The first newspaper was a guy with a real loud voice. He would stand in the town square–maybe he’d get up on a box or something–and bellow the day’s happenings. There was gossip, too, but we’re talking about the news: everyone finding out the same information at once. Broadcasting. Eventually, paper was invented, and then glossy paper which led to the Sunday Magazine.

Americans fetishized the newspaper from the hop. The Founding Fathers wrote the press’ freedom into the Constitution, then figured that was enough freedom and called it a day. Weren’t quite a town without a daily, were you? There were Globes and Gazettes and Registers and Evening Standards; so many that there were not enough spunky orphans to hawk them on street corners, and urchins had to be imported and taught to cry “WUXTRY!” at the top of their lungs. It was a time of growth for the country and the industry. Papers published in the morning, afternoon, evening, and one–the Cascabel Pennysaver–was flung at your sleeping head in the middle of the night. Americans made offerings to the newspaper (they called these subscriptions) and they sent prayers (letters to the editor) and sometimes they had reformations (burning the office down). The paper was the Gospel, if a fleeting one: nothing was true until it showed up under a byline.

“And we are the priests,” Iffy Bould said around the Kool dangling from his lips.

Lolly Tangiers was not as credulous as the other copyboys, as she had been beaten too much as a child.

“How so?”

“We live in poverty and never get laid.”

He ripped the sheet from the manual typewriter. It was an Underwood that went CHAK CHAK CHAK and then PUHCHONK you’d slap the carriage back to its intial position. The machine predated Iffy’s employment and he was glad that it did not have a soul. Lot of murders in this fucker, he thought. He felt bad for the typewriter sometimes. Could have been bought by a whimsical novelist and filled up with jokes and fun; could have belonged to an intellectual working through important problems. Nope: liquor-store holdups and apartment fires. Sorry, Woody.

(Iffy had never told another living soul–not even any of his wives–that he called the machine Woody.)

“Correct this and bring it to Goose,” he said.

“You have a pencil?”

The newsroom went quiet, no more CHAK CHAK CHAK and Barry Cho stopped screaming at the ceiling tiles (deadlines got to Barry) and the crap game near the sports section’s desks that had been going since 1953 paused and Lolly forced herself not to look around fearfully.

“You don’t have a pencil?”

Iffy was whispering, damn near.

“I usually do.”

He took the Kool from his mouth, ashed it, brought it halfway back, reconsidered, stubbed and rubbed. Peeled a freshie from the soft pack, screwed it in, felt around in the papers on his desk like a racoon looking for grubs, there are the matches. Right where he left ’em.

“Usually. No. No, no. You see, the whole job is writing shit down. Y’know what you call a reporter without a pencil?”

“No.”

The match went shhPOP and he lit the cigarette and blew out FWOO and made the most disappointed face he could at Lolly. It was not quantitatively different from his normal face.

“Just some asshole.”

And then the newsroom roared back to life. It was very dramatic.

“That was very dramatic.”

“Y’gotta get your kicks where you can these dreary days,” Iffy said. “Find a pencil, correct the typos, and bring this to Goose.”

Lolly wandered off, already marking up the text. Copyboys these days have it too easy, Iffy thought. That mean old bastard Ronkowicz had used him as a human pocket for a year. Just had to follow him around carrying his pens and notebooks and vodka. Sometimes, he toted a bowling ball all day. Ronk didn’t bowl; he was just a dick. Besides, Iffy thought: what he went through was nothing compared to what Ronk went through. Columnists would throw copyboys out the window back then just to gamble on the bounce. Now there were newspapermen.

The newsroom took up the whole second floor of the Braunce Building. Rows of desks–wooden and metal mixed together–in an open bullpen with small offices along the walls for the editors. The offices had doors on them so the editors could choose to yell at the reporters privately, or masturbate. The assignment desk towered in the northeast corner; under it was no carpet, as the assignment desk was made out of electronics purchased out of the backs of trucks–police scanners and telexes and fax machines and two stock tickers–and wired up by people with no background in engineering, so there tended to be fires. In the middle of the room, there was a glassed-in cube partitioned into two: the Editor-In-Chief’s office and the room where the daily budget meeting was held.

