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pleased her greatly. She enjoyed writing about people and their lives and abhorred the endless council meetings that a regular top-half-of-the-front-page news reporter such as Marvin had to cover.
    Carol, the receptionist, was consistently sweet and made her feel very much at home that first day. Carol was married to Buddyand he was there at noon bringing lunch and hovering.
    Other staff members included copy editor Denton Hyde, a distinguished older gentleman who dressed in immaculately pressed trousers and Oxford shirts. He was unusually quiet, perhaps shy, but seemed to know the newspaper business inside and out. She came to admire him and his quiet advice within the space of just a few hours.
    Plump, gray-haired Emily Davies was the business manager for the newspaper. She controlled the advertising accounts with an iron hand, but otherwise was an earth mother to everyone. Carol told Marya that Emily brought in at least two homemade cakes or pies a week, urging all of them to eat.
    The production crew, responsible for putting the printed stories on the newsprint page in coherent fashion, was made up of two rowdy, jolly, joking men whose working styles seemed to mesh like clockwork. Wallace and Craig, whose last names she didn’t catch in the din of the pressroom, liked to tease the girls of the office, tossing bawdy remarks back and forth across the layout tables as they flashed scissors and X-Acto knives with alarming speed and intensity.
    Three other employees, who were mysteriously in and out at any time, were Connie Doalin, who worked in advertising and circulation, Skip Pleasants, who wrote the sports page on a part-time basis, and Kenny Bond, the paper’s sole photographer.
    The
Schuyler Times
was a small weekly of about twenty-four pages total, so, although the pace was hectic, the work was over quickly and the photographic plates of each page safely off to the press in Myrtle Beach by eight o’clock Tuesday evening.
    Marya was sitting with Marvin, Dallas and Emily, enjoying a cup of the heavy office coffee and the glow of having helped put another paper to bed, when a familiar name was mentioned.
    “Hey, Marya, has Ed given you the Dorcas Wood assignment yet?” Marvin grinned at her like a schoolboy.
    She shook her head in the negative. “No, what assignment?”
    “I don’t know why y’all can’t leave Dorry alone,” Denton said in his soft voice. He sat to one side, perusing the Richmond, Virginia, paper.
    “Well, she’s just bein’ silly, is all,” piped Dallas in her lilting drawl. “There’s no sense in a body bein’ so selfish.”
    Marya’s curiosity was piqued. “Selfish? Selfish, how?”
    Dallas laughed and winked at Emily. “I guess you’re just goin’ to have to find that out for yourself now, aren’t you, hon? That’s part of the job. All the new reporters have to interview ol’ Dorry. Why, she’s just a legend in these parts. Isn’t that so, Marvin?”
    “Sure is,” Marvin agreed, adding, “all you have to do is go to that karate place of hers and ask her for an interview. We want a regular lifestyle feature. You know, what made her get involved in karate and stick with it. Most women give it up quick, just can’t make the grade against the guys, but she’s been at it for more than twenty years. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me.”
    Marya bristled at his mocking tone but kept her composure. Having earned five belts in taekwondo, she knew precisely how hard it was. She also knew that all women didn’t simply give it up when confronted by harsh conditions. That was not what the sport was all about.
    “That’s it? That’s the assignment? How hard can it be?” She looked expectantly from face to face.
    Dallas and Marvin exchanged amused glances.
    Denton rustled his newspaper and folded it neatly. “Don’t let them tease you, Miss Brock. Dorry’s had a lot of…well, let’s say notoriety, in her life and has no love of reporters. The media have not been kind to