In my new novel, The Insurrectionist, Chicago Bullet reporter Ian Landquart learns that he is no longer heading to the Paris bureau, as planned. He must make way for a more diverse correspondent. Instead, he is assigned to one of the paper’s suburban satellite offices.
When he balks, the editor says, “Take it or leave it, Ian. If you don’t want it, I got a stack of résumés that high from reporters who’d give their left arm to write for the Chicago Bullet.”
A harmless metaphor? No way. Ian—who lost a leg several years ago in a hiking accident—resolves to turn tables on the newspaper, using his disability as a pretext to file a civil rights complaint against the paper. The following scene is from his first day at his new work station.
The DuPage bureau, where Ian showed up on Monday, was located in Oak Brook, a suburb full of office parks with grassy berms and ponds with spritzing fountains where Canada geese paddled about, too lazy to migrate further north for the summer. Bureau chief Krystal Brufke, she/her, was a pudgy White woman with frizzy gray hair, dressed in a mauve suit, flowered blouse, and mom sneakers. Her rainbow-colored mask asserted, undeniably, LOVE IS LOVE.
She walked Ian around the newsroom, introducing him to the reporters and editors, as well as a producer and an anchor who had strayed over from the area that belonged to BullMedia Group’s WHOW-TV (slogan: News with a wow!). The combined satellite newsroom was as extensive as that of a suburban daily.
[Order The Insurrectionist here.]
Soon Brufke spirited Ian away to lunch at a Cheesecake Factory in a mall nearby. He was back on his artificial leg today. His stump was still troubling him, but first impressions mattered. A man with a limp was an entirely different creature than a cripple swinging along on crutches. Oblivious to Ian’s limp, the waitperson led them several miles along a meandering path through empty tables and sat them between two chatty parties of female-presenting shoppers. Brufke ordered a cucumber drink, Ian a Guinness. Her forehead rumpled like good Illinois farmland, but she said nothing. Probably so grateful for the additional reporting talent, she did not want to start things off nitpicking about a spot of midday grog. The stout arrived in a glass with a ghost of a lipstick smudge on the rim, and Ian sent it back.
Brufke removed her mask to reveal a beguiling toothy smile. Her oversized glasses magnified the bags under her eyes, and her frizzy hairdo formed a halo against the window behind her. She kept erupting in a laugh one might expect from a longshoreman bending an elbow at a waterfront dive: GUH-HAW, HAW, HAW, HAW, HAW! But her eyes were darting and furtive, as if she expected a runaway Brinks truck to come smashing through the wall and barreling toward her at any moment. And in a way this had happened. Until last year she had been a Metro columnist, a fact Ian had discovered in an internet search last night. In October 2020 she had written a column about her hair titled, “White with a Natural ’Fro: Why’s That a Problem?”
The internet exploded with fury. Her name trended on Twitter. Memes circulated of Brufke’s face photoshopped onto the body of Angela Davis giving a Black power salute. The Root published a think piece titled, “No, Stupid White Boomer Bitch. You Don’t Have a Freaking ’Fro.” A mostly peaceful crowd picketing Bullet Tower grew passionate on the topic and smashed windows up and down the Magnificent Mile, appropriating Nike shoes, Louis Vuitton purses, Mickey Mouse backpacks, crates of beer and strawberry wine from Walgreen’s (the Bullet’s stylebook disallowed the word “looting”). The paper’s journalists’ union voted to expel her, and the ombudsman endorsed the mob’s “righteous anger,” scolding Brufke in print for her “White privilege.” Activists picketed Brufke’s home and her children’s school, demanding her firing.
H.R. hastily set up a Safe Space with beanbag chairs where traumatized staffers could huddle and nibble oatmeal cookies while reviling Brufke on social media. The editor supervising her column apologized, and the offending piece was scrubbed from the website. The entire Sunday Perspective section was turned over to seven prominent Blacks for their responses to Brufke. A bald lesbian civil rights attorney asserted that Brufke’s hairstyle represented “the clown wig of White supremacy.” Within days Brufke had lost her column and was reassigned to the DuPage bureau. Given the uproar, Ian was surprised she had not been fired, but word had it she was close to Squeaky and Editor-in-Chief Ronette Hanrahan-Crikey, who had protected her.
Today Brufke was ecstatic over the infusion of fresh blood. She kept giggling and reaching as if for his arm, then catching herself and withdrawing her hand as if she’d touched a hot grill. She urged Ian to spend a few days exploring. Talk to people, dig up story ideas. The bureau’s turf stretched west beyond DuPage to encompass Kane and Kendall counties. Kendall was virgin land, journalistically speaking. “Yours for the taking!” Formerly an expanse of farmland and small towns, it was turning into an exurb of greater Chicago. Must be a ton of stories out there in the hands of the right reporter. She didn’t know, farming and stuff. Developers.
“Can’t wait,” Ian said dryly. “Glad I won’t be wasting my time chasing stories on the Champs-Élysées.”
“Ian,” she pouted.
“In any event,” he said, “there’s something you should know. I’ve filed a complaint with the EEOC.” She looked blank, and he added, “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Brufke’s eyes widened as if she saw the Brinks truck accelerating toward her, sending tables and bodies flying. She bellowed a laugh. “Report? What for? Against whom?”
“Squeaky said an ableist slur about me. I’m considering a lawsuit.”
Brufke nearly upset her cucumber drink. “Squeaky? You’re joking. I can’t imagine she would—at least, intentionally—”
Ian had always avoided leveraging his disability at work, but now was operating under the Laws of War—a battle for control of his own fate. His life. He tugged up his trouser leg and extended his prosthesis. Judging from the expression on Brufke’s face, she had not been forewarned about his handicap.
“Did this happen in Iraq?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That war. I was opposed to it.” Her eyes welled sympathetically. “What did Squeaky say?”
He filled her in on Squeaky’s faux pas about reporters who’d give their left arm to write for the Bullet.
Brufke yelped out her laugh in percussive gusts—GUHHAW, HAW, HAW, HAW!—but then with an uneasy gearing down, she rearranged her face in a look of empathy. “Sorry. Nervous laugh. Not funny at all. And you with your, uh—” Her eyes fell to his prosthesis. She dared not speak the word.
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The Elephant Box 