CHAPTER SIX
She still couldn’t believe it. Hard as she worked? All those years of her blood, sweat, and tears, working all times of the day and night for that job, and this was how they repaid her? It just couldn’t be!
She parked her Camry against the curb, grabbed her shoulder bag and phone, and hopped out like a reporter on a mad dash to a big story. Only she was the story this time.
She had to park near the end of the block, but she hurried down that sidewalk in a near sprint.
She couldn’t get there fast enough. That text stunned her.
She even looked at it again as she hurried.
She still couldn’t believe the nerve of those people after all she gave to that organization.
Was she being pranked? Was this a big joke? She could not believe it.
And when she made it inside the four-story Dillon Post-Dispatch newspaper building on Branch Street, she was moving even faster.
She ditched that sometimes-working elevator for the stairs, and made it to the fourth floor in seconds, not minutes. And then she sprinted toward his secretary’s desk.
But she didn’t break her stride. “Is he in?”
“He’s in, Maude, but you can’t go in there right now. He doesn’t want to be disturbed. Maude!”
The secretary yelled because Maude Drayton had already opened the door to the office of the managing editor and was hurrying inside.
Amos Forrester slammed the stack of files on his desk. “Didn’t I tell that gal I didn’t wanna be disturbed?!”
“A text message, Amos?” Maude made it up to the front of his desk. “You fired me by text?”
He leaned back in his chair, closed his weary gray eyes, and then opened them back up and looked at the woman that had always been his favorite reporter hands down.
Because she never got her due. She was smarter than everybody else on his staff, but all of her applications for advancement were turned down even after he approved them.
She was also the hardest worker on staff with the best story-to-byline in the business, but that never got her any accolades either.
And if you asked a burnt out old newsman like him, she was by far the prettiest one in the building, too.
But you could never tell her anything like that or she’d try to take your head off.
He’d never met a woman so smart and feisty and confident, but who thought so little of herself.
But whether she liked it or not, she had a look about her that turned men’s heads.
Then they’d wonder why were they doing a double-take on a woman who put no effort whatsoever in her looks.
She wore little makeup. No extensions. And rarely wore a dress or high-heels.
She had long, thick, wavy hair, yet she never styled it once in all the years Amos had known her.
She always wore it in a ponytail. And often a messy one at that.
And her clothes, usually slacks, a sleeveless blouse, and sometimes a blazer, were always neat and tidy on her slender frame, they fit her very well, but they were cheap as rags.
He used to dream about her curvaceous little body in a skintight leopard dress.
Then he’d wake up, knowing that she’d hate his guts if she knew he was dreaming about her, and he’d wrap his arms around his wife and go back to sleep.
Then he exhaled and rested his clasped hands on his stomach. “Believe it or not, there is such a thing as variety in wardrobes.”
Maude just stood there. She’d just been dropped by her boyfriend. She’d just been fired by her job. Her life was upside down. And this man was talking about her clothes? “What does my style have to do with what I just said to you?”
“You could wear a nice little black dress sometimes. That’s all I’m saying. You’d look fab in it. Or maybe even a designer outfit every once in a while.”
Maude stretched her already huge eyes and shook her head. She could not believe it. Was that all men thought about? How women looked? She rested one hand on her hip and the other hand on his desk, and she leaned forward. “If you ever see me in a designer anything,” she said, “kill me on the spot.”
Amos laughed. “Your sense of humor always slay me. I will definitely miss that sharp wit.” But he could see that it wasn’t funny in the least to Maude. He could see the hurt in her eyes. And the fear. She was bleeding over there, and he was making light of it?
His smile disappeared. “It was out of my hands, Maude.”
“Bullshit.”
“It was out of my hands! Real talk. I have defended you from day one and you know it. So don’t try to blame me.”
“But they fired me, Amos. No warning. No second chance. They just jumped up and fired me, Amos! Me! I woke up this morning very much employed. Now I’m unemployed? This can’t be real!”
“I told you to leave it alone. I told you that you cannot piss off the entire power apparatus of this town and expect to keep your job. How many times have I told you that, Maude? How many times?”
“I haven’t even filed my story yet!”
“You didn’t have to file it! You were all up in their spaces asking all those questions.
You were snooping all over this town where your nose didn’t belong.
They’re crooked as curves, yes they are.
Every one of those jokers downtown are crooked as the day is long.
But they aren’t stupid people. They get it.
They know when they’re under siege. And that’s how you made them feel.
Like they were in a little glass fishbowl and you had the bowl in your hand ready to smash that bitch to pieces. Real talk.”
Maude stood erect, folded her arms, and was shaking her leg nervously. She still could not believe it. “All I’ve given to this newspaper. I’ve been working here since I was eighteen years old. That was eleven years ago when I started working here, Amos. And you want real talk? Let’s talk real.”
She unfolded her arms and leaned even further over his desk.
“I’ve taken pay cut after pay cut after pay cut when my white male counterparts were getting pay raises.
