Page 11 of So Far Gone

Lucy Park strolled across the newsroom, swallowing her anger and striving for that elusive affect, nonchalance, as she went

to check on Allison-the-teenaged-cops-reporter, who was bent over her phone at her desk like a nun over rosary beads.

“Hey there,” Lucy said, “I don’t suppose you’re close to filing your story?”

Allison looked up. She was, of course, neither nun nor teenager, but a twenty-four-year-old recent college graduate, still

able to conjure a bit of high school indignation on her face when it suited her. “Um,” Allison said, “I’m, like, working on

it?” She held her phone up with a flopped wrist. On the screen: a photo of crime scene tape around a light pole. She was,

like, posting it! If someone would just, like, leave her alone!

Lucy hated this tone. She also hated that reporters were expected to constantly post on social media, before they’d even gotten

a chance to report their stories, before knowing what their stories even meant. “No problem,” Lucy said, leaving her trademark

profanity unspoken—as encouraged by her boss in her last three performance reviews.

( And maybe , she thought, when you’re done thumb-fucking your phone, you could work some fucking sources and, I don’t know, write a fucking news story that I can put in the fucking newspaper, you spoiled fucking child. )

Language, Lucy , her ex-husband always used to say. A hundred-and-ten pounds of verbal rage —that’s what he’d called her during a fight on their honeymoon. Hundred-and-six, you fucking asshole! she’d said back.

“Right, then,” Lucy said to Allison. “So, how long are we thinking?” Lucy glanced at her watch. It was seven o’clock.

“Hour?” Allison said, meaning two, meaning right on deadline, Lucy thinking: two fucking hours? For what? This story was a rerun: cops had shot another indigent Freddy, this one threatening people downtown with what appeared

to be a syringe. Police responded, stoned guy ran at them, cop lit him up, CAS redux. Cop-Assisted Suicide. Four so far. Banner

year.

“I think they’re going for a record,” Allison said.

“They should call themselves the Department of Euthanasia.” Lucy made a casual check of her watch. “Well, let the desk know

when you file. I’ll have to give it a read from home.” She slinked back to her cubicle to pack up her laptop and her empty

Tupperware.

Anytime there was a story about a street person on fentanyl—which was pretty much every day—Lucy got nervous about Kel, who

wasn’t in school, didn’t have a job, and whose number of days sober now sat at a personal record sixty-eight. Or, at least,

it had been sixty-eight this morning, when Lucy had left for work. Lucy went home nervous most days, worried her nineteen-year-old

son was on his way to becoming a full-time Freddy himself.

She texted him: Headed home soon. What sounds good for dinner?

Instant text bubbles. Oh, thank God! When he didn’t answer right away—especially when she was at the office late like this—Lucy

got sick with worry, afraid he’d pawned his phone again, and was gone, on the streets, in the wind. WTV , the text came back. Whatever. In Kel-speak: I love you, Mom .

One more check on her way out, at the desk of Jackson, the intern she’d asked to inquire about a reported fistfight at a school board meeting the night before.

Lucy could remember when a fight at a school board meeting would be unimaginable ( Fight over what? Lunch lady uniforms? Custodian pay? ) but now, with everyone on edge, still pissed off by school closures during the pandemic, angry about the teaching of sex

ed or evolution or drag queens or gay rights, or about some book no one had checked out from the school library in a decade,

Random Yelling was practically an agenda item. She could also remember when there were two ed reporters she could’ve put on this story, one for K–12 and one for higher ed, back when the staff was twice the size it

was now. Oh, the extravagance!

Now, the education job was in its third month unfilled. At full staff, Lucy had just fifteen bodies to cover a city of 225,000,

in a metro of 600,000—but, of course, they were never at full staff anyway. She had just a dozen reporters today, six in the

office, none to cover the 150 or so schools and dozen or so colleges in the region. So, she scratched an occasional ed story

out of an intern, or she convinced the less overworked of the two government reporters to make a few calls.

“I haven’t heard back from the district,” Jackson said. “And I have to work tonight.”

Right, because you certainly aren’t working here, you fu—

Language, Lucy! But of course, the kid had another job. After the Internet co-opted their content and stole their advertising, the newspaper’s

salaries were frozen, then cut, leading to a flood of buyouts, layoffs, and RIFs. Now, starting pay for a young reporter was

barely above minimum wage. Most of her staff had to moonlight—freelancing, teaching, waiting tables, driving Uber, in the

hopes that scraps and tips might cover the exploding rents and mortgages and the massive holes in their shitty health care

plan.