Gabe Gooseman was the Editor-In-Chief. He liked the glass walls; they made visitors uncomfortable. It kept meetings short. WHAP WHAP against the glass with his palm twice. Outside in the bullpen, Iffy turned around. If you worked at the Cenotaph long enough, you learned to recognize when Goose was WHAPping for you. Lolly Tangiers was in there with him. The office was soundproof, but Iffy was good at reading lips.

“Did she really not have a pencil?”

“No pencil whatsoever,” Iffy mouthed back.

“You’re coming with me?”

“Nrrr.”

“Did Here And There tell you to?”

Black Eyes did not answer Cannot Swim, partially because she was a dog and partially because Here And There had told her not to tell Cannot Swim anything. The sky had just turned from black to purple; it was the very first moment that could credibly argued as morning. The stars were still there, and so was the moon. All night’s trappings. He slipped on his moccasins and threw his tunic over his head, stretched, muttered “Dammit” under his breath. He had snuck out of the kotcha carrying his clothes to let Throwing Knife sleep, but he had left his satchel inside. The door was made of bearskin, and it was thick and creaky so he pulled it away from the kotcha’s sloped redwood frame juuuuuuust enough to edge through, fetched his bag, and back out to stand besides the 100-pound dog that came up to his waist where he balled up his fists and stamped on the ground juuuuuuust a little bit when he realized he also needed his rifle, which was back in the kotcha and so he took up the leather flap once more and–

“You’re making more noise trying to be quiet than if you just did whatever you’re doing.”

Cannot Swim said, “I’m sorry, honey,” but the Pulaski word he used for “honey” means “afternoon with perfect weather.”

It was too dark in the kotcha to see, so he leaned over and kissed at where he thought her face was. His smooth chin bonked her nose. This was not a low-probability hit: Throwing Knife had a powerful nose. Had her culture taught her to feel bad about it, she would have, but the Pulaski all had great bumpy honkers and so hers was barely noticeable in a crowd.

Cannot Swim felt around for her belly, which swelled the leather blanket on top of her, and rested his hand on top of it, and then kissed that, too. He sat down on the bed next to her, just where Here And There had been last night, if she had really been in the kotcha and he didn’t dream the encounter. He tried not to think of Here And There.

“Today?”

“Maybe.”

“If it’s tomorrow, then it’ll be raining.”

“I don’t think the baby cares,” she murmured.

“Is it kicking?”

“No. The baby’s asleep. Like everyone else, because it’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s not. It’s first thing in the morning.”

Throwing Knife put her fingertips over his mouth. There was silence in the kotcha, in the village, in the valley. He did not know why he felt so loved when she told him to shut the fuck up. It was the way she did it, he guessed. Cannot Swim kissed the fingertips on his mouth, and they brushed down his chin and neck and chest; she rested her hand on his thigh.

“They sleep?”

“Babies before they come out?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty much all they do.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That the baby is sleeping?”

“There is a seven pound human being inside of me. I am exquisitely aware of everything that’s going on, trust me.”

“Okay.”

“You’re having the next one.”

Cannot Swim was 97% sure that she was joking, and that men could not have children. Maybe 96%. The Pulaski shared a view with Sparta, and the Incas, and modern-day Orlando, and every other tribe of humans, and that was there were two knowledges: one was for all, and the other was for women. The boys were taught to wash their dicks and the relationship between cum and pregnancy; that’s about it. It’s different for girls. They learned from their mothers, and their aunts, and their older cousins, and for everything else there was Limping Leg.

That was her village name. The Pulaski had three names: family, village, and secret. Your parents gave you your family name when you were born; it usually had to do with the weather or the time of day. Limping Leg’s family name was No Moon At All. Your peers gave you your village name. Her right knee didn’t have enough cartilage in it. Just one of those things. Your ancestors knew your secret name, and so did the Turtle Who Once Was And Will Be Again. It was  might be written as a birth mark on the sole of your foot, or found along the path of a great adventure, or never come along at all. Some Pulaski preferred to not know their secret name, for fear of revealing it to someone who would use it cruelly. Limping Leg did not know her secret name.

