The Night Workers
Summary
Ink-streaked dawn never reaches the subterranean newsroom where a runaway adolescent learns that survival is measured in column inches; orphanage shadows still clinging to his collar, he apprentices under gaslight to compositors who smell of kerosene and regret, then drifts into the city’s nocturnal artery—a newspaper office that never sleeps—where veterans of forty winters trade their last marrow for a byline. Over a decade he metabolizes caffeine, alcohol, and the vertiginous thrill of beating the morning edition, becoming a crack reporter whose moral gyroscope spins only after the presses roll. Enter a woman journalist whose pen is sharper than the city editor’s tongue: she extricates him from libel suits, bar fights, and the abyss of his own charm, all while guarding the secret that his vanished parents—now respectable burghers—have recognized their son in the police-beat pages yet chosen silence. When her grandfather, proprietor of a moribund rural weekly, dies, she coaxes the night creature into daylight: they board a train toward linotype machines rusting among cornfields, swap carbon-black for pollen, and resurrect the country paper. In that town where church bells mark time louder than deadlines, he tastes morning coffee unlaced with gin, sees his own face reflected in a window at sunset, and finally confesses a love no headline could encapsulate, trading the clamorous night shift for the slow luminosity of shared ordinary hours.
Synopsis
Although nearly every family has its night workers, the day-world gives little thought to the unnaturalness of their existence. A boy escapes from an orphanage, and after a few weeks in a country printing office, reaches the city where he obtains work as an office boy on a newspaper. About him everywhere are men who at forty have lived their lives and are ready for the discard. But at fifteen he little heeds the warning. In ten years he has become an excellent reporter, but possessed of the irresponsibility of his night life. The girl, also a reporter, interests herself in him and repeatedly saves him from disgrace in his work. Under circumstances distasteful to him he encounters his parents, who learn his identity but conceal their own. The girl, discovers who he is, but keeps it to herself. In the moment of their greatest "scoop" the girl learns that her grandfather, the editor of an up-state weekly, has died. She persuades the boy to help her edit the paper. Under the spell of living by day his whole attitude changes, and he tells her of his love and his desire to remain in the little country town.
