Starvation Lake

thirteen

I never set out to be a newspaperman. From the time I was twelve, I had worked summers with Soupy at the marina, long, hot days made longer by Soupy’s dad chewing our butts. After two years at the University of Michigan, I decided to try something different. I’d taken a journalism class that year. It seemed easy enough. I liked sports, and one of our neighbors was Henry Bridgman, executive editor of the Pilot. Instead of scraping perch innards off boat decks, I figured I’d write about sports for Henry. Mom called him.

I showed up at the Pilot the next morning. Henry was sitting behind his steel desk, turned sideways at a typewriter. A copy of that day’s paper lay on the desk. A headline on the front read, “School Board Mulls Millage Increase.” Henry bit on a cigarette and stiffened his forefingers to bat out something hunt-and-peck style on the typewriter. “Christ,” he blurted, cigarette jiggling in his mouth. “These bastards must be on drugs if they think they can get away with this.” I had no idea what he was talking about. He stopped typing and stared at his words. “OK,” he declared, and swiveled to face me. A grin creased his face, all bony cheeks and crinkly eyes. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “Did your mother give you my message?”

“Um.” I glanced at my watch. “She said ten o’clock.”

“Oh, holy Christ,” he said, laughing in a hoarse guffaw, haw haw haw. “I get to do the dirty work then.”

“Pardon?”

He haw-hawed again. “See, I don’t really need a sports reporter.”

“You don’t?”

“Naw, hell.” He screwed his cigarette around in his mouth, squinting against the smoke. “I can get some high school kid to do sports. I got real news to cover.”

I wondered if “real news” had anything to do with a “millage,” whatever that was. Why hadn’t I just stayed at the marina? “OK,” I said.

Henry let me cover the occasional high school track meet or baseball game. But mostly I covered the police, the school board, and, when Henry couldn’t make the meetings, the town council. I forced myself to learn about police procedure, zoning variances, even millages. Henry had to rewrite some of my stories so they made sense. I didn’t mind. I felt good about having comprehended enough to write anything down. There were night meetings to cover, but the hours were better than at the marina, my boss was not an asshole, and I was making a few more dollars. That’s all I really thought about it. It was a summer job. Mom would ask how it was going and I’d say, “Fine.” She wanted to hear that I’d found something to do with my life. I couldn’t tell her that. In my mind, there was that summer and there was my future, and one had little to do with the other. Until I got my first big scoop.

His name was James Baumgarten, but his softball teammates called him Bubba. He had biceps like muskmelons and a fat tomato face, and he could hit a softball farther than anyone in Starvation Lake. Somehow Bubba wound up at Soupy’s tailgater one night after his team had whipped our team, also called the Chowder Heads, sponsored by Soupy’s marina.

Bubba and I got to talking over beer and bratwurst. His team, the Screwballs, was Starvation Lake’s perennial softball champion, sponsored by a local manufacturing company, Perfect-O-Screw Inc. Every summer, it seemed, the Screwballs recruited a couple of outfielders built like Bubba. We never saw them around town except on Wednesday evenings, when they’d smack homer after homer over the 283-foot fence at Thinnes Park. Bubba was the latest Screwball ringer. I was a little surprised to hear he lived in Boyne City, more than an hour’s drive away. I asked him why he would come so far just to play softball-there were leagues in Boyne City, after all-and he snickered like a little kid. It took a few beers, but Bubba finally confided that Perfect-O-Screw was paying him to play. “No shit,” I said. I don’t think he knew I was a newspaper reporter, and I didn’t feel compelled to tell him. A few more beers and he was bragging that Perfect-O-Screw even reimbursed him for his mileage.

The company gave Bubba eighty-nine days of pay at the minimum wage and in return he hit long balls and agreed to have himself listed on Perfect-O-Screw’s full-time payroll. He had never set foot in the factory except to pick up his uniform. “You can’t be telling anyone this shit,” he said. “I could lose my job.”

“Your job? You mean left field?” I said. We both howled with laughter.

I probably would have forgotten about it, except that Perfect-O-Screw at that very moment was trying to persuade the town council to expand a tax break the company enjoyed on its land and factory. Two nights before Bubba and I had our little chat, Cecil Vidigan, who owned Perfect-O-Screw and pitched for the Screwballs, had appeared at a town council meeting in his black-and-gold Perfect-O-Screw softball jacket. He reminded the council that the company’s original tax break had led to the hiring of six workers, a big deal in Starvation Lake. He said an expanded break would save it enough money to hire four more employees. “You see,” he said, his whiskery scowl spreading into a smile, “it’s a win-win for the company and for the community.” Not to mention the Screwballs.

