This Present Darkness, Page 2

  “So I’ve seen,” the big man sighed.

  “But what are they doing here? We’ve never seen such concentration before, not here.”

  “Oh, the reason won’t be hidden for long.” He looked through the foyer doors and toward the sanctuary. “Let’s see this man of God.”

  They turned from the door and walked through the small foyer. The bulletin board on the wall carried requests for groceries for a needy family, some baby-sitting, and prayer for a sick missionary. A large bill announced a congregational business meeting for next Friday. On the other wall, the record of weekly offerings indicated the offerings were down from last week; so was the attendance, from sixty-one to forty-two.

  Down the short and narrow aisle they went, past the orderly ranks of dark-stained plank and slat pews, toward the front of the sanctuary where one small spotlight illumined a rustic two-by-four cross hanging above the baptistry. In the center of the worn-carpeted platform stood the little sacred desk, the pulpit, with a Bible laid open upon it. These were humble furnishings, functional but not at all elaborate, revealing either humility on the part of the people or neglect.

  Then the first sound was added to the picture: a soft, muffled sobbing from the end of the right pew. There, kneeling in earnest prayer, his head resting on the hard wooden bench, and his hands clenched with fervency, was a young man, very young, the blond man thought at first: young and vulnerable. It all showed in his countenance, now the very picture of pain, grief, and love. His lips moved without sound as names, petitions, and praises poured forth with passion and tears.

  The two couldn’t help but just stand there for a moment, watching, studying, pondering.

  “The little warrior,” said the dark-haired one.

  The big blond man formed the words himself in silence, looking down at the contrite man in prayer.

  “Yes,” he observed, “this is the one. Even now he’s interceding, standing before the Lord for the sake of the people, for the town …”

  “Almost every night he’s here.”

  At that remark, the big man smiled. “He’s not so insignificant.”

  “But he’s the only one. He’s alone.”

  “No.” The big man shook his head. “There are others. There are always others. They just have to be found. For now, his single, vigilant prayer is the beginning.”

  “He’s going to be hurt, you know that.”

  “And so will the newspaperman. And so will we.”

  “But will we win?”

  The big man’s eyes seemed to burn with a rekindled fire.

  “We will fight.”

  “We will fight,” his friend agreed.

  They stood over the kneeling warrior, on either side; and at that moment, little by little, like the bloom of a flower, white light began to fill the room. It illuminated the cross on the back wall, slowly brought out the colors and grain in every plank of every pew, and rose in intensity until the once plain and humble sanctuary came alive with an unearthly beauty. The walls glimmered, the worn rugs glowed, the little pulpit stood tall and stark as a sentinel backlit by the sun.

  And now the two men were brilliantly white, their former clothing transfigured by garments that seemed to burn with intensity. Their faces were bronzed and glowing, their eyes shone like fire, and each man wore a glistening golden belt from which hung a flashing sword. They placed their hands upon the shoulders of the young man and then, like a gracefully spreading canopy, silken, shimmering, nearly transparent membranes began to unfurl from their backs and shoulders and rise to meet and overlap above their heads, gently undulating in a spiritual wind.

  Together they ministered peace to their young charge, and his many tears began to subside.

  The Ashton Clarion was a small-town, grass-roots newspaper; it was little and quaint, maybe just a touch unorganized at times, unassuming. It was, in other words, the printed expression of the town of Ashton. Its offices occupied a small storefront space on Main Street in the middle of town, just a one-story affair with a large display window and a heavy, toe-scuffed door with a mail slot. The paper came out twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and didn’t make a lot of money. By the appearance of the office and layout facilities, you could tell it was a low-budget operation.

  In the front half of the building was the office and newsroom area. It consisted of three desks, two typewriters, two wastebaskets, two telephones, one coffeemaker without a cord, and what looked like all the scattered notes, papers, stationery and office bric-a-brac in the world. An old worn counter from a torn-down railroad station formed a divider between the functioning office and the reception area, and of course there was a small bell above the door that jingled every time someone came in.

