Deceit

ELEVEN

You always remember your first time.

I overslept.

I was supposed to be on a plane to Shreveport, Louisiana, to interview the family of a dead National Guardsman, one of the first casualties in Afghanistan. Back when the war on terror still had the imprimatur of a just revenge.

Before we blew into Iraq after WMDs that weren’t there and unleashed holy hell.

Maybe I was inherently dreading it. The knock at their door, my protestations about how sorry I was to be bothering them in their moment of grief. Their bewildered faces-because death is bewildering, a vanishing act of stunning skill; first they’re here, then they’re not. The lowered faces, the embarrassing tears, the snapshots brought out in dusty albums, opened for my respectful perusal. The childhood stories, the bedroom tour, the folded American flag sitting obtrusively on the living room mantelpiece. Maybe I was dreading it so much that I’d decided not to wake up.

See. I knew the routine so well that I could write it from memory.

That’s exactly what occurred to me as I gazed bleary-eyed at my alarm clock, which uncomprehendingly was hours past where it was supposed to be. Hours past where I could simply hop on a later plane, still get the interview, and make it into tomorrow’s Sunday edition.

I’ll admit something.

I’d fibbed before. All reporters do.

Little things.

Maybe I’d reconstructed a piece of dialogue that wasn’t exactly word-for-word what that political bagman had told me in that desolate downtown garage. It was close, sure, but it sounded so much better, so much more infinitely dramatic this way.

Maybe, here and there, I’d described something that I hadn’t in actuality seen.

I’d talked to that crack junkie outside his burned-out tenement, and yet a few particulars of his garbage-strewn, needle-littered apartment had somehow crept into the article.

Why not? What was the harm?

His apartment was probably garbage-strewn and needle-littered. Its inclusion in the article added texture. And if I hadn’t actually stepped inside and seen it with my own two eyes, who was to know? It hadn’t changed anything materially, had it?

Of course, this would be different. This would be making something up in its entirety. Its very audacity glued me to the bed, caused me to keep staring at my clock as if the hour hand might miraculously crawl backward of its own volition.

I think I wrote the article as a kind of exercise. At first I did.

That’s, anyway, what I told myself.

Write it for fun, I whispered, and see how it turns out.

Imagine it, I told myself. Walking down a tree-lined sidewalk on a pleasantly mild Shreveport day, then up the rickety wooden steps to their front door. Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont stepping back to let me into the suffocating darkness of their living room. Imagine how they might’ve answered my questions.

I had some actual info. A quick trip to Google had turned up two local articles from the Shreveport Journal. Sergeant First Class Lowell Beaumont was a high school athlete who would’ve gone on scholarship to LSU if not for those torn knee ligaments suffered in his senior year at Stonewall Jackson High.

His bedroom remains filled with the echoes of the high school gridiron, with freshly polished trophies adorning both sides of his dresser bureau.

See, it wasn’t so hard.

Odds are that’s exactly what his bedroom looked like.

Lowell had two younger sisters, the articles said. Mary and Louise.

Mary Beaumont clutched a picture of her fallen brother in both hands. “He was always looking out for us, making sure we were home on time, stuff like that.”

What older brother wouldn’t keep a sharp eye on his sisters? And wouldn’t a grieving sister pick up his picture, if only to stare at the face she’d no longer see again?

Lowell Beaumont had worked on an assembly line at the local tire factory. He’d joined the National Guard one week after 9/11.

“He thought he had a duty to his country,” Mr. Beaumont said, shaking a white-haired head bent in grief. “He felt it was worth even his life.”

Isn’t that the only reason someone would join the National Guard after the Twin Towers fell? Duty to country? Wouldn’t the father be wracked with an amorphous mixture of pride and sadness? If he hadn’t said those exact words to someone, he’d undoubtedly thought them.

Once I got going, it was hard to stop.

It was easier than having to refer back to my notes. Much easier. My fingers virtually flew across the keys.

Speaking of notes.

Let’s suppose I actually handed the story in. Let’s suppose this one time-never again of course, only this once-I saved my ass with a little creativity. If someone were to challenge something in the story, I could supply proof. Not tape-I was the traditionalist who famously abhorred the tape recorder. I would give them my notes.

What notes?

The ones I’d instantly conjure up if push came to shove.

The simple brilliance of this deception comforted me and spurred me on.

When I finished the story, I thought it read exactly like it would’ve if I had gotten on that plane and made it to that shuttered home in Shreveport.

Still, I admit to the slightest trembling in my hands as I walked it over to the backfield editior that evening.

As I stood and watched it make its way from copy desk to proof.

The next morning, he called me into his office.

My trembling increased geometrically. I quivered, consumed by the absolute dread you feel on your way to the principal when you’ve been caught red-handed with crib notes in your pocket.

I rehearsed a story on the way to his office: “I missed the plane, so I called them and did the interview on the phone… It’ll never happen again… I should’ve told you… I’m so sorry…”

When I made it through the door, the first thing I saw was the paper folded to my article. First page, lower left.

A Soldier’s Sad Return

He peered up over his old-fashioned bifocals, looking even more rumpled than usual. Ever since smoking was banned in New York City offices, he’d taken to chewing anything in arm’s reach. This morning it was a red pencil nearly bitten in half, which he carefully removed from his mouth and suspended over the article with the deliberateness of a firing hammer being squeezed back into position.

“Nice writing,” he said. “Moving without being mawkish. Really, really good.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I might’ve even blushed.