THE JOURNAL FAMILY
Next morning, Joan did not even hint to Tim that she was planning some
time to follow him. It would seem like “tagging” to him. But she must
learn all she could about his job. Maybe she could really help him in
some way, and then he’d be glad she had taken such an interest.
She hustled about making beds and putting the house in order. She had
her regular duties, and in the summer-time they were heavier than when
she went to school. Joan did not like housework. But she always tackled
it the way she did everything, and was done before she really had much
time to think how she hated it. Whenever she demurred at having to do
household tasks, when she would rather be over at the _Journal_,
learning about newspapers, Mother would say, “Joan, remember that Louisa
Alcott often had to drop her pen for her needle or broom.” Sometimes,
Mother almost seemed to understand.
Joan had to stop in the middle of her dusting this morning to answer the
telephone. It was Amy asking her to go for a swim.
“I can’t—I tell you, I’ve got a job.” Joan told her for the fourth time.
Joan adored swimming, even though the inland city of Plainfield offered
nothing more than a dammed-up creek.
A laugh buzzed through the wire. “Jo, don’t be silly.”
It was hard to refuse Amy. She was one of those bossy girls. But Joan
hung on, and though Amy coaxed at great length, she was firm.
“You’re going to spoil our vacation!” Finally Amy banged down at her
end.
Joan, rising with cramped muscles to resume her work, thought to herself
that this was going to be the best vacation she ever had because
she—well, Tim really—had a job on the _Journal_. As she turned from the
telephone, she saw her mother’s face full of disapproval. Mother always
wanted her to go with Amy, rather than hang around the _Journal_ office.
“How could I go, to-day,” she appealed, “when Tim just starts his job? I
don’t know when something may break, and Tim might miss a big story.
Why, there might be a big fire right in this block. I have to stick
around.”
The disapproval did not leave Mother’s face, but she said nothing.
Everything finished, Joan found it impossible to settle down to reading.
It seemed strangely lonesome in the house without Tim. Their vacation
had been going on for a whole week now, and the two had been together
most of that time, laughing, chattering and bickering with each other.
She missed Tim, even if he often did fail to treat her with proper
respect.
She wandered down to the kitchen and was grateful for Mother’s timid
suggestion that the ice box needed cleaning. Anything to keep busy! She
discovered a quantity of milk. Enough for fudge, she decided. Tim would
love some when he came home from work that afternoon. She’d make it for
a surprise. She followed the directions Amy had written for her in the
back of the thick cook book—a new kind of fudge. It turned out
beautifully. Mother praised it with lavish adjectives. Joan knew it
wasn’t that wonderful, but Mother was always pleased when she took an
interest in anything domestic.
Tim came home for lunch and between mouthfuls he told Joan what he had
written up that morning—one really sizable obituary. She hoped he had
put in all the details that the _Journal Style_ booklet had said were
necessary for the well-written obit. That was pretty good for him
actually to report something the first day, she thought. She wished he
would tell her in minutest detail, moment by moment, what he had done
that morning, but boys were so vague in their conversations. He merely
said he had “legged” it all over town—a leg man, is what he was called
on the newspaper.
Joan was eager to go over to the _Journal_ for the paper as soon as it
was off the press to see Tim’s story. Would Chub remember to call her?
She would go over sooner if an excuse offered itself, she decided as she
settled down restlessly with a book on the side steps. If only Uncle
John would need her for something; or Miss Betty, who did the society
notes, would send her out for candy to nibble on, or for an extra hair
net or something, as she often did.
About the middle of the afternoon the call came.
“Yoo-whoo!” It was Chub at the _Journal_ window. “Come on over.”
Joan’s book fell on the ground and she hurried over. In the editorial
room, she glanced around. Tim was not at his desk—he had told her that
he was to have the one right next to Mack’s. He was probably out on a
story. She hoped it was a big one.
Mr. Nixon, the editor, was in a good humor and gave the manager’s niece
a smile. The editor seldom wore a coat these days. He was usually in
vest and shirt sleeves which made him seem younger than he really was.
The collar button at the back of his neck always showed. Often he was
cross and would bellow, “Get a job on a monthly,” at all the unlucky
ones who tried to plead that their stories were not quite finished. He
was just as apt to call pretty Miss Betty a nincompoop if she made a
mistake, as he was to say, when she wrote up a good article, “A few more
stories like this, and the _Journal_ won’t be able to hold you.”
Miss Betty Parker waved hello from her desk by the window. Miss Betty
had the distinction of being the only woman on the editorial staff.
“Here, woman!” was the way the men often summoned her to the telephone.
