Reunion at Red Paint Bay - By George Harrar Page 0,10
would love it.”
“What happens when it rains?”
“They have her covered with a canopy. And I’m sure they’ll recarve her features every night. The Virgin will be staying in town with us for a while, if Mrs. Nichols has anything to say about it. She won’t let go easily.”
Amy dumped a container of leftover white rice onto a plate, and it clumped in the center, box-shaped. She flattened it with a wooden spoon. “And you said nothing ever happens in Red Paint.”
The thought of being feted by the Red Paint Area Rotary Club of America left Simon feeling vaguely depressed. Was this the pinnacle of his achievements as a journalist, the most he could hope for? He was the editor of a weekly newspaper in a town known only for the ancient Indian inhabitants who left huge shell heaps in the sand, remnants of their great feasts, and painted their dead with ocher. A thousand years later he was sitting on a raised platform in the Bayswater Inn watching fifty Rotarians jab their forks into Boston cream pie. And he had to listen to himself being praised in a way that seemed perilously close to eulogy.
“A decade ago the Register was going bankrupt,” Rotary president Jim Concannon continued. “Red Paint was in danger of losing its voice. Simon Howe gave up a promising career as a reporter in Portland to return to his roots after his folks died. We all know he used his inheritance to buy the paper and pay off its debts. It’s not a glamorous job, editor of a small-town weekly. I’m sure we’ve all called over complaining to Simon about something he didn’t print or did print.”
There was a little laughter from around the room, and Simon smiled as if no hard feelings.
“Today,” Concannon said, “we recognize Simon Greenleaf Howe with our Medal of Community Service.”
Simon jumped up quickly and whispered, “Thanks for the kind words” in the president’s ear. He only had to wait a moment for the clapping to die down. He surveyed the dozen tables, each with four or five local business people. He knew almost all of them by name or face, even the ones he hadn’t actually met.
“I started out at the Register as a delivery boy when I was ten,” he began. “I probably tossed papers under the cars of a few of you.” Simon sipped from his water glass, allowing a moment for the gentle laughter. “President Concannon suggested I recall some of the most memorable stories we’ve run over the years. I remember this headline vividly—High School Dropouts Cut in Half. Seems a bit Draconian to me. Then there was Police Suspect Foul Play in Murder. Can’t put much over on Red Paint’s finest.” Chief Garrity smiled and waved from the back table when everyone looked his way. “We haven’t spared the school committee with our precision headlines, either. A few years ago we reported on page one, Initiative Seeks to Wipe Out Literacy.”
The Rotarians were wildly laughing now, as he expected. People always enjoyed hearing the errors of others. “To be honest,” he said, “I didn’t know what I was doing when I bought the Register. I learned fast that the paper is not just a chronicle of individual lives—the birth announcements and school sports, the marriages and promotions, the fire and police logs, and finally, the obituaries. A good paper is a portrait of the town itself. Sometimes the picture isn’t what we’d like to present or what you want to read—teenagers knocking over the gravestones in the Veterans Cemetery, for example, or the brawl at the hockey game last year. But there’s far more good in the picture—far more good in Red Paint—and we make sure you see that. It’s not the whole story. Much of life goes on inside families and churches and offices and stores—out of sight of our photographer and reporters. That’s as it should be. The Register strives to reflect the public life of the town with honesty and accuracy—the same goal as every community newspaper in America.”
Simon stepped back from the dais. He hadn’t realized how short his speech was until this moment, as the Rotarians sat there staring at him, expecting more. It took a moment for Concannon to get up from his seat and start the applause.
Amy was in the hallway when he opened the front door, waving an oversized postcard in the air. “Your anonymous correspondent strikes again.”
Simon set down his briefcase in the hallway and loosened his