Ms. Got Rocks by Jacqueline Colt Page A

than that, just a one-day job,” Callaghan was lying to her that this job was a day labor job to him. But he did not prevaricate in that he was not there as a strikebreaker.
    “Got Rocks, go home.” Callaghan said as he pointed at the digital camera that is still peeping. “You don’t have any more batteries. Go home, damn it.”
    Callaghan grabbed Rocky by the shoulders and kissed her hard. Hard enough that her bottom lip was split and bleeding when he turned her loose, giving her a hard shove down the street. He turned again to the factory and raced back into the milling crowd.
    "What the hell?" Stunned, Rocky moved away from the crowd and walked to her truck parked three blocks away. Stunned that she was leaving before the women have left and stunned that she allowed that claim jumper Callaghan to touch her, much less tell her what to do. She called Terry at the paper from the front of the first 7-Eleven she saw on the way. That was when she noticed the spot of blood on the front of her white T-shirt.
    “That jerk bit me,” Rocky announced to the entire 7-Eleven parking lot. They, however, did not seem to care about either her lip or her bloody shirt.
    A few hours later, Terry at the newspaper was excited to see the photos Rocky had rushed through her printer Rocky drove them right down to the Auburn Times before the ink had barely set.
    “Terry, I was so scared that guy was going to hit me,” Rocky told him.
    “If you want to be a press photographer, you’ve got to expect stuff like that,” Terry looked at her like she fell off the turnip truck.
    “Press photographer isn’t on my resume. I have no desire to go to Iraq, Sierra Leone or the insides of Myanmar snooping for a picture. No, that has not one whit of appeal to me. I want to take cute little shots of animals and models wearing overpriced designer clothes,” Rocky proclaimed her goal for the first time.
    Terry’s expression changed; he was now looking at her like she truly did fall from the turnip truck and the looney bin to boot.
    “To each his own, Sugar. These pics are great, thanks for filling in for me.”
    Terry was on the phone attempting to sell some of the photos as Rocky left with her paycheck. She went to the bank and then bought a replacement cell phone and restocked the film in her stash. She did not come out ahead financially on the day’s work.
    The exhausted but still agitated woman spent the rest of the afternoon getting reprints of the photos and storing the photos on two memory sticks. Looking at them again she started to shake uncontrollably.
    That Callaghan guy was in two of the photos that Rocky thought were the best of the lot. Laying guilt on herself, she set them aside to be reprinted for her portfolio.
    Rocky told Lovie and Phoebe, “I’m not giving up my day job to be a press photographer, well I wouldn’t even if I had a day job.”
    The next project was calling to her. The bad day at the labor protest all but forgotten.
    *   *   *
    “The whole situation didn’t turn out as I thought it would. I didn’t get inside the factory,” Callaghan reported by phone to his boss. “It was a bloody waste of time.”
    “I think it was worth the time,” the boss assured him.
    “What, for finding out how they hire their day labor?” Callaghan was practically sneering over the phone.
    “Something may come of that later, not every operation is going to be a shootout, ya know,” the boss reminded the aggressive, energetic man.
    “The only surprising development was the appearance of the Clancy woman. I damn near had a bloody coronary when I spotted her,” Callaghan reported.
    “What is your take on that?” his partner Clark asked.
    “She was wearing press credentials; she was taking photographs and reporting on a cell to someone,” Callaghan answered.
    “Was she reporting to the Don? Why would he use her, he had enough of the Unistat dudes there to give him the scoop,” Clark said.
    “I have the gut feeling that