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.
TWELVE
Once upon a time, Littleton had aspired to a kind of Palm Springs-hood. They’d broken ground for a Robert Trent Jones golf course and two sprawling resorts, ascribing to the build-it-and-they-will-come theory of urban development.
They didn’t come.
Maybe because Palm Springs had Bob Hope and Shecky Greene and a host of other aging Friars Club members, and Littleton had Sonny Rolph.
It didn’t help that Littleton’s major real estate developer went belly-up in the stock collapse of the early nineties, just as Vegas turned into a cheap ticket option for Los Angelenos looking to grab a weekend getaway.
The resorts were never finished-the golf course suspended at nine holes and counting.
Now mall openings were true cause for excitement.
This one was first-rate.
Rodeo clowns handed out balloons twisted into tiny pink dachshunds. Humming machines spun out glistening spools of cotton candy. Someone who looked like Billy Ray Cyrus sung a country song about his girlfriend leaving him red, white, and blue.
Which happened to be the color of the ceremonial ribbon deftly cut in two by Littleton’s three-term mayor. Patriotism was clearly in these days. The voracious crowd promptly surged through the massive doorway in search of bargains and air-conditioning. Not necessarily in that order.
Nate Cohen, my intern from Pepperdine, accompanied me to cover this earthshaking event. Nate the Skate his frat buddies called him, he informed me the day we met.
Why?
I don’t know, he said, looking puzzled at the question.
Nate tended to pepper me with journalism questions when he wasn’t gabbing to his girlfriend. They had matching cell phones, he stated proudly, both of which could take camera-quality pictures. He proved it by showing me his girlfriend, Rina, reclining nude on an outdoor chaise longue.