Joan of the Journal

by Helen Diehl Olds

The Journal was coming out early that day, with a diminished edition, as on the day of the annual outing, in order that the staff might have a bit of a holiday. Every one was busy, working extra hard, so busy that they did not even have time to let Joan help. She had stayed home instead, spending the time trying to console Em.

Poor Em did not like the fireworks. Living right in the heart of the town like this, she suffered agonies. The boys on the street, and the Journal newsies, hanging around waiting for the paper to come out, would hurl “two-inchers” and snakes-in-the-grass in her direction. She would meow and hiss like a wild thing. Finally, she would flee to a safer place. Now, she had just disappeared through one of the back windows of the Journal. Joan knew more newsboys were waiting back there—boys ready to tease the cat. She determined to go after her pet and lock her in the house until the terrible—to Em, at least—day of independence was over.

Joan scurried through the editorial office and through the door to out back. She caught sight of Em’s slim, black body scuttling along ahead of her over the cement floor, on velvet-soft paws. Now she was under the make-up tables, where the long galleys of print were assembled in a newspaper form.

Then the cat darted across the composing room and into the pressroom, over to the far corner where rolls of paper, as high as Joan herself, were stored. Em, frantic at being chased, even by Joan, played hide and seek about the paper rolls. Joan called her endearing names, and finally rounding her into a corner, stooped to pick her up. She quieted the cat with reassuring words. Her eyes wandered to the floor. Why, what was that, there in the corner? It looked like yellow copy paper, several sheets pasted together, the way Tim did when he wrote a long story. She started to turn the paper over, idly, with the toe of her oxford, when her foot touched something hard underneath. She pushed the paper off with her foot. The thing was long and hard and dirty with dried ink and dust; it was a galley of type, still set up in its narrow tin trough. Newspapers are notoriously untidy places; still, Joan was surprised to find the set-up type here, for the type was always melted down in a little furnace and reused in the linotype machines. She was about to go on when her eyes were attracted by Tim’s name peeping out from a fold of the yellow paper—MARTIN, written all in capitals, the way he always did in the upper left-hand corner. It must be one of his stories. She draped Em over her arm while she picked up the paper and smoothed it out on her knee.

It was the story of the charity play, the story that had disappeared off the hook. She examined the galley and found it to be the proof of the story and underneath were the proof sheets, too. No wonder it had not been in the paper, for every evidence of the story had been hidden away here in this corner. Some one had done it who had not quite dared to destroy the story. It could not have been Chub, trying in his bunglesome way to help Tim. She believed firmly in his honesty.

She’d save the story for Tim, because he had said he could use it later. She folded it up and tucked it under her middy. The proof sheets and the galley of type she put back into the corner and left.

Chub vowed he knew nothing about the story being hidden. He thought, like Joan, that Dummy must have taken it to put a mistake in it somehow and then, panicky at being almost caught, had hidden it away.

She vowed then that she would watch developments more closely than ever. But, as it happened, she did not.

Later, she recalled Cookie’s statement that reporters were always keyed up over something, forgetting the big excitement of one assignment when the next one came along. Yes, that was true. Think how wrought up she had been over the deserted children, over Miss King’s picture, and now over the charity play story.

“Something exciting every day on a newspaper,” Miss Betty told her when Joan tried to tell the older girl these thoughts. “You’d love it, Sub-Cub.” That was their new name for Joan.