Contents Under Pressure Read Online Free Page A

and record our history, our beginnings and endings. No matter what happens, the newspaper will come out tomorrow, like the sun. People will wake up in the morning and find it on their lawns. One of the few sure things in life, it is something to hold on to.
    I had finished the soup. It was vegetable; not bad, actually. Nutritious, I told myself. Before dropping the can into the recycling bin I read the label. “Stir in one can of water and heat.” I wondered if I should drink a can of water. I had a glass of wine instead and went to bed.

Two
    I awoke in the dark at 5:30 A.M., wondering if some chronically ill recipient was lucky enough to be waking up with D. Wayne Hudson’s donated championship heart. Still weary and let down, I needed to work out the kinks, mental and physical. There was no time for an aerobics class at the Spa, so I pulled on shorts and my favorite T-shirt, sent by a friend in the Salvadoran press corps: ¡Soy Periodista! ¡No Dispare! (I am a Journalist! Don’t Shoot!) I clipped my beeper to my waistband and walked two blocks east. From a half-block away I heard the ocean, and, as always, it made my pulse beat faster. A shrouded moon and two morning stars hung high above the stairs to the boardwalk. The eastern sky had paled to lavender above the rim of the sea. Dark purple clouds stacked above it in deranged shapes, like the shadowy skyline of some wild and alien city that exists only in troubled dreams.
    The lights of half a dozen ships at sea still dotted the vast horizon. I broke into a slow jog, heading north on the boardwalk, reveling in the refreshing sea breeze, as the lavender brightened to pink and then to orange neon with charcoal smears. A scrawny gray striped cat sat alone on the sandy beach, eyes fixed on the same heavenly spectacle that took my breath away.
    I thought of Billy Boots, fat and glossy, and regretted not having a pocket full of cat nibbles. The black sky to the west faded to navy, and then cobalt blue. Two joggers passed briskly on the beach below, running on hard-packed sand, as the steps of others thudded on the boardwalk behind me.
    Images of D. Wayne Hudson, his wife and children, and the eager faces of youngsters at the project, where Ted Ferrell and the gunman had played out their taut drama, intermingled in my mind as yellow replaced the orange neon to the east, and the ships’ lights began to fade from the horizon. Violence and bad news always seem more shocking when they take place in paradise, I thought. One swimmer was already bobbing out beyond the breakers. Pale blue and pink streaks stretched north and south, a giant finger painting framed by soft billowy clouds. The palms made whispery sounds in the breeze, and crickets still chirped in the sea oats and oleander bushes as I passed the still-sleeping beachfront condos and hotels. Sea gulls soared and swooped over the shoreline, and a pelican skimmed hard-edged surf the color of gunmetal. We were all waiting for the same moment. The playful breeze suddenly ceased, as if in a dramatic pause. The radiance behind the clouds burst into a great blaze of fire as the sun emerged. First a dazzling sliver slid into view, then a quarter, then half and then the brilliant ball of flame broke free, sailing into the morning sky. The ocean instantly changed to a sea foam green fringed by silver.
    The gulls cried out a greeting. I wanted to, too. Another South Florida day had been born.
    I picked up a quart of milk at the Mini-Market on the way home, and carefully scrutinized my stories in the final edition, over cereal and coffee. Ted Ferrell looked good, surrounded by a sea of admirers, young and old. He sounded even better in print on the local page. He might even make Officer of the Month for this, I mused. Lottie’s telephoto lens had caught the suspect in the doorway brandishing his wicked-looking gun before he gave it up, pretty much shooting holes in his mother’s mistaken identity theory. The morning’s radio news