“Well, maybe go to the district office tomorrow?” Lucy suggested.

“I have to work tomorrow, too,” Jackson said.

“Right. Okay. I’ll find someone else.” Lucy swallowed the swears and walked past the night copy desk chief, who had been an intern himself just six months ago. “I’m out. I’ll read Allison’s story from home.”

Kid saluted without looking up from his screen.

Lucy took the elevator down to the first floor.

For now, the Spokesman-Review (which, before consolidation, back in the raucous early twentieth century, had been the Spokesman , the Review , and the Chronicle newspapers) still existed in its classic nineteenth-century brick tower, although the newspaper’s footprint had shrunk from

a couple hundred people on seven floors and a production facility across the street to a couple dozen people on cubicle islands

on two floors. Accountants, real estate companies, wine bars, and a gin distillery had taken over the rest of the family-owned

news buildings. (Booze and rapacious land-capitalism nudging aside the fourth estate and the public’s right to know? Hard

to argue with that kind of progress.) The rumor was that the rest of the grand, old newspaper building would soon become condos

and apartments. So where would the “newsroom” be relocated? Like other newspaper offices—to a mini mall somewhere, where the

baby skeleton staff would be left to “cover the world without fear or favor” between a fabric store and a pot dispensary?

The elevator dinged and Lucy stepped onto the first floor at the same time her phone buzzed. She hesitated. Trouble already?

Turn around and go back up? But, no, it was just Kel, with a dinner suggestion. Tacos?

The warm feeling sweeping through her, what was it? Hope? At least one more day of her son being at home, healthy Kel getting

another day of sobriety under his size 27 belt. Lucy smiled and typed back, Sure thing, K. Then, she looked up from her phone and gasped as—

—rising from a chair in the lobby—

—she saw—

—a fucking ghost—

“Lucy,” the ghost said. “You look amazing.”

“Kinnick? Jesus Christ.”

“No. It’s me. You had it right the first time.”

He’d aged, of course, hair grayer than brown. He seemed work-tanned, too, and while he was clean-shaven, and with a recent

haircut, there was something feral about him, like the rough men she saw walking the streets carrying everything they owned

in backpacks. Or shopping carts. She searched for the right word (they weren’t supposed to use homeless in the newspaper anymore, but rather the less personalized unhoused ), but the word she was thinking was much older: derelict .

“What happened to your face?” Dried blood in his nose and mouth, cheek swollen, eye bruised. His once pleasingly sharp features

were mushed and bloodied.

He touched his swollen, dented cheek. “I got punched.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?”

“There were two of them. Gun nuts. Ram pickup enthusiasts. Knocked me down and stole my grandkids. They want to marry off

my thirteen-year-old granddaughter to some pastor’s kid. They broke my—”

Kinnick turned to a young man in a priest’s collar perched forward in a chair next to the one he’d just left.

“Oh, uh, zygomatic arch,” the young man said. He stood.

Lucy looked from the young man back to Kinnick. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“No, but I saw a priest,” Kinnick said, and nodded at the young man again. “Figured I’d skip the middleman.”

“I was a Golden Gloves boxer.” The young priest shrugged. “It’s a very common injury. I tried to take him to the hospital,

but he wouldn’t go. He’ll eventually need maxio-facial surgery, but as long as he manages the pain, he should be fine for

the time being.”

Lucy looked back at Kinnick’s face, which did not look fine.

“And I’m technically not a priest yet,” the priest added.

“I’m a deacon for another month, but our parish doesn’t have a priest, so I’m practicing.

” He fingered the collar. “I mean... I’m not a practicing priest yet, I’m practicing to be one.

Eventually. But people like the collar, so, you know—” Another shrug.

The flummoxed Lucy turned back to Kinnick. “Did... did you at least go to the police?”

He nodded. “My car died at his church, so Reverend Brandon here drove me to the cop shop first. I filed a report. Then I asked

him to drop me off here.”

The deacon-priest gave a small wave. “Speaking of which, I should get back. Chess club will be over, and I need to close the

abbey.”

“Sure,” Kinnick said. “Thank you.”

“I hope your grandson makes it back to play chess.” And with that, the deacon-priest-boxer left.

Kinnick turned back to Lucy. “I filled out a complaint with the cops, but I only know one of the nutjobs’ names. And it’s

not even the one who hit me. The only thing I know for sure is that they’re idiot friends of my idiot son-in-law.”

“Bethany’s still with—”