One Good Man
“Janey.”
“You agree with him,” I said. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why he brought you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She leaned over the rickety Formica table. “Because I’m worried about you, too. You kept getting closer and closer to the story, so that now you’ve become a part of it.”
I shifted in my seat, my handcuffs clanking as if to punctuate her words. Helen never said much. All through school, the kids called her Hush Puppy for her silence and her big, sad eyes. But when she did speak, when she was serious about something, you felt each word slug you in the gut.
“So what should I do?” I said. “Run to France and do what?”
“Keep reporting,” Helen said, “only from a safe distance.”
I snorted. “I don’t want to keep at a safe distance. I’m so sick of not being taken seriously. I want the big stories.”
“It’s not like Paris is sleeping,” Helen reminded me. “It’s a mess too. And what is left for you here, anyway? You spend all your time in the journalism department’s dark room. You don’t talk to me… I had to hear from Karen that Bobby dumped you. He said the same thing: you’re getting too involved in your work.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bobby’s boring and bad in bed. And you can quote me. Besides,” I added, “what’s wrong with hard work? I have to work twice as hard as a man in my field to get anywhere.”
“Maybe so, but what kind of work can you do from prison?”
“My father is bluffing. He’d never let me go to jail.”
“I agree, but the shootings, Janey. Those are real.”
I dug my thumbnail into a crack on the table, and tried not to think about how scared I was last night. “It feels like running away.”
“There will never be a shortage of stories.”
“Yeah, little ones,” I muttered.
Helen grinned. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s the smaller stories that have the greatest impact.” She reached across the table to take my hand. “Find that story, Janey. Find one that looks like nothing on the outside, but once you crack it open…” She shrugged with a smile. “…Something incredible comes out.”
I pursed my lips, but my fingers curled around hers. “My dad’s secret weapon: Helen Strumfeld.”
“Your dad’s no dummy,” Helen said. “And he loves you, too.”
Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away. I wasn’t a crier. I needed my eyes to stay sharp and focused. To find the right photos to go with the best articles.
The big stories.
May 15, 1970
Paris, France
Janey
My father didn’t know how badly Vietnam had torn France apart, or how it still hadn’t put itself back together. He thought the war ended for France in ‘54. But in the spring of ‘68, riots, protests, and strikes brought the country to a standstill and broke apart the very university my father was sending me to.
I tried to explain this to him during my rushed registration process, but he didn’t get it. Or want to. He needed me to get away from the States, period. It didn’t matter that Paris was in a state of upheaval; no one had been killed here and that’s all that mattered.
As I said my goodbyes and boarded the plane, I pondered my plans for Paris. If my father thought I was going to stay out the war, he was sorely mistaken. My days of interviewing obnoxious athletes and dodging their grabby hands or ignoring their crass comments were over.
Even so, as soon as my flight lifted off, putting more distance between myself and Vietnam, I felt like a coward. Never again would I run away from a big story. There were still big stories in France; I just had to find them.
The flat my father rented for me was pretty keen, I hated to admit. I didn’t want to come here as a spoiled, little rich girl; an ex-pat, living off Daddy’s dime. But there I was, doing just that. The flat was in the 5th arrondissement, across the Seine River, and on the first floor of a beautiful old building. I had a small yard in the back where I could sit in the morning, in a wobbly wrought-iron chair at a tiny wrought-iron table, drinking my coffee.