shifted directors and demanded a cut in expenses—since that day, the one question in the minds of the city room had been, "Who?" And now that question had been answered.
When Henshaw, giving out the assignments ten minutes before, had sent White out on the Hyde Street murder case, those who were of the old guard exchanged knowing glances, for the day's big story—especially if it were of the "violence" type—generally went to Stratton. And, as one by one the reporters got into their overcoats and stamped out on their assignments and still Stratton remained reading his paper at the desk by the window, even the greenest of the cubs realized who was to be let out. Stratton passed into the city editor's office, the swinging door closed behind him, and two minutes later, he stepped out again into the city room.
Henshaw had been very kind, in fact, had come closer to an expression of human emotion than Stratton, after seven years of nightly association, had deemed him capable. But Stratton was the highest paid member of the staff and Henshaw must reduce the payroll, though he could not manage with fewer men. A second-rate man could be hired on half Stratton's salary, and the other half added to the dividend checks of the stockholders. Henshaw had fully explained the situation, and they had risen to their feet and gripped hands.
Stratton straightened up his desk, sweeping the mutilated sheets of yellow copy paper that littered its top to the floor; gathered up a few personal trifles and left.
The elevator boy told him on the way down that the home team had scored two runs in the first, and the man behind the cigar stand in the corridor greeted him perfunctorily as he passed. Then Stratton stepped out into the unnoticing crowds of the street. So much for his seven years on the Sentinel.
At his rooms, he sat down and gazed out of the window and smoked. After an hour, he got up and wrote a letter which he took down to the end of the corridor and dropped down the chute. And for the next six days Stratton spent his time sleeping and smoking by the window or wandering about the city park. Much of this new-found leisure was spent in day dreams that a week before he would have found entirely incomprehensible. At the end of six days came an answer to his letter. He tore it open eagerly.
"My dear Fred," it began. Stratton repeated the phrase, the lines of his face crinkling very slowly to a smile. He read on:
Give you back your old job on the Sun? Dear boy, would Corsica have welcomed her conquerer home; or Stratford hers? Come, tho' I fear you will find us rather dull—a little eight page semi-weekly—after your achievements. Seven years! And now you are coming back. We shall be very proud to welcome you.
H. Galvas.
Stratton started the next day. The little shop he found unchanged. The editor greeted him at the door, his gray eyes shining and held him at arm's length and chuckled over him as over a son. Stratton wandered slowly about the shop, reconstructing memories; the row of cases along the wall to the left, where he had struggled to mastery over the compositor's art; the cement topped make-up table where, in the early days, he had pied the form of the department store's "Annual Mid-Summer Sale" advertisement and then fled home, convinced that his connection with journalism was henceforth and forever ended. He took a drink at the tin icewater container in the corner and noticed that a thick glass tumbler had taken the place of the cocoanut shell that used to serve. Stratton regretted this. Before going home that evening with the editor, he set two sticks of legal news for the Tuesday issue, bungling it badly for he found his fingers clumsy.
Stratton fell into the old routine quickly. He renewed old acquaintances about town; he set up want ads whistling as he worked; he run the job press, and went about town rustling "locals" which he wrote up in his own pungent style—tiny three-line character sketches, so genial and good-natured, so humanly humorous as to make even the persons they depicted chuckle delightedly at their own foibles.
Fred Stratton settled back into his old niche, which he found very satisfying and restful, and it was some time before he would admit to himself that he was not quite happy. Yet this was true. One by one, during the days since he had returned, he had gathered up the broken threads of his old life; but there was one that eluded him. The thought worried him and he puzzled over it constantly, and, when finally the solution came to him, he laughed outright. That night, as he sat on the steps of the editor's cottage, he found himself asking about Helen Dimmick.
"In the old days, when the three of us were here together," he said, "Helen Dimmick, you remember, kept the books and wrote the society column Saturdays, and looked after the want ads and subscriptions. How we three did work! And when a show or a circus came to town Helen and I would go and enjoy it the more because we belonged to the Press and had complimentary tickets!"
The girl, Stratton learned had left the Sun a year after he himself, and, like him, had gone East. The old man led him inside and showed him a copy of a small juvenile paper with Helen Dimmick's name as associate editor.
"How proud I have been of you two," said the old editor, placing a hand upon Stratton's shoulder,—"the geniuses who started on the Sun!"