Sometimes, she wore a brace of thick bearskin. The leather did not bend; this locked the joint in place to give her relief, but it also did not breathe and so became very stanky very swiftly. Mostly, she used her stick. There were carvings its whole length: wolf, coyote, fox, turtle. She needed the support. She took a lot of walks. The roots and berries necessary for her medicines lost potency quickly once picked, and she could not send anyone else for them. Limping Leg was not keeping secrets, but choosing the right plant was more an art than science. A flowering fruit from this part of bush was an effective short-term birth control, but one from that part would sterilize you. Dosages were important

Limping Leg eased menstrual cramps, and she helped the pregnant women shit–the leaf that the Pulaski usually made into a laxative tea caused miscarriages–and she programmed a diet based on the month of conception. Women who conceived in April couldn’t have trout, pregnancies that encompassed the summer required a shit-ton of citrus, that sort of thing. When it was time for the child, she and the woman’s mother and aunts would walk around the lake to the kotcha where Pulaski women gave birth. . Family names were bestowed right there, standing at the edge of the lake. Limping Leg would hold the child up towards the seven mountain peaks that formed the eastern border of their world, and the women would sing the naming song.

Men were forbidden. The Pulaski women said it was unlucky for males to be present, especially the father. This, the women said, would anger the Fox With Teeth For Eyes. It could enrage the Eagle Who Brought The Rains. It might piss off the squatch. A man’s appearance at a child’s birth was a curse upon the babe, the women said. Several stories were regularly told to the village boys about babies emerging with their feet on backwards, or immediately trying to eat everyone in the tribe, or on fire.

(Limping Leg was fairly certain that this belief had been dreamt up by one her predecessors as an efficient way to keep the men where they could do no damage, which was nowhere near the proceedings.)

But this tabooification of male participation in childbirth led–subconsciously, but inexorably–to all the Pulaski men actively avoiding any knowledge of the process of pregnancy. Also, the Pulaski did not employ any gym teachers, so there was no health class. Cannot Swim knew that he put a baby in Throwing Knife via fucking. He knew that part. Kid grew in the belly. Got it. Then, she and half-dozen women would go to the other side of the lake and when they came back he would be a father. He understood the general plot, but was thoroughly fuzzy on the story beats.

Men couldn’t get pregnant. Men couldn’t have anything to do with that nonsense. Cannot Swim knew this. It was female magick.

But Here And There was female, and her magick was weird and confusing and often rather aggressive. Once, she had murdered him several times in a row just to prove a point.  Her magick was disorienting, and what would be more disorienting than a man becoming pregnant, Cannot Swim thought?

He had a lot to learn about women.

“How does a man on his third marriage know so little about women?”

“I understand women completely.”

“Where you sleeping lately?”

“Couch,” Iffy Bould said. “But it’s not my fault. She started drinking again.”

“Why did she start drinking again?”

“I make her fucking miserable.”

When Lolly Tangiers laughed, she choked on her beer. They were at Daffodil’s, which was on the Downside of Little Aleppo and overlooked Graziano Square, which was the only public space in America to be named after golden-age boxer Rocky Graziano. There were nine other bars surrounding the square, but Daffodil’s was the only one with a window clean enough to surveil the park through. Daffodil’s theme was “surprise S&M” but Iffy had slipped the bartender a tenner to avoid being lassoed and beaten sexually out of nowhere. Still, he kept an eye on the bar in the glass’ reflection.

“Uncle Punchfucker,” she said.

“Something we can print.”

“Cousin Punchfucker.”

“How about the Condor?”

“Condors don’t beat people up.”

“Neither do bats.”

“Yeah, but Batman comes out at night. Like a bat. Whereas condors are non-nocturnal.”

“Diurnal.”

“So it doesn’t pop and it makes no sense.”

They needed a picture. Little Aleppians instinctively distrusted eyewitness accounts, mostly because Little Aleppians instinctually lied to reporters. Lolly had a Nikon with a big flash on the table in front of her, strap around her neck because it was the kind of joint where you should have at least two points of contact with your valuables at all times. Iffy had a Kodak Disc 4000 because it was 198- and people toted around Kodak Disc 4000’s. It was the first camera he had ever been able to figure out. One button, and a built-in flash, and it fit in your coat pocket. Little cord that went around your wrist. He loved it.

