Morgan_spiehs - A Vulture in the Weeds–REVISED DRAFT lyrics

“You want me to what?” Anna said. Her eyelids felt heavy and pained her when she opened and closed them. She'd slept four hours between shifts. “Call her, will ya,” her editor said as he flipped through the unorganized piles of newspaper and timecards on his desk. “We need an updated photo for tomorrow's issue. It's going A1.” Anna imagined if this were 1950, her editor would have extinguished the cigarette pinched between his fingers at this point in the conversation. Instead he took a quick gulp from an energy drink can. Anna wasn't prepared to argue with the editor she'd only had for a few months. Her options were simple: feel like a human being or… well… not one. Anna's knuckles were turning white as she clinched the back of one of her editor's office chairs. When she relinquished the polyester material, she was surprised by the amount of sweat her palms left behind. There hadn't been a fatal case of plague in this county for over three decades. Anna was under the impression the plague only affected rats aboard ships and Middle Ages-era Europeans. There were fewer than 50 nationwide cases in the entire decade. And here Anna was, contemplating calling a mother whose daughter played concert cello hours before dying from the plague three days ago. It was Mother's Day. The photo sent along in the press release promised the story a lot of page views. A blond haired beauty with dark green eyes and an endearing set of freckles, Tessa Haven looked like the ideal babysitter Anna dreamed of as a kid. Anna wondered if she was a lifeguard. To a young Anna, there was nothing better than being a lifeguard. Anna's editor wanted a photo of the dead girl's mother. Or at least he wanted to say they'd tried to get a photo of the dead girl's mother. Anna cringed at the thought. She imagined the once well-known Olympic swimmer answer the phone with a quivering, “Yes?” Anna would bet her entry-level journalist's salary Betty Haven let one postman after another hand her an arrangement of flowers today. She was the mother who lost her only daughter on Mother's Day. Anna's fingers hovered over her desk phone's keys. Had someone asked her yesterday if she'd ever call a grieving mother on Mother's Day to ask for a photo, she would have answered surely. No way. It can wait. Was the public curious about how Betty Haven felt? Yes. But was it worth disturbing a distressed woman in the first few days of being daughterless on a day that celebrated her motherhood? No way, no how. Yet, her fingers still hovered above the illuminated phone keys. The dial tone became white noise. Journalism was supposed to be easier than this, Anna thought. As long as she cared about the community, cared about justice, cared about telling the truth, everything would work out just fine she was told by her tenured professors. Did those tenured professors never have to call a dead girl's mother on Mother's Day? Anna typed in three of the keys before her editor yelled across the room. “Anna, never mind! We have bigger fish to fry.” Anna exhaled but was soon disturbed by this revelation. Bigger fish to fry? What could have happened in the last few minutes? “We've got a serial shooter,” her editor said, peering over her cubicle wall. “Like a sniper?” Anna asked. Her editor didn't answer. He was already talking about the serial shooter's first victim. An eighteen-year-old was found lying on the sidewalk with a bullet wound to the chest. This was the second of two shootings in the area. The first left a woman with a hole in her shoulder but alive to tell the tale. She hadn't seen a thing. She was driving when her window shattered. She thought the pain was from the broken gla**. There was a vigil planned for victim one that night. “Do whatever you have to do to cover this thing,” her editor said as he walked toward the vending machine. The other photographer was on vacation. Anna could work a split shift. She didn't mind taking a long lunch. The Tavern has two-for-one burgers today. The cook knew to package one up for Anna to take home and eat later. And she needed to change her shirt to something more vigil appropriate. Anna met the reporter at the college green space listed on the press release. It said there were enough candles for 200 but the gra** was covered in what Anna guessed was easily 500 people. The vigil didn't start for fifteen minutes. “It's not everyday I get pulled off a story about a teen d**h for another,” the reporter said. Poppy (a name that did not suit her) scanned the crowd for tears. She'd moved here from a larger paper. She'd covered a hundred of these events. Anna could count on her hands how many vigils she'd covered. “Did I tell you what I was doing…” Mid sentence, Anna noticed the men embracing. They sat on the curb, the older man's arm around the younger. The younger man, maybe even a boy, buried his head into his knees. He was sobbing. Anna's feelings about photographing vigils were love/hate to say the least. She felt like a vulture, stalking the helpless. After seeing the men hugging, she dropped to one knee, placing the camera in front of her eye. She was buried in the crowd. They couldn't see her. Good. The vulture is hidden in the weeds. Through the viewfinder, Anna liked what she saw. The older man's profile was nice. He wore a cowboy hat. Cowboy