This news of his old colleague sent Stratton's thoughts roving often into the past. But the joy of recreating the old atmosphere and of experiencing anew the zest and restless eagerness of earlier days was too keen for him to be other than contented.
And then one day, nearly a month after his return, Fred Stratton felt once more the thrill of the big news story and, in an instant, became the metropolitan reporter, Stratton of the Sentinel.
He had wandered early one afternoon to the depot, where he proposed covering the up express in the interests of the "Local Comings and Goings" column, and had been standing at the ticket window talking idly with the agent when the telegraph instrument began chattering sharply its "urgent—urgent—urgent" signal. The agent opened his key and shot back a reply as he drew a yellow pad toward him.
Stratton, sensing anxiety in the other's actions, leaned over his shoulder and watched the twisting pencil.
—No. 9.—wrecked, southern approach, Trinity bridge—broken rail, down embankment—engine, baggage, four coaches —under water, rush aid, doctors—notify Gen. Supt.—Tomelson, Trinity bridge operator—No. 9.—wrecked, so—
The instrument kept up its sharp, nervous clatter, repeating the message while the agent straightened up slowly and sprang toward the door.
Stratton grasped his arm as he emerged. "I'll fetch doctors," he said, "and nurses and supplies—"
"Yes—yes," replied the other, not stopping. "And hurry." He disappeared in the direction of the roundhouse.
Stratton crossed the street to the office of the telegraph and telephone company. He gave the news to central with orders to locate every doctor within call. While waiting, he stepped across to the telegraph counter and scrawled a message. It was a twenty-word "flash" of the wreck addressed to the Sentinel and signed "Stratton." The operator sent it at once. Then, like a good reporter, he learned the location of the telegraph office nearest the wreck. The girl at the switchboard called him and for the next five minutes Stratton repeated his news to doctors and nurses, and to stores where he ordered blankets and such other things as occurred to him as likely to be of use. And always he added the incisive order to hurry—hurry!
The relief train—switch engine, a flat car and two day coaches—started fifteen minutes after the message had been received and Stratton rode with the others in the forward coach. It was a quiet, repressed group that had gathered there; the four doctors, examining and rearranging the contents of their kits, one even removing his coat and cuffs in ominous preparation; the amateur nurses nervously sorting stacks of towels and rolls of cotton upon the red plush seats; the group of helpers, recruited from the loungers about the depot, standing silently in the aisle or on the swaying front platform and gazing down the straight track ahead.
A high, motionless column of white smoke and steam first warned the watchers that their race was approaching its end. The engine loosed a prolonged blast, rumbled across Trinity bridge and slowed down as they neared the curve that brought the wreck into view.
Two cars remained on the track, a third slanted down the steep embankment and the remaining four lay in an irregular "W" in the muddy lagoon at the riverside. At its head was the engine, drivers in the air, a peaceful film of smoke rising from its riven vitals.
A group of those who had escaped, occupants of the rear coaches for the most part, were standing in groups on the tracks and gazing down upon the half-submerged coaches below. Several who were not seriously injured were seated along the fence opposite, where they were subjected to the gaze of the curious. A dozen men walked back and forth along the sprawled coaches below, carrying sticks with which they carefully smashed the cracked glass from the sashes of the windows. Save for the steaming engine of the relief train, this clash of glass was the only definable sound that the rescuers could hear.
The arrival of the relief train speedily brought a return of decision to the survivors; reality, which for half an hour had been in eclipse, pushed again to the fore and the work of rescue began to move quickly. Ropes were obtained; jammed doors were forced or men lowered through broken windows. Another relief train came hurrying into sight from down the valley, and directly behind, the business-like wrecker from division headquarters. Authoritative shouts filled the air; the axes of the wrecking crew crashed through paneling and portions of broken seats were shoved through windows and tossed aside. Stretchers appeared; the line by the fence grew longer.
Stratton busied himself here. He obtained the names and addresses of the injured and the extent of their injuries; he listened to the conflicting stories of the survivors and culled the truth from the distorted; he aided in searching the pockets for means of identifying the dead. The work was not new to him; it was the "violence story" atmosphere that he had so lately escaped. He moved about quickly, his voice quick, nervously tense, his face an absorbed mask.
