Steel Beach

"I got that Bicente

"Left hand column, I think, Huck."

"That's where I put her, all right."

"Let's see it."

He brought me a test sheet, still smelling of printer's ink, one of the sweetest smells in the world. I looked at the flag/colophon and folio line:

(Imagine a 19th century newspaper masthead)

As always, I felt a tug of pride at the sight of it. I never changed the weather forecast; it seemed a reasonable prediction even when it turned out to be wrong. The date was always the same because you couldn't put the real date on it, and because March 6 suited me. Nobody seemed to mind.

Huck had faithfully set the schedule of events for the upcoming celebration along the left margin, leaving room for a head, a bank, and a bar line, in keeping with the old style I'd established. We both pored over it, not reading but looking for letters that printed too light or dark, or blots from too much inking, a problem we were slowly licking. Only then did I study it for visual effect and we agreed the new boldface font looked good. Finally, third time through, I actually read it. And god help you if you misspelt a word; Huck would set it as is.

"How about a skyline, Huck? 'Special Bicente

"Shoot, no, Hildy. Charity said she'd like to start up a roto-something but she said you'd think it was too modern."

"Rotogravure, and I don't give a hoot about modern, but that's big-city stuff, and it'd be too dang expensive right now. If she had her way she'd have me buying a four-color web."

"Ain't she something?" he said.

"Huck, have you thought about learning to read?" It's not something I would normally have asked, but I was concerned about him, he was such a likable goof. I couldn't see Charity ever hooking up with an illit.

"If I did, then I couldn't ask Miss Charity to read to me, could I?" he asked, reasonably. "Besides, I'm picking up stuff here and there, I watch when she reads. I know a bunch of words now." So maybe there was method in his madness, and love would conquer all.

I left him to his job case and composing stick. Taking a sheet of paper and a pen from my center desk drawer, I dipped the nib in the inkwell and began to write, printing in block letters.

HEAD: Prize-wi

STORY: The streets of New Austin were recently graced by the presence of Miss Brenda Starr, wi

(CHARITY: run this in the "MONSTER")

The "Gila Monster," named for a vicious little reptile that lurks under rocks and presumably hears everything, was my very own gossip column, and by far the most eagerly-awaited part of the paper. Not for little fillers like the above, but for the really nasty tittles so often tattled there. It's true that everyone in a small town knows what everyone else is doing, but they don't all know it at the same time. There is a window of opportunity between the event and the dissemination, even as the news is spreading at about the speed of sound, that a top-notch reporter can exploit.

I'm not talking of myself. I'd begun the "Monster," but Charity was the venom in the critter's tooth. My teaching tied me down too much, I never had the time to range around getting the scent. Charity never seemed to sleep. She lived and breathed news. You could rely on her for two scandals per week, really remarkable when you consider that she didn't drink and hardly ever visited the Alamo, that ever-flowing gusher of gossip, that Delphi of Dirt.

The correspondent herself breezed into the office around sundown, just back from Whiz-bang, a town that aspired to become our freshly-minted Disneyland Capital in a referendum to be held in three month's time, with a good story about bribery and barratry amongst our elected representatives, a quite juicy one that would have prompted me to tear up the front page if I hadn't owned the paper and known what it would cost me. The economic facts of the Texian were quite simply that I'd sell as many copies with or without that particular story, since everyone in Texas read it anyway, so I had to tell her I'd be ru

Sweeteners like that were necessary because of the second bit of news she brought in, of a job offer from the Daily Planet, a good second-string pad in Arkytown. She basked in the glow of our admiration, oblivious to my chagrin at the thought of losing her, and then a

I went around lighting the kerosene lamps as she chattered on, Huck continuing to set type while seldom taking his eyes from her. Typos would be multiplying, but I had to put up with it.

When I left it was full dark with a moon on the rise. Charity had fallen asleep in her chair and Huck was still stolidly pulling the handle on the magnificent old Columbian. The town was quiet but for the chirping of crickets and the tinkle of the piano around the corner in the Alamo. My hands were stained with ink and my back hurt and the first breath of cool night air only served to remind me how sweaty I was around the collar and under the arms and… well, you know. I mounted a lantern on the front of my bicycle, swung aboard and, with a tinkle of the bell which brought twin howls of desolation from the firehouse, I started pedaling the long road home.

How much happiness could one person stand?

I do believe in God, I do, I do, I do, because so many times in my life I've seen that He's out there, watching, keeping score. When you've just about reached a Zen state of pure acceptance-and the beauty of that night combined with the pleasant aches of work well-done and friends well-met and even the little fillip of two dogs you knew would be waiting for you the next morning… when that state approaches He sends a little rock down to fall in the road of your life.

This was a literal rock, and I hit it just outside of town and it caused two spokes to break and the rim to buckle on my front wheel. I just missed a painful tumble into a patch of cactus. That was God again: it would have been too much, this was just to serve as a reminder.

I thought about returning to town and waking the blacksmith, who I know would have been happy to work on the newfangled invention that was the talk of the town. But he'd be long abed, with his good wife and three children, and I decided not to bother him. I left it there beside the road. You can't steal a thing like that in a small town, how would you explain riding around on Hildy's bike? I walked the rest of the way and arrived not depressed, not really out of sorts, just a little deflated.