At the county library, in the juvenile section, the book is back on the shelf, waiting. Poems and Rhymes from Around the World. And on page 27 there's a poem. A traditional African poem, the book says. It's eight lines long, and I don't need to copy it. I have it in my notes from the very first baby, the trailer house in the suburbs. I tear out the page and put the book back on the shelf.
In the City Room, Duncan says, "How's it going on the dead baby beat?" He says, "I need you to call this number and see what's what," and he hands me a proof sheet from the Lifestyles section, an ad circled in red pen.
Three columns by six inches deep, the copy says:
Attention Patrons of the Meadow Downs Fitness and Racquet Club
It says: "Have you contracted a flesh-eating fungal infection from the fitness equipment or personal-contact surfaces in their rest rooms? If so, please call the following number to be part of a class-action lawsuit."
At the phone number in question, a man's voice answers, "Deemer, Duke and Diller, Attorneys-at-Law."
The man says, "We'll need your name and address for the record." Over the phone, he says, "Can you describe your rash? Size. Location. Color. Tissue loss or damage. Be as specific as possible."
There's been a mistake, I say. There's no rash. I say, I'm not calling to be in the lawsuit.
For whatever reason, Helen Hoover Boyle comes to mind.
When I say I'm a reporter for the newspaper, the man says, "I'm sorry, but we're not allowed to discuss the matter until the lawsuit is filed."
I call the racquet club, but they won't talk either. I call the Treeline Dining Club from the earlier ad, but they won't talk. The phone numbers in both ads are the same one. With the weird cell phone prefix. I call it again, and the man's voice says, "Diller, Doom and Duke,
Attorneys-at-Law."
And I hang up.
In journalism school, they teach you to start with your most important fact. The inverted pyramid, they call it. Put the who, what, where, when, and why at the top of the article. Then list the lesser facts in descending order. That way, an editor can lop off any length of story without losing anything too important.
All the little details, the smell of the bedspread, the food on the plates, the color of the Christmas tree ornament, that stuff always gets left on the Composing Room floor.
The only pattern in crib death is it tends to increase as the weather cools in the fall. This is the fact my editor wants to lead with in our first installment. Something to panic people. Five babies, five installments. This way we can keep people reading the series for five consecutive Sundays. We can promise to explore the causes and patterns of sudden infant death. We can hold out hope.
Some people still think knowledge is power.
We can guarantee advertisers a highly invested readership. Outside, it's colder already.
Back at the City Room, I ask my editor to do me a little favor.
I think maybe I've found a pattern. It looks as if every parent might have read the same poem out loud to their child the night before it died.
"All five?" he says.
I say, let's try a little experiment.
This is late in the evening, and we're both tired from a long day. We're sitting in his office, and I tell him to listen.
It's an old song about animals going to sleep. It's wistful and sentimental, and my face feels livid and hot with oxygenated hemoglobin while I read the poem out loud under the fluorescent lights, across a desk from my editor with his tie undone and his collar open, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. His mouth is open a little, his teeth and his coffee mug are stained the same coffee brown.
What's good is we're alone, and it only takes a minute.
At the end, he opens his eyes and says, "What the fuck was that supposed to mean?"
Duncan, his eyes are green.
His spit lands in little cold specks on my arm, bringing germs, little wet buckshot, bringing viruses. Brown coffee saliva.
I say I don't know. The book calls it a culling song. In some ancient cultures, they sang it to children during famines or droughts, anytime the tribe had outgrown its land. You sing it to warriors crippled in battle and people stricken with disease, anyone you hope will die soon. To end their pain. It's a lullaby.
As far as ethics, what I've learned is a journalist's job isn't to judge the facts. Your job isn't to screen information. Your job is to collect the details. Just what's there. Be an impartial witness. What I know now is someday you won't think twice about calling those parents back on Christmas Eve.
Duncan looks at his watch, then at me, and says, "So what's your experiment?"
Tomorrow, I'll know if there's a causal relationship. A real pattern.
It's just my job to tell the story. I put page 27 through his paper shredder.
Stick and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.
I don't want to explain until I know for sure. This is still a hypothetical situation, so I ask my editor to humor me. I say, "We both need some rest, Duncan." I say, "Maybe we can talk about it in the morning."
Chapter 7
During my first cup of coffee, Henderson walks over from the National desk. Some people grab their coats and head for the elevator. Some grab a magazine and head for the bathroom. Other people duck behind their computer screens and pretend to be on the phone while Henderson stands in the center of the newsroom with his tie loose around his open collar and shouts, "Where the hell is Duncan?"
He yells, "The street edition is going to press, and we need the rest of the damn front page."
Some people just shrug. I pick up my phone.
The details about Henderson are he's got blond hair combed across his forehead. He dropped out of law school. He's an editor on the National desk. He always knows the snow conditions and has a lift pass dangling from every coat he owns. His computer password is "password."