He reached the end of the line and sat down upon an overturned plush seat and rewrote his list of names very plainly, labeling it, "Partial list of dead and injured." He then wrote a brief account of the wreck, skeletonizing it to save time in transmission; merely listing the essentials for the rewrite man in the office, and confining it to a single sheet of copy paper. The relief train upon which he had come was about to return, carrying the first of the dead and injured. Stratton gave his story into the keeping of one of the trainmen, who promised to get it on the wire for him.
He went back to the line by the fence. Several new figures had been added to the end and he obtained the names of these. The last one in the row was a little girl. She was conscious, so he leaned down and asked her name. The child stared back at him in a wide-eyed, dazed fashion; and Stratton, obtaining no answer, wrote on his list, "Unidentified girl, about seven, slightly injured—shock." As he wrote, he became conscious that someone had kneeled down opposite. Very tenderly this newcomer raised the frightened girl in her arms and drew a caressing hand over her forehead. "Now tell me your name," she said, a note of maternal gentleness in her tone, and the child answered immediately.
"Why," said the girl, softly, "her mother is down at the other end of the line. How glad they both will be!" And the tense, strained lines of her face relaxed in a quick smile at Stratton.
He had looked up at the first sound of her voice, and now, for an instant, their eyes held each other's. A moment passed before either spoke, and then, unconscious of their surroundings, their hands went out in an instinctive, friendly grasp. Tongues were loosed and words came tumbling from their lips.
"Helen Dimmick—"
"The great Stratton!" exclaimed she, and then the girl between them stirred; this brought both back to the present, repentant at their moment of self-interest. Helen Dimmick, a quick look of sympathy in her face, gathered the child up and carried it to its mother.
"I'll look for you on the train," promised Stratton, returning to his work.
During the greater part of the journey back to town the girl was busy at her volunteer nursing and Stratton gathered up the loose ends of his story. Then he sought her out and they sat together in a deserted rear seat. In a few brief words he explained to her the story of his return to the Sun. Helen Dimmick listened eagerly.
"Why—why I, myself," she began haltingly, and then paused. "It's so surprising; I can hardly explain—"
"There's no need," said Stratton, slowly. "I can do it as well; explain how you one day found leisure to look along the road ahead, and how you fell to wondering if such things as quiet and restfulness really existed anywhere, or if they were only soft-sounding names. And, how, after a time, the days on the Sun rose before your eyes, and you had your answer, and—"
"And the next morning I bought my ticket, laughing at my own folly, neglecting to even write—"
"The place is open, and waiting," said Stratton. "And—and the famous Animal Show comes on the Seventeenth; the advance man was in yesterday and left the tickets!"
Arriving in town Stratton wired the remaining details of his story, and together they wandered around to the little shop where the old editor welcomed the girl back gladly, and Stratton had her sit at the desk by the window and tap the red curve of her lower lip with the tip of her pencil as she gazed across upon the courthouse square, for this, he declared, had been her habit. For a long time the three talked of the old times that had come again. "And some day," said the old editor, "I shall cease to edit the Sun, and I like to think that you two will be here in my place, and that the work will go on."
Next morning there came to Stratton a long telegram from the Sentinel. The accident of his having been near the scene of the wreck had enabled that paper to score a very clean beat over its rivals, and the message, in consequence, was enthusiastic and one of congratulation. "We haven't succeeded in finding anyone who handles the violence stories as well as you," the message concluded. "Your old position is open if you care to return."
Stratton's pulse quickened at this admission of ability. He sat very still, puzzling silently. The lagging midday breeze floated in at the open windows and rustled the slip in his hand. In the rear of the shop the old editor leaned over a table, spectacles well down on his nose, his lips moving as he corrected a strip of proof.
Presently, Stratton tossed the telegram to the girl. "Your old position," she stated, "they've offered it back. That's fine," striving to put enthusiasm into her voice. "I'm glad, for your sake. Let me be the first to congratulate you." And she held out her hand with a vague smile. Stratton rose to his feet and picked up the telegram, tearing it slowly into a dozen strips. Both smiled faintly as they watched the pieces flutter down into the waste basket.
"Yes," said Stratton, taking the proffered hand, "you shall be the first to congratulate me."
- Hapsburg Liebe tells one of his stories of the Tennessee mountains next month; a story of the land where the laurel and the feud flourish. BUCK HENRY, DESERTER is the name of it; and it has something in it besides a feud.