  Toward the back of this maze of small-scale activity was one luxury that looked just a little too big-town for this place: a glassed-in office for the editor. It was, in fact, a new addition. The new editor/owner was a former big city reporter and having a glassed-in editor’s office had been one of his life’s dreams.

  This new fellow was Marshall Hogan, a strong, big-framed bustler hustler whom his staff—the typesetter, the secretary/reporter/ad girl, the paste-up man, and the reporter/columnist—lovingly referred to as “Attila the Hogan.” He had bought the paper a few months ago, and the clash between his big-city polish and their small-town easy-go still roused some confrontations from time to time. Marshall wanted a quality paper, one that ran efficiently and smoothly and made its deadlines, with a place for everything and everything in its place. But the transition from the New York Times to the Ashton Clarion was like jumping off a speeding train into a wall of half-set Jell-O. Things just didn’t click as fast in this little office, and the high-powered efficiency Marshall was used to had to give way to such Ashton Clarion quirks as saving all the coffee grounds for the secretary’s compost pile, and someone finally turning in a long-awaited human interest story, but with parakeet droppings on it.

  On Monday morning the traffic patterns were hectic, with no time for any weekend hangovers. The Tuesday edition was being brought forth in a rush, and the entire staff was feeling the labor pains, dashing back and forth between their desks in front and the paste-up room in the back, squeezing past each other in the narrow passage, carrying rough copy for articles and ads to be typeset, finished typeset galleys, and assorted shapes and sizes of half-tones of photographs that would highlight the news pages.

  In the back, amid bright lights, cluttered worktables, and rapidly moving bodies, Marshall and Tom the paste-up man bent over a large, benchlike easel, assembling Tuesday’s Clarion out of bits and pieces that seemed to be scattered everywhere. This goes here, this can’t—so we have to shove it somewhere else, this is too big, what will we use to fill this? Marshall was getting miffed. Every Monday and Thursday he got miffed.

  “Edie!” he hollered, and his secretary answered, “Coming,” and he told her for the umpteenth time, “The galleys go in the trays over the table, not on the table, not on the floor, not on the—”

  “I didn’t put any galleys on the floor!” Edie protested as she hurried into the paste-up room with more galleys in her hand. She was a tough little woman of forty with just the right personality to stand up to Marshall’s brusqueness. She still knew where to find things around the office better than anyone, especially her new boss. “I’ve got them right in your cute little trays where you want them.”

  “So how’d these get here on the floor?”

  “Wind, Marshall, and don’t make me tell you where that came from!”

  “All right, Marshall,” said Tom, “that takes care of pages three, four, six, seven … what about one and two? What are we going to do with all these empty slots?”

  “We are going to put in Bernie’s coverage of the Festival, with clever writing, dramatic human-interest photos, the whole bit, as soon as she gets her rear in here and gives them to us! Edie!”

  “Yo!”

  “Bernie’s an hour late, for crying out loud! Call he
r again, will you?”

  “Just did. No answer.”

  “Nuts.”

  George, the small, retired typesetter who still worked for the fun of it, swiveled his chair away from the typesetting machine and offered, “How about the Ladies Auxiliary Barbecue? I’m just finishing that up, and the photo of Mrs. Marmaselle is spicy enough for a lawsuit.”

  “Yeah,” Marshall groaned, “right on page one. That’s all I need, a good impression.”

  “So what now?” Edie asked.

  “Anybody make it to the Festival?”

  “Went fishing,” said George. “That Festival’s too wild for me.”

  “My wife wouldn’t let me,” said Tom.

  “I caught some of it,” said Edie.

  “Start writing,” said Marshall. “The biggest townbuster of the year, and we’ve got to have something on it.”

  The phone rang.

  “Saved by the bell?” Edie chirped as she picked up the back-room extension. “Good morning, the Clarion.” Suddenly she brightened. “Hey, Bernice! Where are you?”

  “Where is she?” Marshall demanded at the same time.

