The Consult

Jagged up about how to write a news article about injustice without sounding like an advocate for the victim, I decided to stop by and consult another reporter. Hence, I went into the Fourth Ward School on the sound end of C Street to visit Taylor Hamby.

While the school’s front door was open, no one was in the building. I checked the basement to the attic and all floors in between and found nobody.

An eerily quiet filled the place until the sound of a bouncing basketball began echoing from someplace above me. While a basketball court is on the fourth floor, I had just been there and saw nobody and no basketballs.

Returning to my truck, I called Taylor to let her know the building was open and no one was there. She told me that her car was buried in snow still, that she couldn’t check on the place, and that she’d have to call someone to do it for her.

“Do you need help digging your car out?” I asked.

“Sure, if you’d like too,” she answered.

South to Gold Hill, I drove and pulled up alongside her car. I wasn’t so much buried in snow as her balding tires could not grip the snow and ice the vehicle sat on.

As I dug away the icy snow built up beneath her vehicle’s tires, she at on the hood, and we talked.

“Nice of you to do this,” Taylor said.

“Thanks,” I responded, “But I’m using it as a pretext to talk to you about an article I’m trying to write.”

“What’s it about?” she asked, and I explained.

Having cleared enough snow around the tires to find the ice below, I hacked away until there was nothing but the gravel surface of her parking spot. It was time to see if the beast would move.

It refused. So it was back at the shoveling and hacking until after four or maybe ten tries, the car moved forward and backward a foot or two.

“You should write it like you would your usual police blotter story,” she offered. “Let the story be the advocate.”

By then, I was in the car, rocking it gently back and forth by moving the shifter from reverse to drive. Satisfied that it would clear the mess it parked in, I gunned the engine.

The car, small, foreign, and old, had some juice. It sprung forward, careening unexpectedly into the Comstock Highway.

Not knowing this would happen, the Honda zipped across the road and in front of an old Dodge rumbling up from Silver City. Judging from the look on his face, the gentleman driving the truck was as scared as I was as we narrowly missed each other.

Quickly, I pulled into the turnout that also serves as the driveway to Comstock Inc. It took me a few seconds to gather my nerves, turn around and pull forward into her parking space.

She invited me in for a few minutes so I could warm up and have something to drink. She never once mentioned the fact that I nearly got her car broadsided.

Knowing she had to be to work, I drove by her house the next day only to find her car in the exact spot I had parked it. She did lift the wipers off the windshield in the event of another snowstorm.