When the first call comes in, and he listens to a woman’s angry tirade as her voice rises into a scream, doesn’t let him get a word in edgewise, it seems to be the anomaly.
We wish he took her name because really, what did she expect? That we’d run the names of every person who appears in our paper to search for a criminal background? Even for inconsequential pictures meant simply to set the mood?
And when another woman calls to run her pet’s birthday in our “happy birthday” list and then a man calls three of us with the exact same comment, it starts to make us nervous.
I check the weather but it’s a crescent moon and there is no good reason for this spate of odd phone calls. I’m seriously considering letting all calls go to voicemail. Clearly something is in the water around Indiana today.
Maybe it’s the heat, though the severe temperatures broke over the weekend and an early morning thunderstorm made for a cooler morning than we’ve had for a while.
Or maybe it’s just coincidence, a number of grumpy people not quite ready to face the work week, still recovering from a summer weekend.
I was moving slow this morning myself, struggling to concentrate after a weekend of friends and pizza and grilling and red wine and sunshine and loud, dusty market-strips and cold beer in the shade of an old stone building.
And though I went to bed right on time and fell asleep to the fan humming in the window it was hard to wake up, hard to settle back in front of the computer, to order my thoughts and make my lists and figure what, exactly needs to be done this week.
There’s a sheriff to call and crimes to list and a couple small notes to write up but the week stretches long without council meetings and I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing about by the end of it. Everyone’s moving slowly these days and the streets are quiet and how to be a reporter when there isn’t any news?
Maybe I’ll pick up the phone after-all. It might be another strange call, but it might give me something – or someone – to write about.
Heather Roth 