hats make good pictures. After a few clicks, Anna had her photos and they were front page worthy. Now she had to get their names. This was the hard part. She imagined herself walking up and saying, "Hey there, I know this is a real tough time for ya'll and everything but can I get your names?" It made her shutter. Inserting herself in other people's worst moments was always uncomfortable. Always intrusive. Always tough to do. To think, she could be knocking on Betty Haven's door at the moment, inserting herself into Betty's tragedy. Anna wasn't sure which was worse. "That's Tyler's uncle and cousin," a woman said next to Anna. Anna's throat tightened. A tear perched itself on her bottom eyelid. God, this sh** never got easier. “This community's been through a lot," Anna managed to say. Her throat tightened more. She was unsure whether it was professional to cry. A family in the same community lost a toddler a few months before. Drowned. Her father was nearly within earshot. Anna wanted to call it "our" community but she couldn't. She'd only been here five months. It was too soon. A vulture she remained. These were the times Anna wished she were a portrait photographer. She could have a shop on her hometown's Main Street where bricks still constructed the road. She could have mismatched furniture from local thrift stores where her clients could sit and choose their senior photo package. “Package A really makes the most sense,” Anna could imagine herself saying to a soon-to-be senior high school quarterback. “You need pocket size prints for all those friends of yours.” If she were her own boss, she wouldn't have to wait for mourners to hug. She wouldn't open the newspaper the morning after covering a vigil in hopes of seeing two men crying on the front as long as her byline was underneath it. But she did. Anna snatched the paper off her apartment stoop's welcome rug. She didn't even need to slide it out of the blue plastic bag to see it. There her photo was: A1, in color. Anna felt proud but quickly itched at her collar, sure she felt feathers. She flipped through the other pages. There was a vacant store for rent featured in the cla**ifieds. About the perfect size for a studio, Anna thought while drinking coffee she'd brewed using the same grounds from yesterday. Her phone rang and she shuttered. No one seemed to call her except to tell her there was breaking news or they needed jumper cables. “The boy's parents are not happy about the vigil story,” her editor said without a greeting. “Said they got too many people asking about their son being in a gang.” Anna put her face in her hands. “But,” her editor said. He paused. Anna knew her editor tried to get a rise out of people. She had no doubt that was underway. “But,” he said again. “You've got a four o'clock with Betty. She wants to talk. A shooter story is definitely going A1 but if you can get something good, we could use filler in the local section. All the reporters are tied up so this is all you.” Just like that, Betty Haven went from front-page story material to “filler.” Serial shooters get all the glory. Anna immediately looked to her closet. She'd wore her I'm-sorry-your-child-died shirt last night and it sat in the hamper with her cigarette smoke soaked jackets. At least Mother's Day expired nine hours ago. Anna decided on a plum collared article she last endured at her great grandparents' 90th anniversary party. Anna wondered if it would still fit. She didn't have feathers to hide then. Betty Haven's front porch seemed welcoming from Anna's car parked down the street. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. “Don't f** it up,” the text read. Her editor could be so encouraging. Anna closed her eyes and let her mind retreat into a calmer place. Her mind usually took her back to Timber Creek. Her parents still lived in the home they built when her mother was pregnant with her. Images of her rural Nebraska upbringing entered her mind: Pink cowboy boots, Garth Brooks concert t-shirts, learning how to Boot Scootin' Boogie. Only a few acres of land separated Anna's house from her grandparent's. The gravel road that ran between was contoured to Prairie Creek. When Anna traveled the eight hours to visit, she would walk the distance between the two houses, counting the rows of soybeans and corn. The number hardly changed year to year. On her last visit, she couldn't stop herself from sitting on the edge of the ditch and weeping on her walk. When a neighbor drove by and waved, she'd got up and wiped the tears, ignoring the dirt under her fingers nails and waved back. She knew her mother would be waiting for her, sitting on the front porch watching the traffic on the highway, wondering why Jolene was heading into town at nine in the morning for the third time this week. She would have a diet Mountain Dew in her hand and her hair would still be wet from showering, looking co*katoo-like. She would be sitting in her robe, inviting Anna to sit next to her and watch the cars. She was sure aunt Sherry would be driving by soon in her new Jeep. Her mother always spoke. She never asked Anna questions about her new life, her new job. Anna didn't mind so much anymore, though it used to bother her greatly. It allowed Anna to further escape the uneasiness she felt about her new career. Her mother would go on for an entire episode