“The Downsider,” she said.

“Huh.”

“Downsider,” Lolly said as she tabled her mug and sat up straight. “Don’t see him punching anyone in the Reserve, do you?”

“The Reserve’s gated. He couldn’t get in.”

Iffy’s tie was yellow, and out of fashion. About four or five years too wide. He used to have a mustache when everyone else did, but didn’t now that no one else did. A reporter should look nondescript, he thought. Blend in. If you blended in well enough, people would forget you were in the room. No new clothes. Half the job was talking to folks who couldn’t afford new clothes, so if you showed up to a crime scene in a pair of fashionable slacks, it looked like you were showing off. The best way to get people to talk was to make them think they had more status than you. Best reporters in the world were taxi drivers and bartenders, Iffy thought. You’d confess to killing Kennedy to a cab driver.

“Of course he could. Superpowers.”

“He doesn’t have superpowers.”

“He’s 11 feet tall.”

“He’s 6’4″ or something.”

“Jumps off six-story roofs and back.”

“He doesn’t. I have three eye-witnesses that said he has some sort of pulley-deal.”

“Just say grappling hook.”

“That fact has not been corroborated by any evidence, and is therefore not a fact yet.”

“Why’d you ask me to come with you on this?”

“You’re the only copyboy with a camera. This is not a mentor-type situation. I’ll never forgive you for the pencil fiasco this morning.”

Lolly was glad it was not a mentor-type situation, if he was not lying. She had several men enter themselves into mentor-type situations with her when she was at the Harper College Semi-Daily, and it always turned out the same.

“You can’t hit on me.”

“I’m not hitting on you.”

“Currently. But you can’t in the future.”

“I don’t wanna hit on you”

“Not even a little?”

He finished his mug and set it down too hard, but just a little, and slid it towards her.

“Copyboy. Another beer.”

The streams were named Farthest From The Hills, The Middle One, and Nearest To The Hills. (It sounded better in Pulaski.) They were fed by small lakes that gathered on what would one day be named Mount Faith, and cave systems within the rock. Every 18 days, the mountain gorged itself on the rains and then sluiced it down its western face in tiny gulleys and brooks; at the foothills, the uncountable became triune–running almost dead south, and the water so cold–to unify again in the lake.

Each Pulaski had their satchel, and some knelt and some bent over at the waist to pluck the shiny rocks from the water. They stood on the western banks so that their shadows would not shroud the telltale glow, and they were not careful. Saw a glimmer? Grab the fistful of pebbles and polished shale and weedy greens, shake the water off, throw it in your bag. The Pulaski had little use for gold. Loud Fingers liked it. Not quite a stone, he thought. You could pound it flat and it would still gleam, and so Loud Fingers wrapped it around button-sized rocks to make eyes for the creatures he embroidered on the tribe’s tunics. No one cared one way or the other. which annoyed him. He thought it made his designs pop.

The Whites loved gold. The Pulaski had known that since Wanders Away returned. He had wandered away one morning, and came back two years later with wild stories about mountains made by men, and machines powered by fire, and hookers. Wanders Away had maybe a million stories about hookers. But he also had a Winchester rifle and a Bowie knife made of steel. The hunters saw the value in these objects, but the elders did not; they argued in favor of the traditional weapons that they had used all their lives. The hunters’ argument was “Tradition shmadition” and they came home deliberately empty-handed from the next few hunting trips until the elders gave in.

They will trade the weapons for the shiny rocks in the streams, Wanders Away told them. They call it “gold,” he said. The Pulaski did not have a special name for the substance. It was a rock. So it was shiny? The one next to it was big. A big rock is more useful than a shiny rock, common sense dictated. You could peg a rabbit with a big rock, and that’s dinner. Shiny rock does you no good if you’re hungry. Shiny rock, big rock, jagged rock, smooth rock. Rock’s a fucking rock, the Pulaski figured. Wanders Away attempted to explain the gold standard, and basic monetarism, but after not a long while gave up and just said, “They trade the rocks for guns and let’s talk about something else.”

