Steel Beach

She looked at me for a while, then at my plate. She gestured with her fork.

"That looks good. Mind if I have a bite?"

I let her, then got up myself to get her a glass of water from the back. Foo's Hunan Beef is the only thing in Texas that can rival my five-alarm chili.

"So Walter screamed and hollered about you for two or three days," Brenda said. "We all tried to stay out of his way, but he'd come storming through the newsroom shouting about one thing or another, and we all knew what he was really mad about was you."

"The newsroom? That sounds serious."

"It got worse than that."

We had finished our meal and ordered two beers and Brenda had regaled me with more stories about her exploits in the journalistic wars. She certainly led an exciting life. I didn't have many stories to tell in return, just amusing little fillers about fu

"He started calling us in one at a time," she said, emptying her beer glass and shaking her head when Foo started over with the pitcher. "He always said it was about something else, but it always got back to you and what a rotten thing you'd done to him and did we have any ideas on how to get you back. He'd always be depressed when we left. We all started making up excuses to get out of those sessions.

"Then he got to where he'd bite your head off if your name was mentioned in his presence. So we all stopped talking about you to him. That's where it stands now."

"I'd been thinking about dropping in on him," I said. "Old time's sake, you know."

She frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea, yet. Give it a few more months. Unless you plan to go back on the job." She raised her eyebrows and I shook my head, and she said no more about what I'd been presuming was the purpose of her trip.

Foo brought a little tray with fortune cookies and the check. Brenda opened hers while I was putting money on the tray.

"'A new love will brighten your life,'" she read. She looked up at me and smiled. "I'm afraid I wouldn't have time for it. Aren't you going to open yours?"

"Foo writes them, Brenda. What that one means is he wants to make pecker tracks on your mustache brush."

"What?"

"He finds you sexually attractive and would like to have intercourse."

She looked at me in disbelief, then picked up my fortune cookie and broke it open. She glanced at the message and then stood. Foo came hurrying over and helped us out of our chairs and handed us our hats and bowed us all the way to the door.

Outside, Brenda glanced at her thumbnail.

"I'll have to get going now, Hildy, but-" She slapped herself on the forehead. "I almost forgot the main reason I came to see you. What are your plans for the Bicente

"The… that's right, that's coming up in…"

"Four days. It's only the biggest story for the last two weeks."

"We don't follow the news much in here. Let's see, I heard the Baptist Church is planing some sort of barbecue and there's going to be a street fair. Fireworks after dark. People should be coming from miles around. Ought to be fun. You want to come?"

"Frankly, Hildy, I'd rather watch cement dry. Not to mention having to wear these damn clothes." She hitched at her crotch. "And I'll bet these are comfortable compared to the stuff you're wearing."

"You don't know the half of it. But you get used to things. I don't mind it anymore."

"Live and let live. Anyway, Liz and I, and maybe Cricket, were thinking of having a picnic and camping out before the big show in Armstrong Park. They're having some real fireworks there."

"I don't think I could face the crowds, Brenda."

"That's okay, Liz knows the pyrotechs and she can get us a pass into the safety zone, out around Delambre. It ought to be a great view from there. It'll be fun; what'd'ya say?"

I hesitated. In truth, it did sound like fun, but I was increasingly reluctant to leave the safe haven of the disneyland these days.

"Of course, some of those shells are going to be mighty big," she nudged. "It might be dangerous."

I punched her on the shoulder. "I'll bring some fried chicken," I said, and then I hugged her again. She was starting off when I called her name.

"You're going to make me ask you, aren't you?" I said.

"Ask me what?"

"What it said in the goddam fortune cookie."

"Oh, that's a fu

I went around the corner of Old Spanish Trail, past the sheriff's office and the jailhouse and came to a small shop with a plate glass window and gold leaf lettering that read The New Austin Texian. I opened the front door of West Texas' finest-and only-twice-weekly newspaper without knocking, then through the swinging gate that separated the newsroom from the public area where subscriptions were sold and classified ads taken, pulled out the swivel chair from the big wooden cubbyhole desk, and sat down.

And why shouldn't I? I was the editor, publisher, and chief reporter for the Texian, which had been serving West Texas proudly for almost six months. So Walter was right, in the end; I really couldn't stay out of the news game.

We published like clockwork, every Wednesday and Saturday, sometimes as many as four pages. Through hard work, astute reporting, trenchant editorials, and the fact that we were the only paper in the disney, we'd built circulation to almost a thousand copies per edition. Watch us grow!

The Texian existed because I'd run out of things to do during the long afternoons. Madness might still be lurking, and it seemed better to keep busy. Who could tell if it helped?

While the impetus for the paper was fear of suicide, its midwife had been a loan from the bank in Lonesome Dove, which I figured to have paid off shortly after the Tricente

The loan had paid for the office rent, the desk with sticky drawers built by a journeyman carpenter over in Whiz-bang (buy Texan, you all!), supplies from-where else?-Pe

So instead technology sprang to the rescue. The very day the ruling came through I was the proud owner of a cast-iron-and-brass reproduction of a 1885 Model Columbian Handpress, one of the most outrageous machines ever built, surmounted by a proud American Eagle, authentic right down to the patent numbers stamped into its frame. It took less time to build it than to truck it to my door and muscle it into place. Ain't modern science wonderful?

"Afternoon, Hildy," said Huck, my pressman. He was a gawky youth, about nineteen, good with his hands and not particularly bright. He'd spent most of his life here and had no desire to leave. He was wonderfully anxious to learn a trade so useless it would fit him for no other life. He worked like a donkey far into Tuesday and Friday nights to get the morning edition set and printed, then jumped on his horse and rode to Lonesome Dove and Whiz-bang to deliver them before dawn. He couldn't read, but could set type at three times my poor speed, and was always covered in ink up to his elbows. He only became fumble-fingered in the presence of my other employee, Miss Charity, who could read just about anything but the lovelorn expression on Huck's face. Ah, the joys of office romance.