There was a pink rose on Miss Betty’s desk. Had Mack, the sport editor,
who was there with a green eye shade and a pencil behind his ear, given
it to her? Joan thought it must be lovely to write all those society
items about the people who lived on the North Side and who gave teas and
parties and luncheons and things. Beside that, Miss Betty conducted an
Advice to the Lovelorn Column, which Joan read every evening. She signed
her answers, Betty Fairfax. Mack tried to make Joan believe that he
wrote the questions, but she knew better than that, because they had had
them before he came to the _Journal_, which was only a few months ago.
Somehow, Joan did not like Mack, although he was really almost as
good-looking as Tim. Tim was dark, with wavy hair and dark eyes, while
Mack was very blond, with a reddish mustache. Tim had been loud in his
protest against Mack when he first joined the _Journal_ family, and
especially when he had been made sport editor. “That sissy! Imagine him
a sport editor.” But later, he admitted that Mack was a smart fellow.
“He has a ‘nose for news’ all right and he certainly can write,” Tim had
added admiringly.
Mack’s corner had been fixed up with appropriate sport pictures before
he came. He had added no new ones. Tim would have.
There was a member of the _Journal_ staff, of whom Joan approved
whole-heartedly. That was old James Cook, a veteran reporter, called
Cookie by all who knew him. He was fat and old, but kind, and always as
gracious to Joan as though she had been Miss Betty’s age.
“Well, well,” he greeted her now, as he shuffled over to the files. “I
thought the day wouldn’t be complete without your shining face around
here. Especially now with brother Tim on the pay roll. When are you
going to steal Miss Betty’s job away from her?”
He was not teasing, like Mack. But Joan was embarrassed. She really did
hope to have Miss Betty’s job in a few more years, but it hardly seemed
polite to admit it.
“Just as soon as I get to be the star reporter around here on double
space rates,” Miss Betty laughed in reply to Cookie, and Joan did not
need to answer.
Cookie was one of the nicest men in the world—always ready to help any
one. He would even pitch in and help Miss Betty write up social items,
pink teas and things when she got rushed. “I can describe a wedding gown
as well as any one,” he would brag. He had once been on the _New York
Banner_, but his health had failed and now he was content to putter
along here on the _Journal_, doing desk work. He was liked by every one.
He was always willing to answer all Joan’s questions about the
newspaper. He had taught her long ago that “news is anything timely that
is of interest,” and Joan had learned that phrase by heart before she
was ten. He had told her that the word “news” came from the letters of
the four points of the compass, north, east, west, and south.
“Cookie,” Joan reminded him, “you’re always saying you are going to tell
Chub and me some of your experiences on that big New York newspaper.
When are you?”
“Oh—some time,” he drawled, as he ambled off.
Another member of the _Journal_ tribe sauntered up. It was Bossy, the
colored janitor. His steel-rimmed spectacles gave his dark face an
owlish look. He sniffed at Betty’s rose. “Hit sho looks just like an
artificial one, don’t hit now?” he asked, amiably.
There was no squelching Bossy. He was a great talker and every one let
him ramble on. He had been the janitor so long that he felt almost as
though he owned the paper. No one felt it more keenly when the _Journal_
was “scooped” by the _Star_, than did this same, good-natured Bossy. He
prided himself that he read every word in the _Journal_ every day.
“Your brother gwine be a newspaper reporter, dat what?” He turned to
Joan. “Well, he’ll hab to be careful and not make no mistakes. De
_Journal_ got to be careful. Mistakes is bad. Bossy knows.” He muttered
something to himself.
Tim came back into the office now, with a rather disgusted look on his
face, and began pounding his typewriter keys, for all the world like a
provoked small boy doing his detested piano practice. Joan went over and
glanced over his shoulder at what he was writing. It was a short article
asking for cast-off baby things, toys and clothing for the babies of the
crowded-to-overflowing day nursery on Grove Street. Of course, Tim would
hate a “sissy” assignment like that, but Joan would have enjoyed seeing
all the babies and having the matron tell her of the things recently
donated.
When he finished that story, he started on the rewrites, stories from
the _Morning Star_ dished up in a different style. Joan glanced at his
desk. It was cluttered like a real reporter’s. The whole editorial
office was untidy. The staff seldom used the tall, green metal
wastebasket in the corner. They wadded up papers and aimed at it. Chub
often said, “The first person to hit the wastebasket around here will be
fired.”
Joan noticed that Tim had tacked a slip of yellow copy paper on the wall
just above his typewriter. It read, in the editor’s handwriting:
Martin—
Call Undertakers twice a day, at 9:30 and 1:15.
Call Medical Examiner at the same time.
Read other papers and clip any local deaths.
Ugh! Being a cub reporter was sort of a gruesome job. But Tim did not
seem to mind that part of it. Would he really like the work, she
wondered. He had never been half so crazy about the _Journal_ as she
was.
