Letter From Home by Carolyn Hart Page B

bandaged foot.
    Gretchen was almost all the way to the Gazette office before she wondered: What if no one believed Barb?

. . . when I saw your picture on the page with the editorials. I remember you won a prize for an editorial in the Wolf Cry. You were always winning prizes. Anyway, there you were in the Times. The headline said: Around the World . . . by G. G. Gilman. You were in Rome and it was something about happy Italian memories. That’s nice, to have happy Italian memories. I wish I did. I had some good times—when I didn’t remember home. That was always the trouble . . .
    CHAPTER 3
    â€œGRETCHEN, MEIN SCHATZ .” I heard Grandmother’s voice in my memory. It was as if she were here and speaking to me. No one had ever said my name in quite the same way. Was it her German accent or was it the love that made the intonation so utterly unmistakable? In my heart, I felt like a girl again. Gretchen. That’s how Grandmother knew me. I’d been G. G. Gilman in newsrooms around the world for most of my life. The nickname, derived from my initials, sounded like Gigi, appropriate for a fluffy white Angora cat or a fan dancer. I like to believe I carried it off with flair. No one patronized me. Or, to be honest, no one ever tried it twice. I hadn’t been so tough in the beginning. The toughening started that sultry summer when Barb Tatum ran through the night to bang on my window screen. . . .
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“PRETTY UGLY, HUH kid?” Mr. Dennis’s rounded face sagged into creases like an old bloodhound. He leaned back in his swivel chair, arms folded, pipe clenched in one side of his jaw. “You feel like telling me?” His tone was quiet.
    Gretchen stood by his desk. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.
    Jewell Taylor, her bluish white hair in a French twist, stopped typing. She made a soft, sad noise. The feather on her wispy hat trembled. “Walt, don’t make the child talk about it. Let Ralph handle it.”
    â€œGretchen was there.” The editor’s tone was sharp.
    Gretchen stood still and stiff, reliving the night, how Barb’s fingers on the screen sounded like June bugs, the smell of newly mown grass at the Crane yard, the light spilling down from the pink ceiling fixture onto Mrs. Tatum’s sprawled body. . . .
    â€œBut maybe not.” The editor puffed on his pipe and the sweet woodsy scent was comforting, like the crackle of a fire in winter. “Okay, Gretchen, I’ve got a couple of stories for you. Billy Forrester’s family brought him home from the army hospital in Kansas City. He lost both legs. They say he wants to go to college. And the First Baptist Church has a new pastor. And there’ll be a Red Cross bus to take volunteers to Tulsa Saturday to donate blood for the wounded overseas. We’ll do a box on page 1 for that. But first, clear the wire.” He jerked his head toward the clacking Teletype, paper oozing from the top, sloping down, and mounding on the floor.
    Mrs. Taylor brushed back a loose tendril of her snowy hair. “Have I got room today for that mug of the garden club president?”
    Dennis glanced toward the page layouts spread across his desk. “Nope. Too much jump from the Tatum story.”
    â€œAll right.” Mrs. Taylor was always good-humored. In her world, if a story didn’t run one day, it would the next. As far as she was concerned, big stories came and went but weddings and funerals and club meetings were the heart and soul of the Gazette . As she’d earnestly said when she handed Gretchen the list of this year’s graduating class, “What matters are people’s names. That’s what they look for in the paper.”
    But Gretchen knew that everyone would read about Faye Tatum in this afternoon’s Gazette . And, as Mr. Dennis observed, Gretchen had been there.
    Gretchen took a step toward the editor. “Mr. Dennis, maybe if I wrote it all down. About