IGMS Issue 17 by IGMS

Author:IGMS [IGMS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hatrack River Enterprises
Published: 2010-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Frankie and Johnny, and Nellie Bly

by Richard Wolkomir

Artwork by Anna Repp

* * *

I always ran down to the Depot at 3:37 p.m. to see if the Central Florida Express brought persons of interest to Duster. Also, I liked to visualize myself boarding a Pullman and steaming out into the world -- I would achieve éclat, then extricate my mother from the Ascending Angel and provide her with fine dining and wholesome activities.

Éclat, if you've never looked it up, means "brilliance of success or reputation." I imagined crowds at newspaper kiosks clamoring to read the latest scintillating dispatch from Budapest or Marrakech or Rangoon or Cincinnati, penned by the lustrous Susanna Entwhistle, who is I.

So, that momentous afternoon, guess who disembarked! Nellie Bly! The most famous reporter in the world!

She was precisely as attractive as in her pictures, with her hair pulled back at the sides, but down over her forehead, and her eyes set wide apart and intensely observant. Her plush blue dress had a white embroidered collar, like a many-rayed star. She stood beside her two valises, deciding which way to go, so I ran right up and told her I would be enthused to proffer my assistance.

She said: "Why do you dress like a boy?"

"It is my idiosyncrasy," I said. "I am eleven, but I know everything about Duster, including an impending crisis involving a spellslinger-for-hire, so I can help you."

"Where did you learn a word like idiosyncrasy?" she asked.

"I read lots of books, in preparation for my future career, which will be of a literary nature," I told her.

"Fewer words are better," she said. "I'm seeking a reputable hotel -- what do you suggest?"

I told her Duster had four hotels, all owned by Phosphate Extraction Enterprises, meaning Daryl "Sweetie" Hieronymus, and that the least disreputable, in terms of bowie knifings and smashed glassware, also profane shouting, was the Ascending Angel, in which I resided myself.

"Lead the way," she said.

I made sure her room had laundered sheets, and a good view -- she looked out on Main Street, and the Okie Livery Stable's corral. Then I ran to my own room, since I did not share quarters with my mother, Marigold. I had borrowed books piled everywhere on the floor, and newspaper clippings tacked onto the walls. I untacked one and rushed back to her room to show her.

"What's this?" she said, looking at the clipping.

"That," I said, "is you!"

On top was her picture, just under the headline: "Ace Reporter Nellie Bly Bests Jules Verne's fictional Around the World in Eighty Days, Performing the Same Feat in 72 Days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 Seconds."

She rode, the story said, ships, trains, jinrikishas, sampans, horses and burros. And it recapped her previous scoops for The Pittsburgh Dispatch and the New York World, such as reports on divorce, slums, and the situation in Mexico. Once, she pretended to be insane to get committed to the Blackwell's Island asylum, her exposés leading to reforms. She wrote about tenement conditions. Also

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