“Old John.”
Colin cut the argument short, turning to face the man who’d kept this paper running longer than Colin had even been alive in this body.
“At the circulation we’re pulling right now, does five cents one way or the other actually change anything?”
“…”
The question did exactly what Colin meant it to.
Old John’s head dropped, one hand drifting up to adjust the brass glasses, and after a long stretch of silence, he shook his head, resigned.
“You’re probably right, Boss.”
No probably about it.
The Messenger’s sales had bottomed out — under a fifth of what they used to move at their peak, back before everything fell apart.
Numbers that thin couldn’t keep a newspaper office breathing.
Not for much longer.
All three of them knew it.
None of them had wanted to be the one to say it out loud first.
Because saying it out loud meant staring straight at what the Depression actually had waiting for them.
“So instead of fighting over five cents in a newsboy’s pocket, we should be figuring out how to get the rest of this week’s edition finished before the weekend run.”
That pulled Old John back to his feet, mentally at least.
He rolled his wrist, worked a little soreness out of it, glanced back toward the typesetting machine with a frown tugging at his mouth.
“Everything else is close enough.
Little John’s got the material ready to go.
Front page is the one piece that’s still open.”
The original plan had Virginia Cherrill’s photo running the cover — the actress who’d played the flower girl opposite Chaplin in City Lights.
Old news by now, sure.
The film’s buzz had cooled off weeks back, and running her photo this late might read as scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But scraping the barrel was exactly where The Messenger sat these days, so beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Except even that fell through.
Colin had already caught the tail end of it through the door earlier — Little John’s shoot hadn’t gone clean, and there wasn’t a single usable frame of Cherrill sharp enough to put on a cover.
“As it happens, I’ve already got something in mind for the front page.”
Colin caught the strain in Old John’s expression and let a little confidence show through his own.
He held out the manuscript and photos he’d already put together, watching Old John’s face shift into surprise as he took them.
“What’s this?”
Old John’s hand closed around the papers on reflex, eyes dropping to scan the content.
His brow furrowed, and he hesitated over the words.
“This kind of piece…
isn’t it a little too—”
Didn’t need to.
Colin read the rest of it plain enough off his face.
“So there’s something wrong with what I wrote?”
Old John ran through the manuscript a second time under the weight of that question, then shook his head.
“No, Boss.
Content’s sound enough.
It’s just…
merciless.
The wording, I mean.”
Too merciless, if you’re asking me.
He kept that second thought behind his teeth.
Whatever objection he raised now wasn’t going to change anything — Colin had clearly already made up his mind before the manuscript ever hit the desk.
No sense picking a fight over it and souring the room for nothing.
“If the content’s fine, let’s get it into typeset.
We’re running short on time before publication.”
Friday already.
Generous math put them at a day and a half, maybe less, before The Messenger had to hit the streets.
Typesetting in this era meant hours of grinding, letter by letter, even for someone fast at it.
No shortcuts, no room to dawdle.
So Old John didn’t argue further.
He took the manuscript, dropped into the seat at the typesetting machine, and started arranging the type word by word, exactly as written.
While Old John worked, Colin wasn’t sitting idle either.
Three people ran this entire operation, and that meant Colin wore more than one hat — boss, and when the moment called for it, editor too.
He settled behind his desk, picked up a fountain pen loaded with ink, and started drafting fast, pulling from the pile of material Little John had scraped together.
His years as a reporter in the other World paid off here — the rhythm of rushing copy under deadline wasn’t foreign to him, even stripped of every convenience a computer would’ve given him.
No screen, no backspace key, just ink and the clock ticking down.
He wrote faster anyway.
Had to.
Clack, clack—
Outside, the street had slipped from afternoon into dusk without anyone in the office noticing.
Old John finally set down the last piece of type, breathing out a long, tired breath.
He rolled his shoulders against the stiffness, turned around — and found Colin still bent over the desk, pen moving without pause.
“Cough, cough…”
He hesitated a beat, then raised a hand to his mouth and coughed on purpose, loud enough to carry.
“What?”
It did, however, jolt Little John awake where he’d been dozing off, chin propped on one fist.
He blinked, smacked his lips, looked around bleary and confused.
“Huh — what’s going on?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
Old John shot him a look somewhere between exasperation and warning, then doubled down, coughing harder on purpose this time.
“Cough, cough, cough, cough!”
That one landed.
Colin’s pen stopped mid-line, pulled out of the work at last.
He rolled his wrist, working the ache out of it, and only then looked up — and saw the black night pressed against the office windows.
“…It’s that late already.”
He set the pen down.
Caught the two sets of eyes fixed on him, father and son both waiting, and something clicked into place on his face.
“Sorry.
Lost track of time.
Should’ve said something sooner.”
“It’s fine, Boss.
Just finished the typesetting myself, good timing.”
Old John waved it off fast, no mention of the fake coughing anywhere in his voice.
Colin shook his head, pushed up from the desk.
He knew exactly why the two of them had stuck around this late instead of heading home hours ago.
Wasn’t loyalty.
Wasn’t love of the work either — not entirely, anyway.
So he didn’t make them say it.
Just reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin pouch, and counted out two stacks under both their watching eyes.
“Good work today.
Get home safe.”
He pressed a stack of ten-dollar coins into each of their hands, tacking the words on almost as an afterthought.
“Thank you, Boss!”
Old John’s tired face cracked into something close to a smile as he pocketed the week’s wages.
Little John, beside him, couldn’t hold back a grin of his own.
Colin watched the pair head out into the dark, then let out a long breath and hefted the pouch in his palm.
Noticeably lighter now.
Payroll cleared, and The Messenger’s coffers had all but scraped the bottom of the barrel to make it happen.
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