“Sixteen hundred subscribers, while that fish wrapper the Trumpeter has broken three thousand. Curse that ridiculous Advice from Aunt Edna column,” thunders the publisher. “It’s embarrassing.” His voice only comes in two levels: loud and louder. I imagine his ruddy face with its fleshy eye pads growing bright with indignation.
I release my breath. It pains me to hear Mr. Bell upset, but at least it is not over Old Gin and me.
Circulation for the Focus has recently taken a nosedive, after Nathan’s risky editorial criticizing a proposal to segregate Atlanta’s streetcars, while the similar-size Trumpeter has soared, thanks to its new agony aunt column. The family sheepdog, Bear, short for Forbearance, sounds out a hearty woof, and her tail begins thumping. Unlike most sheepdogs, Bear’s tail was never docked. I like to imagine the Great Shepherd put her heartbeat in her tail and wanted it kept intact.
“We could add more pictures,” says Nathan, pronouncing the last word pitchas. Unlike his parents, who hail from New England, a light drawl rubs some of the letters from his words. Old Gin says the Georgia accent rubbed off on me, too. “The Trumpeter has at least two per page.”
“A waste of space. Pictures are for children.”
The room falls silent. Even Bear’s tail stops thumping. I can almost feel the rise in Nathan’s temperature, and my heart reaches for him. Nathan is my oldest friend, even if he doesn’t know it. We have much in common, including a love of goobers (what Nathan calls peanuts), a distaste for turnips, and a longing to be heard.
Wood scrapes the floor, probably Nathan pouring himself into one of the worktable chairs. I imagine him sketching out his frustration into one of his political cartoons, art that could easily be featured in Puck magazine.
“Where is your article on hickory fungus?” Mr. Bell booms. “Folks want to know why their trees are stunted.”
“I’m waiting for it to grow on me,” grumbles Nathan. If I had to have a husband one day, I hope he would have a quick wit, like Nathan, minus his grouchiness.
“If it’s parasites you want,” he adds, “let me write that exposé on Billy Riggs. The Constitution’s too gutless to write the real story.”
The Constitution called Billy a “fixer,” but the Bells believe Billy trades in dirty secrets. Last year, the heir to a bourbon fortune hanged himself after a rival revealed the heir preferred the company of men. The Bells suspected the information was bought and sold by Billy Riggs.
Mr. Bell snorts loudly. “The end might be near, but I won’t be burnt at the stake of scandal!”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Bell smooths. My ears perk up. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if she’s in the room, as she walks with the heft of a mosquito. “Well, there’ll be a scandal if you miss the early train. Better turn in now.”
Mr. Bell always travels to New York in the spring to meet with the Focus’s sponsors. The sound of grumbles is followed by footfalls as the publisher departs.
Eavesdropping is a vile habit. But I have been eavesdropping on the Bells ever since I had ears, and I doubt I can change now. Their words comforted me on many a lonely night and made me feel like part of a family. The abolitionists who built this place cleverly disguised the upstairs end of the speaking tube to resemble a vent. Bet they never expected someone like me would be eavesdropping. Who could’ve anticipated that when the enslaved were freed, Chinese would be shipped in, not just to replace them on the plantations, but to help rebuild the South?
A broom scratches the floor as Mrs. Bell wages her nightly war against carbon soot. I imagine the straw bundle snooping under the worktable, the foot-operated press, and the type case. Bear woofs, chasing the broom.
“Let me do that.”
“I like sweeping. Please, just humor your father. If things don’t go well in New York, it won’t matter what we write.”
“What do you mean, ‘if things don’t go well’?”
I hold my breath, my fingers twisted into my flannel nightgown.
“Most of our Northern sponsors have given up floating a paper down here. If we don’t return to two thousand subscribers by April, we are done.”
“But April’s only four weeks away. We’d need a hundred new subscribers a week. Impossible.”
“Maybe it’s time for us to move to Aunt Susannah’s—”
“We’re not alfalfa farmers. I don’t even like alfalfa. It’s a joke of a word. Rearrange the letters and it’s a-laf-laf. Those sponsors need to give us more time.”
I worry a hole into the toe of my sock. Never did it occur to me that the Bells might move. Is that why she came to Mrs. English’s? To give me an implicit goodbye?
“What does the Trumpeter have that we lack?” asks Nathan.
Mrs. Bell snorts. “Advice from Aunt Edna.” Her broom scratches even harder. “Well, maybe we’ll get more subscriptions at that horse race.”
The race kicks off debutante season, and everyone who lives on the top branch will want to be seen. Those of us on the bottom branch would be content just to see the horses, but tickets cost two dollars each.
“What did you say?”
I press the right side of my head up against the opening.
“I said, maybe we’ll get more—”
“No, before that. Advice from Aunt Edna. If we had an agony aunt column, we could improve our readership. What do women, er, like? Laundry tips?” He lets out half a grunt. Probably his mother pinched him.
“Sometimes you’re as dense as your father.” Bear adds a woof! “Women get enough household advice from Aunt Edna. Someone should write about meatier topics. Like how to get a bunion of a husband to listen to you. Or what to do if the butcher tries to gull you with an inferior cut of meat.”
Gull. Such a great word, though I doubt the seagulls love having their good name tied to trickery. I’ll add it to the G-words I chalked on my wall. Mr. Payne gave Old Gin our dictionary, which is intact except for the G section, so I give those words a place here.
“Why don’t you write one?” Nathan asks.
“I’d have to run it by your father.”
Nathan groans. “Forget I mentioned it.”
The upstairs grows silent, and I plug the listening tube. We are careful never to leave the open tube unattended.
If the Bells go out of business, they would leave, and they are like family. Old Gin might even decide it’s time to find me a husband with a “fleshy nose,” the kind thought to accumulate wealth. Chinese bachelors are so desperate for wives, they spend hundreds of dollars fetching them from China, many younger than my seventeen years. I’d have my pick of noses and all the bitterness I could stomach.