Chapter 10

Wednesday, January 6, 1999

Emily had first gotten a job at the Spee-D-Mart when she had been a freshman in high school. It was only a few hours a week and at that age a lot of the chores had to be done under supervision. It wasn't long before the store manager discovered she was very reliable for such a young kid and would let her solo for a while if needed. Emily liked the job; she got to stay active, got to talk to people, and be cheerful and upbeat. The store was one of several around the area started by George VanTyle and now managed by his widow, Sharon; when Emily graduated from high school, Sharon knew Emily was only weeks from marrying Kevin, and told her she was welcome to go full time if she wanted.

Emily wanted -- in fact she started full time the day after graduation, a day she remembered as the day she really became a grownup; it was also the day she first met Eve McClellan, although she wouldn't know that for another ten years. With the exception of a week that Sharon gave her off for her honeymoon, which she and Kevin spent by riding his old Kawasaki crotch rocket up to Mackinaw Island, she worked straight through until the day Kayla was born the following spring. She took a few days off then, but soon was happy to be back behind the counter.

Convenience store workers are often low-paid and often have to work weird hours, so understandably there's a lot of turnover. Sharon appreciated having someone who was reliable and competent and wanted to stay on the job. After J.J. was born a year and a half later, she made Emily assistant manager; when the manager's position opened up a couple years later, Emily was the obvious candidate for the job and got it.

Emily didn't fully realize it at the time, but that bumped her up from being just another person who worked downtown into being part of the business community. Among other things, the Spee-D-Mart was a member of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, so that meant Emily automatically became a member of the chamber, and naturally, she took her responsibility seriously.

Most towns Bradford's size have a chamber of commerce, or some other association of business people. Bradford's Chamber met every other Wednesday morning, changing off between the meeting room at the Chicago Inn, and the one at the Bank Cafe. The purpose of the chamber, of course, was to do what they could to increase business traffic into the town by coordinating various promotions and activities, but at the time Emily came aboard it was more of a breakfast club. People came up with good ideas, but there was limited interest in actually carrying them through. Emily, however, was bright, cheerful, energetic, and more importantly, a natural-born organizer. Naturally, there were far more senior members of the chamber who were more than willing to let her carry the ball on things so they wouldn't have to do those things themselves.

One of the balls that got handed off to her relatively early on was the Bradford Courier. The local paper, of course, was a member of the chamber but the editor/publisher, Lloyd Weber, hardly ever came to a chamber meeting. He had a good reason; at the time the chamber was meeting, the Courier was being printed in Hawthorne, and Weber was having his regular Wednesday breakfast up there before he brought the papers back. One Wednesday morning when Weber brought in the Spee-D-Mart's ration of papers, she asked him if he'd be willing to print something about the chamber's activities if she were to write it. "Sure," he smiled, glad to have someone volunteer to do something that needed to be done.

Emily had been good at writing in high school, reports and essays and like that, but she was glad the chamber met on Wednesday, and she didn't have to have the story down at the Courier until the following Monday. Never had she agonized over putting words on paper more than she did over that first brief report of a routine chamber meeting. When she got a chance on Monday, she hiked down the street to the Courier office and gave her report to Weber with the words, "I hope this is OK."

"Yeah, sure," he grunted after a glance at it. "No problem. Appreciate it, Emily."

"If there's anything that needs to be fixed," she told him nervously, "Feel free to fix it up."

"That's what I'm here for," he smiled lightly.

Weber had the reputation of being a dour, cranky old fart who didn't suffer fools gladly and liked things done his way. She was not terribly surprised to see the story she'd spent literally hours on had been changed around considerably when she saw it in print a couple days later. But she had to admit that it read better, and it was on the front page, rather than on the inside where she had expected it. Rather than confronting him about it, she knew enough to come at it obliquely when he arrived for his routine mug of coffee and long john the next morning. "Thank you for fixing up my story," she said contritely. "I didn't really know what you wanted."

"Nothing wrong with what you wrote," he told her. "But there are some things that need to be presented in a certain way if the story is going to be on the front page, so I made the changes."

"I don't quite follow you," she nodded. "Can you show me what you're talking about?"

"Sure, it's pretty simple," he smiled. "The big thing is to write from the viewpoint of an outside observer, which the reader usually is. It's not 'We did something', but 'They did something'. If you want to say 'We did something', you have to say it in such a way that it's attributed to someone, like, 'The chamber president said we did something'."

"I see," she replied, the light dawning. It seemed awkward in a way, but pretty simple. "I'll try to do better next time."

When she brought the next chamber story in a week later, she hadn't agonized over it anywhere near as long. "Much better," he smiled, and led her back behind the counter to the computer sitting in the middle of a spectacularly cluttered desk. He sat down at the keyboard, and Emily was amazed as his fingers literally danced over the keys -- this slow-moving, rather arthritic old man was the fastest typist Emily had ever seen! In a matter of seconds, he had the whole story up on the computer screen. "The only real comment I have is you put the most important part of the story at the end. You were building up to it, I understand, but this isn't a novel, and the reader needs to be told what the most important part is up front, since he may not stick it out till the final point." She could see what he was talking about as soon as he pointed it out, and could see he was right. He made the changes, and yes, it really was better.

Over the course of a couple years it had become routine. Only rarely was the write-up for the chamber story longer than two or three paragraphs, but by such gentle lessons Weber taught her things like good leads, simple but effective writing, pyramiding stories, and other tricks. She also came to understand that he really wasn't a dour old curmudgeon, but was a rather private man who, in spite of his lifelong business, really wasn't comfortable with most people. When you got past that, he had a sparkling intelligence, a wide range of interests, and a wry sense of humor. She also learned he'd been in the business over forty years, and frankly was burnt out on it a little, just going through the motions. She thought she could see how he'd gotten that way, from doing the same old thing for too long, and dimly realized it was a trap she could fall into. At the reunion the previous fall, she'd realized she had indeed fallen into it. Now, being on council and having the Sportster gave her a couple new things to take interest in.

There was a problem with the Sportster though, Emily thought on the Wednesday after New Years' as the morning rush died out, and it was that she couldn't use it. With snow all over the place and it being colder than the south end of a northbound husky, the Sportster was sitting in the garage with a tarp over it. It would be spring before she got to ride it much. Maybe she ought to think of something else to get her through the winter; she'd had a knitting project she'd started on in the fall, but had come to a halt on it and couldn't get up the enthusiasm right now to get it going again.

Just about that time, Weber came in, wearing a heavy jacket and a fur hat over his nearly bald head, a stack of papers under his arm. "Good morning, Lloyd," she said brightly. "How are you today?"

"Grumpy," he replied honestly. "There ain't no such thing as a good morning when there's as much snow on the roads as there is today. So, how was the chamber meeting?"

"Same old, same old," she replied. "A couple new ideas for Downtown Days next summer. Dayna and Sandy's schedule got shifted around a little, so they're finally going to be able to give the free concert they've been promising for a couple years."

"I hear they're pretty good," he smiled, counting the return papers that would be taken off their bill. "I've heard one of their albums and like it."

"They're much better live," Emily grinned. "Most people around here don't know how good they really are. Anyway, I'll get the story written up tonight and drop it off in the morning."

"Always good to have it," Weber said. He stopped for a moment, obviously turning something over in his mind. "Emily," he said finally, "How would you like to cover the Albany Township board meeting for me tonight?"