“No story’s worth dying over.”
I nod, but then I think of Buck Ferris floating dead in the river, of Arthur Pine standing smugly in my office waving his debt-purchase agreement, and of my father sobbing in impotent rage. And a voice in my head says:
This story might be.
Chapter 35
Ten minutes after leaving my parents’ house, I pick up Aaron Terrell and his brother at their house in Bucktown. Aaron takes the shotgun seat, while Gabriel climbs into the back behind his brother. African American men in their seventies, both worked as my father’s press men for nearly fifty years. Both have close white beards and an amazing amount of muscle tone for their age. Neither says much after our initial handshakes. I saw both these men many times when I was a boy, but after Adam died, I rarely went down to the newspaper building, so we don’t really know each other.
As I turn onto Cemetery Road, Aaron asks how “Mr. Duncan” is doing, then falls silent after I give him a general report. He could probably tell on the phone that Dad isn’t at his best. I figured he’d ask for details on how our family “got screwed out of the paper” (as I heard Dad describe today’s events), but Aaron seems content to simply fulfill the favor my father asked of him.
Three minutes after I pick them up, we’re rolling over the dogleg turn where Dad’s first wife and daughter were murdered in 1966. The gully where they drowned is still there. Two sets of railroad tracks still cut through the asphalt at the lowest point in the road. How easy it would have been, I realize, to run a car off that pavement in a rainstorm and send it pitching down the kudzu-strangled gully.
As we leave downtown behind, I call Ben Tate, who turns out to be drinking at a Lower’ville bar with some of the former Watchman staff. I tell him to go outside so that he’ll have privacy. Then I ask him if he got out of the building with the hard copy of the PDF file I gave him before Pine showed up.
“I did indeed,” he says in a game voice.
“You read it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You think you can write a story from it by tonight?”
He hesitates. “Absolutely. But why? You planning to post it online or something?”
“Actually, I’m thinking we might put out one last edition of the Watchman tomorrow.”
“No shit? How do you plan to do that?”
“I’m working outside the box. Way outside. But tell me this: If my plan doesn’t work out, do you know anybody in this corner of the state who might run us off a paper if we throw some money their way? All the local publishers Dad knows are enemies now and would love to see him go down.”
“You want this printed under our masthead? Our former masthead, I should say? That would probably be illegal, or at least a trademark infringement.”
“I’m betting that if we bust this story wide open, the Poker Club will be too busy to worry about suing over Mickey Mouse shit.”
“Maybe. But no publisher around here is going to want to risk a lawsuit.”
“You’re right. So, can you think of anybody who might help us?”
He takes a few seconds with this. “I know the editor at the Natchez Examiner pretty well. Walter Parrish. He and I supported the bars of Athens, Georgia, for about four years.”
“That’s right, you’re both Bulldogs. Does he listen to as much R.E.M. as you?”
“More. You know, the Masters Group does the printing for four south Mississippi papers now. They added Vicksburg and McComb. You want me to give Walter a call?”
“Yes, but don’t even hint what the story’s about. Just tell him we need it bad. I’ll pay him out of my pocket.”
“Right. Shouldn’t cost you more than seven or eight hundred bucks. What about our staff?”
“You can’t use them.”
“Nobody? You told them to stay ready. They’re so pissed, they’ll work for free.”
“It’s not the money, Ben. Arthur Pine gave me the feeling he has a mole in our ranks.”
“Ahh, okay. So am I just writing a story? Or are we going to reprint some of that PDF file?”
“We’re definitely going to reprint some stuff.”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
“One thing. Did you see that reference in the emails to a ‘Mr. Chow’? Related to Senator Sumner? An implied exchange of favors?”
“I did indeed.”
“Leave that out of your story until we know more. I mentioned it in front of Holland and Russo, and they nearly shit themselves.”
“Understood. I’ll head home now and get started.”
After I hang up, Aaron Terrell says, “We ’bout three miles from the turn now. You lookin’ for a Billups gas station on the right.”
We already passed the turn for the barn where Jet and I spent most of the summer of 1986. What lies ahead is a straight shot to the county line. When Jet and I were kids, this stretch of Cemetery Road was unpaved, a plumb line of dirt cutting through trees so tall and stately they might have been standing for a thousand years. I can still see our bike tires cutting through the powdery dust, and fat raindrops slapping into it, making nickel-size black circles as the gray clouds that flung them swept over us toward the river.
I’ve seen Dad’s fishing camp only once, when I drove out to meet the guy who keeps the grass bush-hogged. There’d been armadillo damage to the dam that keeps the pond filled. I know nothing about armadillos or dams, but Dad was going through a tough period, so I handled it. I saw what he refers to as his “barn” that day, but it was padlocked, and I had no way to look inside. What I remember sure doesn’t seem like an ideal place to store printing presses.
“What do you guys think about our chances?” I ask. “Of printing a paper off one of the old presses in Dad’s barn?”
“Hard to say,” Aaron answers. “Your daddy used to pay us to come out here reg’lar and keep the place locked tight, dusted down. We’d even run the equipment once or twice a year. But that’s been a while ago now.”
“My mother told me she stopped paying you.”
Aaron nods philosophically. “I get that. Hard to pay good money to keep up something nobody use.”
“I can’t believe you guys could put out a paper on a linotype.”
Both men laugh heartily. “That linotype jus’ a museum piece,” Aaron says. “I could probably print a little something on it, as a demonstration. But them old offset presses are like Dee-troit classics.”
“Damn right,” his brother agrees. “All-metal monsters.”
“Your daddy bought that old Heidelberg in 1973. That big girl could jook.”
“Never shoulda bought that new press,” Gabriel declares in a chiding tone. “He quit that Heidelberg in 2010, but she had plenty of life left in her.”
“Might just take a little loving care,” Aaron agrees. “We’ll know in a couple minutes.”
When I grunt skeptically, Aaron says, “Sounds to me like you all set up to pay that Natchez group to print for you. Fee-for-service. We just wastin’ time out here or what?”
“We’re humoring my father,” I concede. “But I wouldn’t waste your time. What I’m really hoping is that you guys can run me a front page with the old masthead on top. That’s all, one broadsheet with a headline. Even if the Natchez group will print a paper for us, they won’t do it under the Watchman masthead.”
Aaron is nodding, a trace of a smile on his lips.
I turn off Cemetery Road where he tells me to, then follow a narrow road to a metal gate that opens to the pond and the barn. The place looks much as I remember it, but it was winter during my first visit, and now it looks like a jungle. Vast curtains of kudzu hang between the trees, giving me the feeling that the whole place will be covered in a year or two. I park the Flex about ten feet from the barn door.