The day after hearing Bubba’s secret, I visited the Pine County courthouse for a look at the company’s property tax records. Inside the county clerk’s office, eight rows of filing cabinets stood behind a panel of frosted-glass windows set atop a long oak counter. The place was empty except for Deputy Clerk Verna Clark.

She was a pencil-thin woman in her fifties, wearing an ash gray dress on which was pinned a name tag that said, “Deputy Clerk Clark.” Henry had warned me about her. Years before, a county commissioner had raised a stink about Verna and her family because they lived a few miles outside Pine County. The commissioner, who wanted to replace Verna with his daughter-in-law, made an issue of Pine County employees actually living in Pine County. He dropped the matter after his daughter-in-law got a job with the county drain commission. But Verna, mindful of how the powers-that-be could snatch away her livelihood, had become a stickler for rules and procedure. A pain in the ass, in other words. Henry told me he once went to the courthouse for a county map, and Verna told him he’d first have to fill out a public-information request.

“Can I help you?” she asked me.

I told her what I needed. Without a word, she produced the one-page form for requesting public documents.

“Do I really have to go through all this?”

“It’s county policy,” Verna said.

“How long will it take?”

“Most people are able to complete it in two or three minutes.”

“No,” I said, growing annoyed. “How long to actually get the records?”

“The statute requires us to respond within ten business days.”

“So I’ll have it in ten days?”

“If the county attorney was to determine that the documents could be released, sir, we would then have a reasonable period of time to process and produce them.”

“And how long could that take?”

“I’m afraid the statute doesn’t specify.”

“Could you at least guess?” Saying “at least” was a mistake. Her thin lips got thinner. She may have been a bona fide bitch, but it didn’t help that I was young and stupid.

“Guessing isn’t part of my job, but if I had to hazard an estimate, I’d say that, assuming the county attorney approves, you could have the materials by Labor Day.”

“That’s three weeks from now.”

She picked up the reading glasses dangling from a nylon cord around her neck and peered through them at a Chet’s Sunoco and Party Store calendar taped on the counter.

“Two weeks and four days,” she said.

I had to be back at college a week before that. “Look, Miss Clark, I’m-”

“Mrs. Clark,” she corrected me.

“Mrs. Clark. I’m sorry, I just need a few names and numbers. It wouldn’t take me more than an hour. Couldn’t I just do this today?”

She tapped a finger on the form. “You’ll need to fill this out.”

I looked haplessly around the room, hoping to see someone who might be able to help me. There was only Verna. “This is not right,” I said. “These are public records. The public has a right to see them.”

Verna gave me a tight smile. “Then, sir,” she said, “I suggest that you have the public fill out the required form.”

After filling out the form, I stepped out into the hallway. The men’s room at the end of the hall was closed for repairs. A plumber there told me I could use an employees’ restroom around the corner.

I stood at the urinal fuming. I wondered if Verna Clark knew Cecil Vidigan or had friends or family working at Perfect-O-Screw. Goddamn Starvation Lake, I thought. Maybe there was a story, maybe not, but I couldn’t let this small-town bullshit keep me from finding out. I had to see those records.

I washed my hands and stood at the sink, trying to figure out what to do. In the mirror I noticed a second door in the restroom. An idea popped into my head, so preposterous that I laughed. But I stood there thinking about it a little more and, after a while, it didn’t seem so crazy.

That other door opened on a dimly lit corridor that led past a janitor’s closet to yet another door, this one fitted with a frosted-glass window. I walked as quietly as I could to the frosted-glass door and put my hand on the knob. I turned it and gently tugged the door open. Through the half-inch crack I peered across a bank of filing cabinets to the counter where Verna Clark stood with her back to me, waiting on someone. I eased the door closed.

The inside of the janitor’s closet smelled of soggy mops and Comet. I found a thermos, which I filled with cold water from the restroom sink, and a rolled-up bag of stale pretzels. I locked the door from the inside and sat down on a box of toilet paper. I’d written a story that summer about county budget cutbacks. One cut meant janitors didn’t work Tuesdays and Thursdays. This was a Thursday.

I waited until after nine to slip into the clerk’s office. The records took me a little while to find, but once I had the right drawer, I worked fast, jotting names and numbers on my legal pad in the light of a half moon slivering in through the blinds. I wanted to get out of the courthouse as soon as I finished, but I feared someone might see me. So I refilled the thermos, cleaned off a big sponge to use as a pillow, and prepared to spend the night. I figured I’d sneak out as soon as the building opened in the morning.

