Free Tea and Primroses by Tess Thompson Page A

triumphant, my reporter’s pen in hand. I attended the festival with new eyes, different than the year before when I was merely a participant. Now I was a reporter. I must see with reporter’s eyes. I sampled oysters, I interviewed townspeople, I jotted down descriptions of the weather and booths. That night, I wrote my first article under the slant of my attic room roof, typing long into the night. The next day I presented it to Mr. Reed, with, I admit, more than a little nervousness. He used a red pen to slash sentences and superfluous words. “Succinct, Miss Mansfield. You must be more succinct. But you can write. I’ll give you that.”
    After that, he let me start writing at least one article a week and then two. After a time, he sent me to cover all the local events and happenings and personal interest stories—what he called the heart of any small town paper. “I hate all this people stuff, Miss M. It’s all yours.”
    When I graduated from high school, I left for the University of Oregon, where I majored in Journalism, but returned summers to work for Mr. Reed. He was the first person to tell me I could write. He was also the first person to tell me I had no future in journalism. “You’re not a reporter, Miss M.,” he said one day after reading an article I’d written about an abandoned baby left at the town’s Catholic church.
    “Why?” I asked him.
    “Because this article made me cry. Because you don’t stick to the facts.”
    “But I did.”
    “You most certainly did not.” He picked up my typed story. “Here’s the perfect example. ‘One can only imagine the desperation this young mother must have felt in order to do something as heart wrenching as abandoning her own child. We have no choice but to salute her brave choice rather than condemn it. This little baby will have a chance now to be adopted into a family of better stability and means. She’s given the adoptive parents a great gift.’” He looked up at me, waving the paper in the air. “You’re a writer, sweetheart, but not a journalist. But this thing you do—make your readers laugh and cry and cringe, hell even old crusty editors like me with a dead heart—that’s a real writer. Don’t waste it in journalism. Focus on those stories you’re always scribbling in your notebook.”
    “But how will I make a living?”
    “There’s a place for you on any small town newspaper, just like there is here. Keep writing these heartfelt columns and I’ll keep printing them. Write your stories at night and one day you’ll have a novel.”
    So I returned to college that autumn and changed my major from Journalism to English with a minor in Creative Writing. I continued to work for Mr. Reed after I graduated, living with my parents in their ramshackle bungalow in the middle of town and writing my first novel in the middle of the night as he suggested. During my few moments of leisure, I spent time with Miller Byrd, my high school sweetheart, double dating with my best friend Louise and her fiancé Tim Ball. At night, I wrote. It was then I was most alive.
    Two years passed, as they do, without our notice, until one day you wake and think, is this all there is? I was restless. I wanted to see more of the country. I wanted to live a little in order to write a lot. Just shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, I asked Mr. Reed to help me find something at another paper, preferably someplace far away, which he reluctantly did, reaching out to an old classmate, John Teller, who was the editor-in-chief of the paper in Greeley, Vermont. John hired me without meeting me after reading examples of my work. Could I be in Greeley by April? Yes, yes, I can, I answered without hesitation. Louise and Tim were to be married at the end of March, only two weeks away. I could leave after the wedding.
    Vermont! I said the word over and over in my head, hugging a pillow on my narrow bed next to the slanted wall. Now my life would begin, I thought. Finally.
    But