Standing next to my desk, he says, "Streator, is that nasty blue tie the only one you got?"
Holding the phone to my ear, I mouth the word Interview. I ask the dial tone, is that B as in "boy"?
Of course I'm not telling anybody about how I read Duncan the poem. I can't call the police. About my theory. I can't explain to Helen Hoover Boyle why I need to ask about her dead son.
My collar feels so tight I have to swallow hard to force any coffee down.
Even if people believed me, the first thing they'd want to know is: What poem?
Show it to us. Prove it.
The question isn't, Would the poem leak out?
The question is, How soon would the human race be extinct?
Here's the power of life and a cold clean bloodless easy death, available to anyone. To everyone. An instant, bloodless, Hollywood death.
Even if I don't tell, how long until Poems and Rhymes from. Around the World gets into a classroom? How long until page 27, the culling song, gets read to fifty kids before nap time?
How long until it's read over the radio to thousands of people? Until it's set to music? Translated into other languages?
Hell, it doesn't have to be translated to work. Babies don't speak any language.
No one's seen Duncan for three days. Miller thinks Kleine called Duncan at home. Kleine thinks Fillmore called. Everybody's sure somebody else called, but nobody's talked to Duncan. He hasn't answered his e-mail. Carruthers says Duncan didn't bother to call in sick.
Another cup of coffee later, Henderson stops by my desk with a tear sheet from the Leisure section. It's folded to show an ad, three columns by six inches deep. Henderson looks at me tapping my watch and holding it to my ear, and he says, "You see this in the morning edition?" The ad says:
Attention First-Class Passengers of Regent-Pacific Airlines
The ad says: "Have you suffered hair loss and/or discomfort from crab lice after coming in contact with airline upholstery, pillows, or blankets? If so, please call the following number to be part of a class-action lawsuit."
Henderson says, "You called about this yet?"
I say, maybe he should just shut up and call.
And Henderson says, "You're Mr. Special Features." He says, "This isn't prison. I ain't your bitch."
This is killing me.
You don't become a reporter because you're good at keeping secrets.
Being a journalist is about telling. It's about bearing the bad news. Spreading the contagion. The biggest story in history. This could be the end of mass media.
The culling song would be a plague unique to the Information Age. Imagine a world where people shun the television, the radio, movies, the Internet, magazines and newspapers. People have to wear earplugs the way they wear condoms and rubber gloves. In the past, nobody worried too much about sex with strangers. Or before that, bites from fleas. Or untreated drinking water. Mosquitoes. Asbestos.
Imagine a plague you catch through your ears.
Sticks and stones will break your bones, but now words can kill, too.
The new death, this plague, can come from anywhere. A song. An overhead announcement. A news bulletin. A sermon. A street musician. You can catch death from a telemarketer. A teacher. An Internet file. A birthday card. A fortune cookie.
A million people might watch a television show, then be dead the next morning because of an advertising jingle.
Imagine the panic.
Imagine a new Dark Age. Exploration and trade routes brought the first plagues from China to Europe. With mass media, we have so many new means of transmission.
Imagine the books burning. And tapes and films and files, radios and televisions, will all go into that same bonfire. All those libraries and bookstores blazing away in the night. People will attack microwave relay stations. People with axes will chop every fiber-optic cable.
Imagine people chanting prayers, singing hymns, to drown out any sound that might bring death. Their hands clamped over their ears, imagine people shunning any song or speech where death could be coded the way maniacs would poison a bottle of aspirin. Any new word. Anything they don't already understand will be suspect, dangerous. Avoided. A quarantine against communication.
And if this was a death spell, an incantation, there had to be others. If / know about page 27, someone else must. I'm not the pioneer brain of anything.
How long until someone dissects the culling song and creates another variation, and another, and another? All of them new and improved. Until Oppenheimer invented the atom bomb, it was impossible. Now we have the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb and the neutron bomb, and people are still expanding on that one idea. We're forced into a new scary paradigm.
If Duncan's dead, he was a necessary casualty. He was my atmospheric nuclear test. He was my Trinity. My Hiroshima.
Still, Palmer from the copy desk is sure Duncan's in Composing.
Jenkins from Composing says Duncan's probably in the art department.
Hawley from Art says he's in the clipping library.
Schott from the library says Duncan's at the copy desk.
Around here, this is what passes for reality.
The kind of security they now have at airports, imagine that kind of crackdown at all libraries, schools, theaters, bookstores, after the culling song leaks out. Anywhere information might be disseminated, you'll find armed guards.
The airwaves will be as empty as a public swimming pool during a polio scare. After that, only a few government broadcasts will air. Only well-scrubbed news and music. After that, any music, books, and movies will be tested on lab animals or volunteer convicts before release to the public.