  Edie listened and her face filled with horror. “Yes … well, calm down now … sure … well, don’t worry, we’ll get you out.”

  Marshall spouted, “Well, where the heck is she?”

  Edie gave him a scolding look and answered, “In jail!”

  CHAPTER 2

  MARSHALL HURRIED INTO the basement of the Ashton Police Station and immediately wished he could disconnect his nose and ears. Beyond the heavily barred gate to the cell block, the crammed jail cells didn’t smell or sound much different from the carnival the night before. On his way here he had noticed how quiet the streets were this morning. No wonder—all the noise had moved inside to these half-dozen peeling-painted cells set in cold, echoing concrete. Here were all the dopers, vandals, rowdies, drunks, and no-goods the police could scrape off the face of the town, collected in what amounted to an overcrowded zoo. Some were making a party of it, playing poker for cigarettes with finger-smeared cards and trying to outdo each other’s tales of illicit exploits. Toward the end of the cells a gang of young bucks made obscene comments to a cageful of prostitutes with no better place to be locked up. Others just slumped in corners in a drunken stew or a depressed slump or both. The remainder glared at him from behind the bars, made snide remarks, begged for peanuts. He was glad he had left Kate upstairs.

  Jimmy Dunlop, the new deputy, was stationed loyally at the guard desk, filling out forms and drinking strong coffee.

  “Hey, Mr. Hogan,” he said, “you got right down here.”

  “I couldn’t wait … and I won’t wait!” he snapped. He wasn’t feeling well. This had been his first Festival, and that was bad enough, but he never expected, never dreamed of such a prolonging of the agony. He towered over the desk, his big frame shifting forward to accentuate his impatience. “Well?” he demanded.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m here to get my reporter out of the can.”

  “Sure, I know that. Have you got a release?”

  “Listen. I just paid off those yo-yos upstairs. They were supposed to call you down here.”

  “Well … I haven’t heard a thing, and I have to have authorization.”

  “Jimmy—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your phone’s off the hook.”

  “Oh …”

  Marshall set the phone down right in front of him with a firmness that made the phone jingle in pain.

  “Call ’em.”

  Marshall straightened up, watched Jimmy dial wrong, dial again, try to get through. He goes well with the rest of the town, Marshall thought, nervously running his fingers through his graying red hair. Aw, it was a nice town, sure. Cute, maybe a little dumb, kind of like a bumbling kid who always got himself into jams. Things weren’t really better in the big city, he tried to remind himself.

  “Uh, Mr. Hogan,” Jimmy asked, his hand over the receiver, “who was it you talked to?”

  “Kinney.”

  “Sergeant Kinney, please.”

  Marshall was impatient. “Let’s have the key for the gate. I’ll let her know I’m here.”

  Jimmy gave him the key. He’d argued with Marshall Hogan before.

  A whoop of mock welcome poured out from the cells along with hurled cigarette butts and whistled march tunes as he passed by. He lost no time in finding the cell he wanted.

  “All right, Krueger, I know you’re in there!”

  “Come and get me, Hogan,” came the reply from a desperate and somewhat outraged female voice down near the end.

  “Well, stick out your arm, wave at me or something!”

  A hand stuck out through the bodies and bars and gave him a desperate wave. He got there, gave the palm a slap, and found himself face-to-face with Bernice Krueger, jailbird, his prize columnist and reporter. She was a young, attractive woman in her midtwenties, with unkempt brown hair and large, wire-rimmed glasses, now smudged. She had obviously had a hard night and was presently keeping company with at least a dozen women, some older, some shockingly younger, mostly trucked-in prostitutes. Marshall didn’t know whether to laugh or spit.

  “I won’t mince words—you look terrible,” he said.

  “Only in keeping with my vocation. I’m a hooker now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, one of us,” a chunky girl sang out.

  Marshall grimaced and shook his head. “What kind of questions were you asking out there?”

  “Right now no joke is funny. No anecdote of last night’s events is funny. I’m not laughing, I’m seething. The assignment was an insult in the first place.”

