were both subdued when they approached Brindle on Friday. The Great Basin desert stretched out to infinity on one side of the highway, and the Cascades loomed on the other. One looked as dead as a lunar landscape, the other, thinly populated here with ponderosa pines, was as unmoving as a painting. The only signs of life were the cars and trucks on the road.
“You’ll be bored to death out here,” Barney said.
“Won’t. I’ll take up bird-watching. I wonder if there are birds? But you’ll be miserable.”
“Nope. I’ll wander barefoot in the desert, grow a long beard, have visions and become a revered prophet.”
“We are arriving,” she said a moment later. On the left, a mammoth greenhouse seemed ridiculously out of place considering that the temperature was 101. A motel, a gas station with a small convenience store attached, a Safeway…Another store, general merchandise, a tourist-type souvenir store, another motel with a café, a rock shop…It looked like a movie set waiting for the actors. Behind one of the gas stations, a group of manufactured homes stood baking in the sun.
“We turn right on First Street,” she said. It came up fast and Barney made the turn. Now a larger building came into view, a two-story hotel, with a lot of well-maintained greenery visible, and a few more shops. “Right again on Spruce,” she said. Brindle had turned into a real village with houses and yards, green things growing, a restaurant, a few people going on about their business. She spotted the Bolton Building with a neat sign: The Brindle Times, and Barney pulled to the curb and parked.
“Ready or not,” he murmured, and patted her thigh. “Just don’t go into your magic pose. Okay?”
“I’ll try to restrain myself,” she said, uncrossing her fingers.
She had told Ruth Ann Colonna that they would arrive between one and two, and it was ten minutes after one when they entered the building. A pretty, round-faced young woman met them.
“Mrs. Fielding? They’re expecting you. I’ll tell Johnny you’re here. Just a sec.” She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and sandals. She crossed the outer office, tapped on a door, then entered another room. Two other women looked them over as they waited, an older woman, possibly in her sixties, and a lean young Latina.
The door across the room opened and the one who had met them reappeared, followed closely by a thick-set man with straight black hair. He had a dark tan and big brown eyes.
“Ms. Fielding? Mr. Fielding? Johnny Colonna. Glad to meet you. Come in, come in.” He clasped her hand briefly, nodded to Barney and led the way into his office, where he introduced Ruth Ann.
Todd had assumed that Mrs. Colonna was his wife, and was surprised to meet the old woman. She was taller than Todd and as straight as a stick, without a hint of extra fat; her skin was weathered and wrinkled with a tan as dark as her son’s, and her hair pure white and straight, cut short. Her eyes were startling, green with flecks of amber. She looked sinewy, tough, impervious to the elements. She was wearing faded chinos and a cotton shirt.
Todd was beginning to feel overdressed in her interview clothes—skirt, blouse, panty hose.
Waving Todd and Barney to chairs, Johnny went behind his desk to his own chair, cleared his throat, and then said, “I was impressed by the journal you sent us, but I’m afraid that we’re not doing anything quite like that. We have a weekly newspaper, and a few circulars, nothing like you’re used to working with.”
Without glancing at him, Ruth Ann handed Todd a copy of the latest edition of the newspaper, the one that had infuriated her. “Can you tell by looking it over what went wrong? Theodore, our editor, swears that he edited the copy himself, and he’s been quite good in the past. And I know beyond any doubt that my own editorial was letter perfect.” She sat in a chair close to Todd’s.
As Todd began to examine the newspaper, Ruth Ann turned to Barney. “Do you have computer expertise also, Mr. Fielding?”
Barney shook his head. “Not a bit. I use a word processor and when I goof, as I do all the time, she fixes it.” He nodded at Todd, who was frowning at the newspaper.
She turned to the last page, then looked at Ruth Ann. “It’s lost the formatting. And the columns aren’t set. Also, someone tried to use text and graphic boxes without setting the parameters.” She would have continued, but Ruth Ann held up her hand.
“If I edited all the paper copy and someone put it in the computer, would it end up garbled like that?”
“Until the program is straightened out, the errors fixed, the formatting reset, things like that, it would probably come out about like this.”
Ruth Ann’s lips tightened. “What are those strings of gibberish?” She leaned over and pointed to a string of codes.
“It looks like different programs were used and codes from one ended up in the text without being translated.”
“Ms. Fielding—may I call you Todd? How long would it take you to straighten out the programs, fix things, print a decent edition if you had the copy?”
Johnny made a throat-clearing sound and Ruth Ann turned to snap at him, “Have you understood a word she’s said?”
“You know I don’t know anything about computers.”
“And neither does anyone else in this office. That’s the problem.” She looked at Todd again.
“I could run off an edition in a day or two if I had all the prepared copy. But it would be makeshift. To fix things the way they should be fixed? I can’t be sure until I know what programs are in use, how many people have access to them, if there are templates, or if they have to be set up. It could be a matter of days, or it could take several weeks. And after all that, your people, anyone who uses the programs, should be trained. I can’t say without more information.”
“When can you start?”
“I thought you said you would want someone by the first of September,” Todd said.
“I want someone now, today, Monday. Todd, if you can start sooner, I would appreciate it. We will cover your relocation expenses, hire movers to come in and pack your things, haul them down here. Meanwhile you could stay in the hotel, Warden House. Would that be acceptable?”
Startled, Todd glanced at Barney. He nodded at her and stood up, then said, “Mrs. Colonna, I think Todd and I should take a few minutes to talk about this.”
“Yes, you should,” she said. “Come along. I’ll take you to my office.” She led the way back through the outer office to the opposite side and opened a door. “My room,” she said. “This is where you’ll be working, Todd, at least until Theodore leaves in September. When you’re ready, just come back to Johnny’s office. Take as long as you like.” She looked around, shrugged, then left, closing the door after her.
It was a bigger office than Johnny’s, and while his had been neat and tidy, this room was cluttered—an old desk, two old chairs, boxes on the floor, papers all over the desktop. A separate desk held only a computer.
“Barney, we can’t just abandon our stuff,” Todd said.
“Honey, that old lady is desperate,” he said softly. He looked at the vintage desk, faded framed photographs on the wall, wooden file
