NORTHERN CORRESPONDENT By Kristine Kathryn Rusch # ’ve seen the obituary they’ve written up for you, Molly. It ’s empty and boring M and isn’t about you at all. I pointed that out to Knudson and he directed his reply to the entire newsroom: “Seversen here thinks he ’s so good that he can write a better damn obituary than the publisher of this paper. ” I didn’t yell at him, Molly. Honest. I told him that when a person dies, her obituary should be written by someone who doesn’t know her. That way, the cold, hard facts of her life tell their own tale. Whatever I write about you will be impure; i t ’ll be my vision of you and consequently, the story I tell will be mine, not yours. For that ! apologize. You deserve better, but all that you get is me writing a column that Knudson won’t even print. / ■ / ■ y typewriter and I were sitting / ■ / W at the front desk the day you -L r arrived, remember, Molly? I was hoping that a change of scenery, no matter how slight, would inspire me. Instead, I had torn up four leads and was sweating over a fifth when the screen door slammed against its frame. I didn’t look up. That week’s receptionist was on one of her frequent coffee breaks, and I had to work hard to keep my attention on the sentence before me. “ Excuse me.” Your voice was soft, rich—the tones of a soprano who wanted to be an alto all of her life. I glanced at you. What I saw before me was a slight girl clutching a folder tightly in her right hand. “ Yeah?” “ I came to apply for the reporter position.” I scanned you again. Dark brown hair stylishly cropped to cap your skull, eyelashes so thick and dark that they almost obscured your clear blue eyes, high cheekbones, a small nose, doublepierced ears and a lower lip that hinted at sensuality. I knew Knudson would take one look at you and assign you the sociIllustration by Jessica Dodge Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall/Winter 1988 ety page. “ Look, kid, we usually don’t hire anyone under 21.” Two spots of color appeared in those lovely cheeks, but to my surprise, you smiled and set the folder down in front of me. “Then I’m in luck. It’s been six years since I’ve seen 21.” I opened the folder. Your crisp, professional resume confirmed your age. You graduated salutatorian from the local high school, got a B.A. in English from University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent the last three years as news director at a non-commercial radio station. Your clips, from local and national newspapers, covered stories so left-wing that they were unprintable up here in this redneck town of thirty thousand. “You don’t belong here,” I said. You looked at my manual typewriter and then at me. “ Sure I do. I like a challenge.” “Then you don’t want to work at the Sun." I closed your folder and slid it back.. “We print the same garbage the other rag in town prints, except we print it in the morning and they print it at night. There’s no challenge in that.” “You’re Bill Seversen, aren’t you?” I thought you were using an old reporter’s trick to get past me. My name was on top of the page in the typewriter; if you could flatter me, you thought I would pass you on to Knudson with a good word. “Yeah.” You picked up the folder and hugged it to your chest. “You spoke to my high school journalism class once and I’ ll never forget what you said. You said that it was a reporter’s job to fairly and accurately report any story he discovers. Any story. Especially those stories people in power want to keep hidden.” “ Sounds faintly idealistic. I must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.” “ And you were doing it. I can remember how everyone looked forward to your co lum n because it was so interesting.” “That was ten years ago.” “And I’ve been trying to do that,” you said, ignoring my coldness. “Tell the stories no one else is willing to tell. But it’s easy at an alternative radio station where you’re expected to find the off-beat. The challenge comes in a place like this, where information is suppressed.” “You want to make a difference. You nodded. “You want to make an impact. You nodded again. I shook my head. “Child, this is a place that turns idealists into cynics.” “ I’m not a child, Mr. Seversen.” You were smiling faintly and I got the sense that you were patronizing me. “And I’m a lot tougher than you think I am.” “ Knudson doesn’t want controversy.” “Controversy?” You raised your eyebrows and the 19-year-old innocent was back. “ From me?” Twelve years ago, when I stood in this office hugging my resume, it had been the last step in a career that had gone nowhere but down. Although during those first few years before Knudson, I did make an impact even though I never really did make a difference. “ I’d take those clips on Central American refugees out of your file,” I said. “And if I were you, I’d make sure that everybody knew how much I hated writing that leftist trash.” You grinned and I took you to see Knudson. fter he hired you, the society page never looked the same. You were a good writer and you always finished your rewrites of the engagement forms within an hour after your arrival. Then you pursued other “ societal” stories. You profiled some of the more controversial residents and found experts who denounced the area’s dullness, saying it lead to high alcohol and drug abuse. The local feminists suddenly found all of their major events running beside the latest church tea, and all •speakers, even the challenging ones, had their speeches covered. Knudson let you get away with this at first because you were young and pretty. Then, as you kept repeating how nice it was to work for an “ objective” newspaper, he had no choice. One afternoon, I finally did what I had wanted to do since I first saw you hugging your resume. I asked you out for coffee. We went to one of the newer restaurants in town, done in early-eighties m ode rn - all chrome and plants. “ Do you know,” you said before I had a chance to sit down, “ that you haven’t had a single by-lined article since I’ve been here?” I pulled the chair back and sat. “ I’m Knudson’s cliche. You know, former ace reporter now kept around as a relic to show the cubs what booze and hard living can do to a crack mind.
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