  “Look, somebody had to cover the carnival.”

  “But we were quite right in our prognostication; there was certainly nothing new under the sun, nor the moon, as it were.”

  “You got arrested,” he offered.

  “For the sake of grabbing the reader with a scandalous lead. What else was there to write about?”

  “So read it to me.”

  A Spanish girl from the back of the cell offered, “She tried to do business with the wrong trick,” at which the whole cell block guffawed and hooted.

  “I demand to be released!” Bernice fumed. “And have you stepped in epoxy? Do something!”

  “Jimmy’s on the phone with Kinney. I paid your bail. We’ll get you out of here.”

  Bernice took a moment to simmer down and then reported, “In answer to your questions, I was carrying on spot interviews, trying to get some good pictures, good quotes, good anything. I assume that Nancy and Rosie here”—she looked toward two young ladies who could have been twins, and they smiled at Marshall—“wondered what I was doing, constantly circumnavigating the carnival grounds looking bewildered. They struck up a conversation that really got us nowhere news-wise, but did get us all in trouble when Nancy propositioned an undercover cop and we all got busted together.”

  “I think she’d be good at it,” quipped Nancy as Rosie gave her a playful hit.

  Marshall asked, “And you didn’t show him your I.D., your press card?”

  “He wouldn’t give me a chance! I told him who I was.”

  “Well, did he hear you?” Marshall asked the girls, “Did he hear her?”

  They only shrugged, but Bernice shifted her voice into high gear and cried, “Is this voice loud enough for you? I employed it last night while he slapped the cuffs on me!”

  “Welcome to Ashton.”

  “I’ll have his badge!”

  “It’ll only turn your chest green.” Hogan held up his hand to halt another outburst. “Hey, listen, it isn’t worth the trouble …”

  “There are different schools of thought!”

  “Bernie …”

  “I have some things I would love to print, four columns wide, all about Supercop and that do-nothing cretin of a chief! Where is he, anyway?”

  “Who, you mean Brummel?”

  “He has a very handy w
ay of disappearing, you know. He knows who I am. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t reach him this morning.”

  “And he turned his back last night!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Suddenly she clammed up, but Marshall read her face clear as a bell: Make sure you ask me later.

  Just then the big gate opened and in came Jimmy Dunlop.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” said Marshall. “All set, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy was too intimidated by the yells, demands, hoots, and jeers coming from the cages to answer right away. But he did have the key to the cell in his hand, and that said enough.

  “Step away from the door, please,” he ordered.

  “Hey, when’s your voice gonna change?” was characteristic of the answers he got. They did move away from the door. Jimmy opened it, Bernice stepped out quickly, and he slammed it shut again behind her.

  “Okay,” he said, “you’re free to leave on bail. You’ll be notified of the date for your arraignment.”

  “Just return my purse, my press card, my notepad, and my camera!” Bernice hissed, heading for the door.

  KATE HOGAN, a slender, dignified redhead, had tried to make good use of her time while waiting upstairs in the courthouse lobby. There was much to observe here after the Festival, although it certainly wasn’t pleasant: some woeful souls were escorted and/or dragged in, struggling against their cuffs all the way and spouting obscenities; many others were just now being released after spending the night behind bars. It almost looked like a change of shifts at some bizarre factory, the first shift leaving, somewhat sheepishly, their scant belongings still in little paper bags, and the second shift coming in, all bound up and indignant. Most of the police officers were strangers from elsewhere, overtimers sent in to beef up the very small Ashton staff, and they weren’t being paid to be kind or courteous.

  The heavily jowled lady at the main desk had two cigarettes smoldering in her ashtray, but little time to take a drag between processing papers on every case coming in or going out. From Kate’s viewpoint the whole operation looked very hurried and slipshod. There were a few cheap lawyers passing out their cards, but one night in jail seemed to be the extent of punishment any of these people would have to bear, and now they only wanted to get out of town in peace.