So they loaded up Wanders Away with the rocks they now knew were called gold, and sent him back into America to buy them more rifles and ammunition, also knives. The nearest White settlement was a day’s walk. The cynics in the tribe began to suspect he wasn’t coming back after a month, but a sizable contingent–mostly his family–plead for patience, but after a year, even his mother was forced to admit the obvious, and a boy whose family name was High Noon was sent into what the Pulaski now knew was called America. When the boy returned, he was a man and he was called Talks To Whites, and when he had a son, he taught him the White language, and so the boy was called Talks To Whites, as well. It was confusing for a while, but then the elder Talks To Whites was murdered by the Whites he had taught his son to talk to, and no one was confused anymore.

He had stood before the tribe the night before. When he and Cannot Swim returned from the recce up the pass, they walked straight into the village, past the communal hearth and into the storehouse where fruits dried. By the door was the Gathering Drum. Talks To Whites picked it up and began beating it; anyone–even a child–could summon the tribe with the Gathering Drum and speak to them. If you did it for a dopey reason, everyone would make fun of you for the rest of your life.

There was a wide plain in between the hearth and the kotchas, and the tribe–five not-at-all-distinct families, 150 strong in total–sat to hear Talks To Whites and Cannot Swim. (Mostly the former; Cannot Swim was afraid of public speaking and let his cousin do all the talking.) Some children attended, fidgeting, while the younger ones ran around by the lake playing grab-ass with the dogs.

“We need to hide the gold,” Talks To Whites said. The Pulaski did not, in general, lead with a joke.

“It’s almost dark,” Fell In The Fire said.

“First thing in the morning.”

“What about breakfast?”

“Before breakfast.”

“Not even a quick bite?”

“No. This is of incredibly pressing importance,” Talks To Whites said.

Cannot Swim was standing a few feet behind his cousin.

“We could eat on the way. It’s an easy walk.”

Talks To Whites turned in confusion.

“That’s not helping.”

There was a discussion about breakfast, and it was decided that the tribe would head to the streams first thing in the morning, but it would be acceptable if individuals wanted to scarf down some fruit or whatever on the way out.

“Why are we hiding the gold?” Hairy Legs asked. (Compared to, say, a Greek or some other Mediterranean, Hairy Legs was downright sleek, but his calves were hirsute for a Pulaski, so his friends mocked him for it.)

Talks To Whites threw up his hands and said,

“Now you ask that? After the breakfast discussion?”

It was not the Pulaskis’ fault they did not take America seriously. They’d not met her, not for real, not in person and living color; they were not the Wampanoag who saved the Pilgrims from winter only to be repaid with syphilis and smallpox, and they were not the Iroquois whose land was sold without their participation, and they were not the Seminole dead in their swamps, and they were not the Cherokee on a death march. Their men had not been slaughtered, and their women had not been raped, and their children had not been sent to the Indian Schools to have the savage beaten out of them. The hills kept them safe. America was someone else’s problem.

“Elders, men, women: listen to my words,” Talks To Whites said. “You sent my father, who was also called Talks To Whites, to the White village to learn about them and trade with them.”

Now the tribe was very quiet. The Pulaski did not speak of the dead.

“Did he ever bring back any friends? Like, he met a real cool guy and wanted to introduce him around? No. Why? Because these people are dangerous. All they do is shoot each other and spit. They do not treat strangers with respect and honesty. They believe that the land they are on belongs to them. More importantly, they believe that the land everybody else is on belongs to them.”

“Tell them about the smell,” Cannot Swim added.

“Still not helping,” Talks To Whites said without turning around.

“What is that smell?”

“Crack.”

“Inside? Just ‘Hi, I’m in a public place smoking crack?'”

“Apparently,” Iffy said.

“Spiffy.”

“You’re not smoking crack? I thought all the kids were nowadays.”

“We’re not,” Lolly said. “I mean, some of us are. I think my friend Gavin is. Pretty sure he’s the one who stole my speakers.”