The floor was hard and sticky, but sleep came. In a dream I slept on the edge of a cliff out West. I could hear water rushing by in a canyon below and invisible birds made of metal rattling around me in the darkness. Then I felt the cliff’s edge slipping out from under me, felt myself rolling off. Jerking in my sleep, I bolted awake to the clatter of a tin bucket I’d kicked over. “Shit,” I whispered. I lay still and listened over my thumping heart. At first there was only the quiet hum of the old building at rest. Then I heard a knob turn-the door on the restroom-and then a footstep, then another, as a spray of light flashed beneath the door to my hiding place. Did the county budget include a line item for security guards? I couldn’t remember. I sat up as quietly as I could and made sure I’d locked the door.

The light passed twice before finally stopping at the door. I heard a key being inserted into the lock. I looked desperately around the closet for some cranny into which I could disappear. Of course there was none. I squatted on one knee, thinking I could spring past whoever was about to find me. Then the door squeaked open and the flashlight beam blinded me and I froze.

“Gus?”

The voice was familiar. And the laugh that followed. “What the hell are you doing?” Darlene said.

She was wearing a dark blue cop’s uniform with a patch stitched in gold and shaped like a badge over her left breast. “Vigilant Security,” it read. Her hair was tucked up into a policelike hat sewn with an identical patch.

“Darlene,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? I’m working. What are you doing here? Did your mom kick you out? Or do you like sleeping with cockroaches?”

“It’s a long story. I came in this afternoon to look at some files. The bitch clerk wouldn’t let me.”

“So you broke into the county courthouse.”

“No. I was already in.”

“Do you think the sheriff would look at it that way?”

“Come on, Darl,” I said. I was beginning to worry that she might actually take me in. “I never told your mom about Jitters.”

We were nine years old. Darlene and I liked to careen down the dirt two-track of Jitters Trail on our bicycles and catapult over the bank into Jitters Creek. Of course our parents forbade this. One afternoon we were ski-biking, as we called it, when Darlene lost control and crashed into a small poplar along the path. Her bike kept rolling into the creek and started floating away. I chased it down the bank until it snagged in a fallen tree and I was able to dislodge it and bring it back. I found Darlene sitting on the bank, crying. She had a bloody cut on one cheek and had torn her new one-piece lavender bathing suit. Being a nine-year-old, naturally I considered teasing her, but thought better of it and instead solemnly informed her that the front wheel on her bike was badly bent and would need repair. Later we told her mother Darlene had slammed into a picnic table at the public access. Darlene hated to lie, so I did most of the talking while she stood next to me sobbing. Her mother bought it. Or at least we thought so.

“So what am I supposed to do, Gus?”

“Let’s see. Forget you ever saw me here?”

“Hmm-I don’t know.”

I’d never seen her in her uniform. She’d wanted to be a cop since she was in high school, but I realized, kneeling there in the janitor’s closet, that I’d never really taken it seriously until now. It seemed to suit her. Which made me feel glad, despite my predicament. There she was doing what she wanted to do with her life. I smiled.

“Are you really going to arrest me?”

Now she smiled, too. “I might.” She leaned back against the door until it closed.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know. A citizen’s arrest?”

We didn’t say anything for a while. We just looked at each other, me on my knee, Darlene in her uniform, the flashlight beam playing across my chest. My heart was pounding now from something other than fear. Darlene and I had gone on a few dates and gotten into a few clinches, but one of us had always stopped things before they went too far. I think we knew we really liked each other, and we knew I wasn’t going to stay in Starvation Lake, and we knew that those two things could only come to pain. But there in the humming silence of the Pine County courthouse, with the town asleep around us and my stupid little secret hanging on the air, I guess it was easier for both of us to say the hell with it, this is our place, for now.

I sat back on the floor. She snatched her hat off and tossed it at me. I caught it against my chest and set it down next to the bucket I’d upended. Darlene locked the door and snapped off her flashlight.

I got my story. Bubba Baumgarten wasn’t the only slugger on Perfect-O-Screw’s payroll. I called some of the guys whose names I’d found in the courthouse records. As it turned out, there were six Perfect-O-Screw employees who hadn’t done anything more for the company than catch fly balls and swing bats. Henry was so delighted that he never asked why I hadn’t come in until noon.

“Christ,” he said, “it’s a double play. You nailed ’em screwing the city and the softball league.”

More like a triple play, I thought.

Henry wanted to publish the story on the day the town council was scheduled to finalize Perfect-O-Screw’s newest tax break. The day before the meeting, my phone rang just after 9:00 a.m. “Gus Carpenter,” I said.

“What the fuck are you?” came the voice. I knew it from the softball field. I looked around for Henry. He’d gone for doughnuts.

“Mr. Vidigan?” I said.