You want real talk? Let’s talk real! And now I’m forced to work based on each story I file rather than an actual salary supposedly because of even more budget cuts. ”
“Everybody has to work that way now and you know it, Maude.”
“But there’s no business stories out there for me to file, except for the ones I generate myself. Like the one I’m working on now. It’s big. I’m telling you it’s big. And you’ve done everything in your power to stop me from doing my job.”
“I was trying to stop you from getting fired. But did you listen to me?”
“I was doing my job!”
“I know that. And you think I wanted to cut your pay? No! That was out of my hands too, Maude.”
“I was making a third of what I used to earn. Barely surviving. But because I loved my work and believed in what I was doing was the right thing to do, I accepted those pay cuts. And now you’re taking that away from me too? After all these years this is how you treat me?”
“It’s not me. How many times do I have to tell you that?
I’m the second most experienced person around here, second only to you, but I’m just a nobody who has to run everything by the executive editor before I can approve any major moves.
That’s why all of your promotions were turned down.
That’s why Hamp didn’t come to me when they were pissed off with your snooping around.
Oh no. They went over my head. The powers that be in this town, and they are formidable whether you wanna believe it or not, went where they needed to go and I was ordered to fire you. Full stop.”
“But ordered by whom? You run it by the executive editor, but you make the final decisions on hiring and firing. He has the final word on promotions. You have the final word on hiring and firing. This isn’t a promotion we’re talking about. This is my job!”
“You’re still missing the point, Maude. All of my hiring and firing decisions have to be based on what they want.
Not what I want. It’s what they want, and it’s always been that way.
And if I can’t play their game, then they’ll just get another nobody to play it.
I have children. I have alimony. I have mouths to feed.
I can’t lose this job for nobody. You gambled with your job and lost. I’m not gambling with mine. ”
He could tell she was disappointed in him. But she still wasn’t hearing him.
He exhaled. “Truth is,” he said, “the decision to fire you didn’t come from the executive editor. It came straight from the publisher himself.”
This surprised Maude. “The publisher?”
“The publisher himself. He even told me in what manner I had to do it as if he wanted to make certain you were humiliated. It came straight from him. So you know it’s final. Because as I said repeatedly to you but you aren’t hearing me: My hands were tied. And still are.”
He sat erect, as if he was wrapping this up whether or not Maude wanted to wrap up. “And right now, I’m very busy.” He gave her a hard look, although it was tinged with regret and sadness. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an overload of work to do.”
It was a dismissal. And a cold one at that.
Which made it all real for Maude. She used to have such faith in Amos.
And in The Post. It was all she knew and all she had.
Since high school she’d been devoted to that paper.
Now they just took that away from her too?
First Johnny, which wasn’t a great loss.
But now her job? Her very reason for getting up every morning?
She figured she could deal with a break up.
Even the humiliation of the way he broke up with her.
But she wasn’t at all sure if she could deal with this.
She went to her desk, cleared it out of the little papers and pens and whatnots she kept inside of it, and left.
Nobody asked why she was clearing out her desk.
Nobody asked why she had that box in her hand.
It was as if everybody already knew she was going down, and they relished it.
She ran circles around every one of them in terms of work productivity each and every quarter, and they always despised her for it.
Now their mediocre asses could continue their mediocrity with no threat of her overwork exposing their underwork ever again.
And those were the same ones first to complain about woke and DEI and all that other bullshit as if they were above it all when they were the poster child of it all.
She realized, as she was walking out of the city room, that she wasn’t going to miss any of them at all.
But then again, she knew, they weren’t going to miss her either.
But she knew she was going to miss her investigative, hardnose style of journalism.
Chasing the story. Tracking down leads. She worked hard for the money they were paying her and she knew she would miss that part of the job mightily.
And especially the story they forced her to abandon.
It was going to be the biggest story of her career.
Could even go national. It was going to finally put her on the map. But they took that away too.
By the time she got off the elevator and made it outside again, she turned and looked up at the big writing on the top of the building.
DILLON POST-DISPATCH. SINCE 1958. For eleven long years it was her home.
Her safe space. Her everything. Now it was .
. . her what? Her yesterday’s news? Her once upon a time?
Her past when she hadn’t figured out her future yet?
But then she heard wheels squealing and turned around. That was when she saw a Mercedes convertible double-park in front of the building and a well-dressed older white lady jumped out and began running toward her. “Maude?” She was yelling as she ran. “Maude Drayton you wait right there!”
Maude was about to do the very opposite, but she stopped in her tracks when she realized who was running her way.
Natasha? That was Natasha Keating, who used to be an editor at The Post!
That was when Maude knew this had to be some stupid-crazy joke.
And she wondered once again if she was being punked or on some kind of a gotcha show.
Because this was giving crazier on an already crazy day kind of vibe.
And then police sirens could be heard in the background. The cops were in on it too?
What in the running white woman world, Maude wondered, was this about now?