“They’re running, Jo!” called Chub from the swinging door to the
composing room, and Joan hurried after him.
That meant that the paper was being printed. Joan followed Chub “out
back” into the composing room where the linotype machines were all
silent now. This part of the _Journal_ was just as important as the
writing and business end, Joan knew, though Amy did not agree with her.
Amy had visited “out back” only once, and then had brushed daintily by
the printers in their ink-smeared aprons. Joan didn’t mind the dirty,
dim old place, or the rough men. They might be inky and stained, but
they were kind, always joking together just as the men in the front
offices did. The “front” and “back” were like brothers of an oddly
assorted family.
Joan knew all the men back here. The head pressman, the linotype men who
often printed her name in little slim lines of lead for her when they
weren’t busy. But she had to hold the lines up to the looking glass to
read her name. It always made her feel like Alice in _Through the
Looking Glass_.
All about on shelves under the long tables stood little tin trays of
type, stacked—stuff ready set for a dearth of news. Joan had learned to
read type, too. It was just as easy as anything when you got used to it.
They passed a gray-haired man sitting hunched on a tall stool, reading
yards and yards of proof.
“Meet the Dummy!” Chub said, with a wave of his hand.
Joan looked at the man, whom she had seen only once before, with some
interest. Chub’s remark was not so impolite as it seemed, for “dummy” is
a word used for the plan of the newspaper before it is made up, and
names apropos of their work delighted the _Journal_ family. Just like
Em, the cat.
He was a middle-aged man, and seemed rather dignified for a proofreader,
with his gray hair and blue eyes.
“The office Dummy. He can’t hear a sound or say a word,” Chub stated in
his ordinary voice, just at the man’s elbow. “But I’d forgotten that you
were introduced to him the other day when you were over. He came last
week, you know.”
The man gave Joan a half-smile of recognition. There was something
puzzling about him. Perhaps there was about every deaf-mute. It really
must be terrible to have to write everything you wanted to say, Joan
mused. And not to be able to hear, but still he couldn’t hear the rumble
and clatter of the presses, and that might be a blessing, though Joan
liked it.
Joan recalled what Chub had told her of Dummy. That he had applied for
the job in writing. “I do not speak,” he wrote, “but I can work. I can
read proof. I do not have to talk to read proof.” He got the job.
“Dat new proofreader gives me de creeps,” said a voice behind Joan and
Chub, and there was Bossy. “Never saying a word, like dat. Hit ain’t
natural.”
“Well, it is for a deaf-mute,” explained the office boy.
They went on out to the cement-floored pressroom where the big presses
were. They were roaring like thunder, and whirling endlessly back and
forth, over and over. Little ridges of tiny blue flames, to speed up the
drying of the ink, made blobs of color in the drabness. Leather straps
above the presses were slap-slapping to a dull rhythm. It was a dim
place, old, musty, ink-reeking, but romantic to Joan. And to think that
to-day, this big press was multiplying Tim’s story for the thousands of
_Journal_ readers!
The place had a spell for Chub, too, for it was here that he chose to
mention the mystery.
“Say, Jo, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, there’s nothing new
for me to tell you. When there is, I will. It’s just a mystery, that’s
all.”
“But what’s it about?” pleaded Joan. She hated to be kept in the dark.
“It’s—well, I guess I can tell you this much,” he granted. “It’s
about—mistakes.” He shouted the last word, to be heard above the roar.
“Sh!” warned Joan. She was bewildered. Mistakes. It seemed to be in
every one’s mind. First Tim had mentioned mistakes, then Bossy, and now
Chub! She wanted to ask more about the mysterious mistakes, but she knew
Chub would tell her when he was ready and no sooner.
They went around to the other side of the big Goss press, where a crowd
of newsboys, both white and colored, were waiting for the papers. Joan
hardly noticed their grins. She rushed to the levers that were shoving
the papers, already folded, and let one be shot right into her hands.
She looked down at the folded paper, opened it out, and searched the
front page. Tim’s story wasn’t there. She had expected it would be, with
a two-column head, at least. But now she realized that was silly. A new
cub reporter wouldn’t make the front page, right off like that! She
turned the pages and hunted. On the back page, she found it—about two
paragraphs long and under the regular obituary heading. She was
thrilled, anyway.
She clasped the damp paper, reeking of fresh ink, to her chest and the
inky letters reprinted themselves in a blur upon the front of her white
middy. “My brother wrote that!”
Over the paper she caught a glimpse of Dummy, who had left his corner in
the other room and appeared now around the big press. Why, the man had
rather a scared look. Had he read her lips and was he afraid of her
brother, perhaps? Maybe Tim’s job wasn’t so safe as they thought. The
man might be plotting against the manager’s nephew. Joan had read of
such things, but her thoughts were rather vague.