“What the hell have I ever done to you? Did I strike you out or something? Will ruining me be a feather in your fucking cap? Will you be able to go to your bosses and say, ‘Stop the fucking presses, I’m about to destroy Cecil Vidigan’?”

“Actually, Mr. Vidigan-”

“By the way, print a word of this and I’ll come down and cave your goddamn skull in.”

Then he hung up. My hands were trembling. What if I had the story all wrong? I wished Henry were there.

The phone rang again.

“Gus?”

“Yes, Mr. Vidigan. Sir, I had fully-”

“No, no, Gus, please.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that sh-, all those things. You’re just doing your job. As you can imagine, Gus, this company, I’ve built it from the ground up. I’ve sweat blood, Gus. Cried tears, friend, real tears. And I think I’ve contributed a hell of a lot to this community.”

“I understand,” I said. “Do you think you could tell me-”

“Listen,” he said. “Why don’t you come out to the shop in the morning? I’ll lay it all out, how this grimy little joint-I’m pretty damn proud of it-how it makes a big difference around here. What do you say?”

My hands still hadn’t stopped shaking. “Well,” I said, “I actually need to do this now.”

“Now? Like today?”

“Yeah.”

He cleared his throat, a little too loudly. “Look, Gus, today’s just impossible. I got a huge shipment to get out of here.”

“We can do it over the phone. What I’m working on is this tax abatement-”

“No. I can’t do it now. Tomorrow.”

Now that I’d heard his anger turn to feigned calm and finally to desperation, my initial fear of Vidigan began leaching away. I’d worried for a second or two that maybe he had a perfectly reasonable explanation for hiring softball ringers, that maybe my story wasn’t a story after all, maybe I’d wasted my time breaking the law with Darlene at the courthouse. But now I was sure, without even hearing what he had to say, that I really did have a story.

“Mr. Vidigan,” I said. “We plan to run this story in tomorrow’s paper. If you want to comment, now is the time.”

There was another long pause before he said, “OK. I get it. You want to fuck me at the town council.”

“I just want to report-”

“Don’t give me that happy horseshit. You just want a feather in your fucking cap.”

“Mr. Vidigan, everything you say now is on the record.”

“Oh, ho, ho, fuck you,” he said. He sounded like he was choking. “Put this in your piece-of-shit paper: I will cave your goddamn-”

“If I don’t hear from you or your lawyers, I’ll assume you didn’t want to comment. Thanks.”

Now I hung up.

Henry went through the story with me line by line, asking what I knew, how I knew it, whether I’d double-and triple-checked all my facts. When we’d finished, he gave me one of his big, crinkly smiles and said, “Goddamn headline ought to be, ‘College Kid Raises Hometown Hell.’” The actual headline, bannered across the top of the front page, read, “Town Strikes Out on Perfect-O-Screw Abatement.”

That evening, the town council rejected the company’s application for a new tax break, canceled the original abatement, and authorized the town attorney to sue Perfect-O-Screw for $83,174.98 in back property taxes. Cecil Vidigan didn’t attend, but eighty-seven citizens did, quite a turnout for an August council meeting. I counted every one. For a few hours, people talked about something I’d done that had nothing to do with that state title game.

After the meeting, I went back to the Pilot. Deadlines had passed, the newsroom was empty, and I didn’t have to file a story on the meeting until the next morning. But I didn’t want to go home yet. On my desk I found a copy of that day’s paper with a note scrawled across it in black Magic Marker. “Here’s how you know you had a helluva scoop,” Henry had written. “The mayor called to complain about not being quoted.” I took it into Henry’s office and grabbed a Bud out of the mini-fridge beneath his desk. I propped my feet up on the desk and reread my story about twenty times. I kept thinking, This is just what my professors taught: Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable. I had exposed a cheat and saved the town money. That’s what real journalists did.

But there was something else, too, that kept me sitting there reading my story again and again into the middle of the night. I was a short, skinny college kid who’d gone toe-to-toe with a captain of industry, or at least what passed for one in Starvation Lake, a man of means and stature and raw, purposeful anger. And I’d beaten him.

Two years later, after I’d graduated from college, the scissored-out clips of my Perfect-O-Screw stories would impress a Detroit Times editor enough that she’d hire me as a general assignment reporter for the business section. By then Perfect-O-Screw would be out of business, and Cecil Vidigan would be rumored to be running a golf driving range somewhere in the Upper Peninsula.

But on the night I changed his life, I sat with my feet up and a beer in my hand and decided that if something could make me feel this good for even one night, and it didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve to be hurt, maybe it was something I could actually do, something I might actually be good at, something that might actually make somebody proud of me.