of Antiques Roadshow about who's cheating who and who's quit their boss lately. When Anna loaded up her 4Runner and headed back to her empty apartment filled with unfamiliar smells, she looked in her rearview mirror for much too long. The silos filled with corn that helped pay her student loans reflected the morning light. Her two Labradors, one golden and one black, ran in the yard, minding the electric fence keeping them from wandering into the highway. There was no electric fence keeping Anna back. She shouldn't want to stay. She had a degree and dreams of a career that would be chronicled “All the President's Men” style. Anna wondered which actress would get the esteemed role of playing her. But when teenagers died in Timber Creek, Anna wasn't a vulture. Anna was expected to grieve with others. Not to take a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph. She wouldn't wonder whether she felt human. That photo studio on Main Street sounded more appealing with every community tragedy she covered, every paycheck that hardly covered the rent. Her mother could manage the finances and her brother who'd married rich always wanted to invest in his younger sister. She knew her kitchen table would be piled high with bills. No doubt there would be more in the mailbox. Her parents' mailbox only had Timber Creek's newsletter and possibly a graduation announcement from the neighbor boy next door. The same town that was proudly home to the largest ice cream cone in the state sheltered Anna from the world. The town's residents despised the current president no matter what party he belonged to, too uninformed to be partisan. Serial shooters belonged to fiction plots. It was a convenient upbringing, charmed and filled with people telling Anna to “count your blessings.” It was not the type of upbringing that prepares you for the cruel world. And definitely not to report on its mothers whose children died too young. The Havens' house seemed outdated. Like a Victorian woman decorated it in 1890 and the Havens didn't want to disturb her hard work. “We'll sit in the parlor,” Betty said. The parlor? Maybe Betty was somehow the Victorian woman, Anna thought. Betty's greeting was warm. She could pa** as person who hadn't just lost a child, Anna thought. Her hair was done. Her makeup looked like she'd run out to Dillard's to have the ladies at gold sales counters apply it before buying a jar of night cream. Anna kept reminding herself Betty had called her. Betty wanted her to be here. Anna wasn't intruding. The image of the vulture entered her head. Anna's collar felt tight. She checked for more feathers. The walls were covered with photos celebrating Tessa's accomplishments. Volleyball, debate, track. Anna checked, it didn't look like she'd been a lifeguard. Betty was with her daughter every step of the way. Donned in coaching gear, Betty smiled and wore the same medal as her daughter and her teammates. Betty looked to the large black Canon cameras resting on both of Anna's hips. “Are you a photographer too?” Betty said. She smoothed her tweed pencil shirt as the tips of her heels tapped the hardwood floors. Anna suddenly felt underdressed. “I'm primarily a photographer, actually.” “They didn't care to send a real reporter?” Anna didn't remember having time to react but she must have. Betty closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. “I apologize. But, you have to understand, this is important to me. I've nowhere else to turn” There weren't people like Betty in Timber Creek. She was intimidating and brutally honest. She spoke slowly and with a sense of dignity Anna wished she had. Betty was commanding and seemed to posses a quality that could hold even a goon's attention. Anna was petrified, unsure she was equipped to handle this situation. “I understand,” Anna said even though she didn't. Betty inhaled the stuffy air filling the room and sat on a couch with a dusty pink slip cover. The tall, slender woman Anna guessed could still give Olympic swimmers a run for their money, slumped into the seat, tilting her face toward the ceiling. “I need help,” Betty said. Anna's heart skipped. Helping was the reason she majored in journalism, unsure how she could do much good as an interior designer. If a journalist doesn't help, they can say goodbye to the new Katherine Hepburn vying for a role in their biopic. “I've started a scholarship fund in Tessa's name,” Betty said. She leaned forward and placed her face in her hands. “It hasn't raised a single cent.” She looked up at Anna. “I thought you could write a story. It can run on the front page, just like your photo from that boy's vigil. That would get the exposure it needs to revive the fund.” She paused and closed her eyes. “I can't stand the thought of my daughter's memory fading this quickly because a senseless shooter stole the community's attention.” Anna knew nobody wanted to read about a scholarship fund. Unless a scholarship fund helped find the serial shooter on the loose, Anna knew it wouldn't make the paper. Maybe around Christmas it would if it were a really slow news day. People would read a short story about Betty's first few days after the loss of her daughter. But even that couldn't be more than a couple hundred words for the “filler” her editor requested. “Unfortunately, I can't promise you what the story will be about,” Anna