Webster Daily's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

Webster worked the booth until his hand cramped. The line thinned by midday. He stepped out for air and saw a man waiting beside the old newspaper stand at the edge of the lot, a folded paper pressed flat against his chest. The man knew his byline. He had read every word. He held out the Gazette and tapped the blank line where a name should have been. Then he pulled a second page from inside the fold, a galley proof, stamped and dated before the print run. On it, in clean type, was the name Webster had left out. The Gazette had set it, then cut it. Someone inside had buried Sherrie's name before he ever made his choice. Webster took both pages and sat down on the curb. The proof shook in his hand. He had thought the silence was his. He had carried the guilt of it for a day and a night. But the paper had killed the name on its own, for its own reasons, and let him believe the cut was his mercy. He folded the proof into his coat beside the badge. Two names hidden now, one by him, one by them. He looked back at the line of new arrivals signing their trades. The story had brought them. The story had also been smaller than he knew. He understood, finally, that the truth he wrote would always pass through other hands. He stood up. He walked back to the booth and took up the pen. He wrote the next name, and the next, and the next. The arc of the story closed there, not with Sherrie undone, not with the hill cracked open, but with Webster choosing the work in front of him. He would write again. He would write better. For now, the town had a list, and his name was on it too.