Graziano Square had a triumphal arch on the southern side: it was supposed to look like the one in Paris or Manhattan, but topped out at 14 feet and was therefore not overly inspiring. Poems had been written about it, but not good ones. There was a statue of Furlong Christy on the north side, peering through the rangefinder on his theodolite. In between, there was crime. Drug dealers and muggers and guys who liked fucking park benches. Dude selling stolen first-baseman’s gloves. There were gangs of suspiciously handsome teens that danced at each other for control of turf; they wouldn’t fucking stop singing. Marionette carvers who had been blackballed by the guild. The prostitutes were neatly placed about the park: cis men here, and trans women there, and someone named The Rowboat–who was genderless and had a terrifying underpants area–was by the phone booth.

“Now, you wanna be a reporter?”

“Wanna be a great reporter,” Lolly said.

“Well, you gotta be a reporter first before you can be a great reporter. Tell me, reporter: why don’t the cops arrest everyone in this park?”

“There’s too many bad guys.”

“Nah. Cops got cars and shotguns and a big van to chuck folks in. That’s not it.”

“Everybody in the square is armed.”

“They’re not. The stick-up kids are, but most everyone else just got a knife. Everyone in here,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “got a knife. Not the weapons.”

Lolly was wearing brown corduroys and Stan Smith sneakers, the ones with the bright-green schwop across the heel, and a cream-colored blouse she thought was elegant and had spilled beer on. Her first day at the Cenotaph, which was the Monday following her graduation from Harper College, she had worn a business suit. This was 198-, and so women could purchase business suits and wear them to the business office to do business, just like the fellows. There were shoulder pads, and peaked lapels, and colored tights with geometric shapes sewn into them, and everyone in the building–including the janitorial staff–mocked her relentlessly until she went home from lunch and threw on what everyone else was wearing, which was cheap slacks and a stained shirt. (Except for Goose. He wore a suit to work, but everyone was pretty sure Goose was born in a suit. Barry Cho says that he once saw Goose loosen his tie, but no one listens to Barry.)

“The cops are getting paid off.”

“The cops are getting paid off by way bigger. This is small potatoes, plus a pain in the ass. You know Boone’s Docks?”

“I keep telling you that I grew up here,” she said.

“Precinct sends one guy over on Tuesday. All the smugglers over there pass the hat around and pay him. Easy as can be. Here? You’d be chasing down each hooker individually for, what, a hundred bucks? That sounds fun.”

“So tell me, Cronkite.”

Iffy snorted.

“Cronkite was an actor. The reason open criminality is allowed in Graziano Square is because you can only do two things with a problem. You can fix it, and thereby eliminate it, or you can quarantine it. Cops can’t get rid of crime and they know it. Little Aleppo cops aren’t stupid. They’re lazy and corrupt, but not stupid.”

“You can get rid of this problem,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Legalize drugs and prostitution. And that would get rid of the muggers, too, because no one would be wandering around in the park with wads of cash.”

“What about the guy fucking the park bench?”

“He’s not hurting anyone.”

The guy fucking the park bench was, in fact, hurting someone: he had been hurled at drug dealer who sold Saint Paul (you shot it and sat up all night writing letters to Ephesians), breaking the dealer’s leg and the benchfucker’s clavicle. Next, the bench which had been so ruthlessly and regularly fucked was SCHRONCHED out of the concrete bankings it was laid into the ground with and BRAK brought down on the head of a hooker called Silly Willy, and now there is a great and panicked scattering of scoundrels and the door to Daffodil’s bar SLAPS open; Iffy is fumbling with his Disc camera, and Lolly is sprinting across the street and into the park, and he calls after her “HEY!” but she’s 22 and her legs are faster than her brain. Iffy can see the flash of her Nikon POP and then farther away Pop and then farther again pop. He trots in after her and steps over Silly Willy to ask if she got the shot.

“How’d you get her away from Throwing Knife?”

“Her decision.”

“Throwing Knife’s?

“The dog’s.”

Black Eyes trotted alongside Cannot Swim, and so did Talks To Whites. The three were moving quickly. They wanted to be atop the pass before the White got there and had already lost time making sure everyone went to the streams. Cannot Swim’s rifle clattered across his back at any pace faster than an amble, so he held it in his hand. The sun was in their eyes, so they could not see the way forward but knew it was there.