said while looking down at her shoes. Betty titled her head. “Well, what else will it be about?” Betty wanted to strike a deal. The image of a page explaining ethics from Anna's Ma** Media and Society cla** entered her mind. “I don't know that now,” Anna said. “Why don't you tell me about your daughter. What would you want the world to know about her?” Betty shifted her large green eyes to the window. Her furrowed brow allowed wrinkles to show her age. Sixty one, according to a brief Google search. Anna could tell Betty realized her story didn't stand a chance against public safety. There was an active threat in the community and no suspects. In a town this size, people would be satisfied to open their paper and see a cover story about the shooter for weeks on end. And her editor would keep running them, knowing this type of manhunt paid his salary. “I want people to know the best way to serve my daughter's memory is to donate to her scholarship fund,” Betty said. “A scholarship fund that will help a cellist go to Julliard. Like my daughter might have.” Anna left only with quotes referring to the fund. “What would you like to tell someone going through something similar?” Anna asked. “To donate to a scholarship fund.” “Would you suggest volunteering? Or finding a way to help parents who've lost children?” “Scholarships help parents.” When Anna felt defeated enough to excuse herself from the parlor, Betty asked if she was sure she wanted to leave. Unsure how to respond, Anna smiled slightly. “I hope you hear from me again,” Betty said as she closed the door behind her. Anna wondered if she heard her right. Anna took a photo of Betty before leaving. She didn't have the heart to ask the woman to part with the couch she'd nestled herself into. As she walked the block to her car, she noticed her pace was slow for being on deadline. She would rather sit through Geology 101 again than piece the last hour into a story that might not even publish. Her editor sent her another message. “Everyone's dropping their stories. Need whatever you got ASAP.” Anna stopped and exhaled. Betty would get her way. A story about her scholarship would have to run. Maybe it would be next to the obnoxious interstate furniture store ad buried alongside the community calendar. But it would run. A small victory. Now, Anna thought, people have to read it. With the morning paper in hand, a few people stopped by Anna's cubicle, peaked over the edge and complimented her work in pa**ing. “I wish you'd used more quotes. But you made something outta nothing,” someone said with ambiguous approval. She knew no actresses would be fighting over the role of playing her for making something out of nothing. Anna imagined herself walking into her editor's office. He'd quip about her story's quotes. She wouldn't laugh nervously like she usually did, unsure if he was serious or not. She'd toss a piece of paper with her signature scribbled at the bottom across his desk. Before he could ask her why she was quitting, she'd be on her way to Timber Creek, wondering where she would take her first group of seniors for their portrait shoots. The police scanner's afternoon traffic chatter changed suddenly to an ominous tone. “Code 3. Attempted 839 at West Beacon and Dodge.” Anna stood up, reaching for her camera. It could be the shooter. The scanner squelched on. A man was running on a trail outside of town when he heard a gunshot. A bullet lodged in a tree ten feet to his left. Anna's editor peaked around the corner of his office door. “You're up, Anna!” The near-victim must have chosen the hardest trail in the county to find. Anna wished she'd grown wings by now. Map sprawled across the front seat, Google maps open, Anna found relief that if she crashed she wouldn't add to the community's teen d**h count at 22 years old. As Anna drove out of town, her pocket vibrated. What could it be now? Did a teen come down with a case of leprosy? Had Black d**h made an appearance in the county? The I-80 interchange was a few miles away. With a slight left, she could be on her way to Timber Creek. She put the phone to her ear, ready to tell her editor to find a new vulture. “We've got Ted Bingham on the phone. Say's he want's Betty Haven's number,” her editor said. It sounded like he was chewing gum. Ted Bingham owned nearly every movie theater in the region and half the beef packing plants. In the few months she'd worked in this town, she'd learned little about Ted Bingham. But she knew he gave more money to charities than she'd hoped to make in five lifetimes. She smiled, thinking of Betty. Anna wondered if the fund overflowing with money would accomplish the healing Betty pined for. She frowned, doubting it would. “Ya better call Betty and do a follow up,” he said. “She better agree to it. She really owes you one here.” This would make a great story for her students when she was tenured at Western Kentucky, Anna thought. She'd tell it to all the seniors in their last semester before they'd all graduate with ambitions to become the next Ansel Adams or Dorthea Lange. Meryl Streep, Anna thought. That's who should play her in the movie. She pa**ed the 1-80 interchange and the images of the studio on Main Street faded from view. Her editor's voice returned. “And false alarm on the shooting. Turns out a yahoo with bad aim shot at a vulture in his yard.”