Duty of Responsibility

                                                                    Duty of Responsibility

The minute hand of the clock swept up to the twelve.  It was finally 5:00 o’clock.  Stanley hated himself for watching the clock.  Watching a clock is like watching your life go by.  He got up from his desk and checked into Trevor’s office.  Trevor was the young man who was too enthusiastic.  It made him smile thinking about the day he hired him.  He must have interviewed a half dozen candidates before Trevor sat down in front of his desk.  He knew from the start the infectious smile of this young man, the sparkle in his eye and the music in his voice made him worth hiring.

But that same enthusiasm made for an employee who worked too many hours.  Stanley may have had to compromise over the years to keep his small town newspaper alive, but he still was a compassionate man.  And he remembered how he got in trouble as a young reporter taking all his work too seriously.  How his two sons and three daughters missed their dad for nearly a decade.  His wife finally finally packed up the family, went to the greyhound station one Thursday night and left.  She never even dropped a line to let him know where they had moved to.

But tonight Trevor’s office was already shut down.  His desk was much more organized than Stanley’s, his typewriter cover properly in place and the light turned off.  As Stanley turned back to the hallway he heard a knock at the front door.  Most visitors simply walked in.

He looked at his watch in dismay.  Already ten minutes into the weekend.  The paper didn’t publish on Mondays.  Why would someone be calling on a Saturday night when everyone was already preparing dinner to eat early enough to get to the hillside to watch the fireworks that night.  It was the second night’s celebration of the annual folk festival.  The folk festival that boasted the best jug band music this side of the Mason Dickson Line.

When he opened the door, he was surprised at the small, dark haired woman standing there, looking hunched over.  Trembling, with a shaky voice, “C-c-can I talk to someone?”

Stanley immediately forgot that he was already late for his Hillside Festival date.  He ushered her into the couch on the right hand side of the receptionist office.  He sat beside her.  “What happened?”  His voice sounded like his father’s when he got his tongue frozen on the handrail by the corner store.

She looked up at him.  That’s when he noticed the left eye badly bruising.  “He drowned our daughter while she was having a bath.  Then he turned on me. . .”  She started sobbing uncontrollably.  Maybe it was the cool air or the shaking body.  But he felt the urge and unabashedly hugged her.  Like a small child, she folded into his arms.

Over the course of the next two hours, he learned much about the girl named Isadora.  He learned how her own childhood had been ugly.  Her father had left to fight in the War.  He never returned.  Her mother, who was not very sure of herself, found a new albeit temporary confidence in the attentions of men.  It was also a much appreciated addition to their meager funds.  Unfortunately Isadora’s small bedroom was next to her mother’s where the “gentlemen” were entertained.  It made Isadora feel that men were evil, for her mother seemed prone to screaming often.

When Stanley heard this part of the story, he felt privileged that he could hold her.

As the drugstore psychology of the day taught, abused daughters seek out abusing husbands.  Stanley wondered if psychologists had any sense of propriety in publishing such facts.

Isadora’s marriage to Jean-Pierre, the relocated tobacco farmhand, was actually a fairy tale wedding.  Her mother and family, for some reason, opted to send her on her way with wonderful memories to keep.  For three years less a day, Jean-Pierre was the height of good and proper husbandry.  But by the time their little girl was a year and a half old, he had discovered supremacy.  As in, “I am the boss, and you obey me.”

Self appointed bosses are not known for fairness, and Jean-Pierre got pretty ugly pretty fast.  Isadora seemed to have a child-like quality in the way she viewed the world.

The night that brought her to Stanley’s doorstop, Jean-Pierre had been fired from his warehouse job, and was rip roaring mad.  Cheryl was playing with her yellow ducky in the bathtub when he came in to relieve himself.  When he saw her, he became the monster Isadora had  run from.

As she told that part of the story, she started shivering again.  Stanley hugged her again, now worrying that she was going into shock.

It was now past the time he could expect to find his date still waiting.  He thought a hot chocolate would be good for her.  There was some in the lunchroom.  It had marshmallows in it.  He brought it to her with some ginger snaps.

She did calm down.  After her tears dried and the swelling around her eyes subsided, he realized she was a rather attractive woman, probably under thirty years old.

After Stanley dropped Isadora off at his aunt’s house - his aunt was an angel - he went to the police station.  The sergeant on shift looked half asleep when he first walked in.  Thirty seconds into the story woke him up better than a strong cup of black coffee.  Stanley had gotten the address of the apartment from Isadora.  The desk sergeant radioed the one police car on duty.  When the dispatched officer went into the bathroom and saw the little girl still submerged in the bathtub, he got sick to his stomach.  He cleaned the rim and flushed the toilet twice.  A cold drink of water calmed him down.,  He radioed the desk sergeant to call the coroner.  “At 8:30 at night?”  The desk sergeant was a bit incredulous.

“If you could see what I am looking at right now, you would understand.”

The next morning, Trevor was in the office pouring over the telex’s and looking rather excited.  “You should see what the police found last night in the apartment building in town.  “I think it could be a front page story.”

The picture with the telex showed Cheryl’s eyes and mouth wide open, as if  she had just gotten the Christmas present of her dreams.  Of course, there were four inches of water in front of her face.

Stanley had second thoughts.  Trevor knew nothing of the details, so Stanley simply said that the killer had not been caught and the mother was still at risk.  This immediately prompted Trevor to ask how he knew so much.  Remembering what it was like to be a young man in a grown-up world, Stanley opted to be honest.  He knew Trevor to be an upright person, and without using names, told the story of the previous night.  Trevor sat wide eyed.  At the end of the story, Trevor sat back in his chair, sighed deeply, and said he understood the black out.

Stanley gave him a favorite lecture on the obligation newspaper had to withhold certain items from the public.  He called it “Duty of Responsibility.