Aaron still has a key. He walks up to the building with confidence, but it takes him half a minute to get the lock to yield. After it does, Gabriel trudges to the side of the heavy sliding door and walks it open. I let the brothers go in first, to assess the condition of the press. What I see from behind them looks like some sort of hardware museum that a Hollywood set designer draped in cobwebs.
A few feet from the door stands a Willys jeep that has to be seventy years old. Beyond that I see a shelf unit lined with typewriters, slot machines, and what might be a photo enlarger. After about ten seconds, my eyes begin picking out the printing equipment. The linotype stands closest to the door. It looks like some steampunk contraption, a relic that belongs in a Dickens novel. Beyond the linotype I see more curtains of cobwebs, dust-caked machine parts, rust on everything. My heart is sinking, but Aaron walks right past this junk to a big machine that looks like an F-150 pickup truck with half its bed sawn away.
“Used to be a tarp on here,” he says in a doubtful tone. “Must’ve come off a good while back. What you think, Gabe?”
“Nothing good.”
The Heidelberg offset press is nearly as tall as I am. After walking around it once, Aaron begins pulling cobwebs off the German behemoth. I watch in silence as he and his brother begin exploring the machine with their hands. Aaron squats to look beneath it, while Gabriel climbs onto an attached metal step, leans over, and peers down into the guts of the machine.
“What do you think, guys? Is there a chance in hell?”
Aaron steps back from the press and stands with his hands on his hips. “This front page you’re imagining,” he says. “Are you seeing colors?”
“Nope. Black-and-white’s fine. Just the masthead and a headline. Table of contents, maybe. Teasers. We could start the stories on the front page, but I hate to risk that. I need ten thousand broadsheets. Can you do it?”
Aaron looks at his brother.
“Hell,” says Gabriel. “If we can’t, we ain’t got no business calling ourselves press men.”
“Whoa, now,” Aaron cautions. “We got some work to do before that kind of talk.”
Gabriel spits beside the press. “I didn’t say it’d be easy. The problem is the folder. Getting that bitch hooked up.”
Aaron leans against the press and regards me with interest. “I read that story you wrote about Byron Ellis. I knew Byron back when he drove an ambulance, way before he was coroner. You goin’ after them Poker Club fellas, ain’t you?”
“Looks like it.”
“And Byron’s helping you?”
“Yep. He went out on a limb to help.”
“Well, then.” Aaron reaches into his pocket and takes out a pack of Kool Menthols, shakes one out, and puts it between his lips. “I reckon we better help that brother out.”
After he lights up, the three of us stand looking at the press the way all men do who must use inadequate tools to do important work.
“If we can’t get her runnin’ right,” Aaron says, “we can print a single sheet on the old ABDick jobbing press, then fold that around the main edition. We’d better get hold of some eleven-by-seventeen paper while we can, just in case.”
“Whatever you need,” I tell him. “I’ll cover it.”
As Aaron nods, my iPhone rings. It’s my mother.
“Hey, Mom. How’s Dad doing?”
“I’m not sure. Jack Kirby wanted to admit him to the hospital, to be on the safe side, but your father wouldn’t hear of it. Duncan insisted that I call and ask you about the presses. He wants to know if one’s in good enough shape to get the job done.”
I look at the big offset press, standing silent as a mausoleum and showing rust at every seam. “Tell him everything looks great, Mom. Mint condition.”
Her voice drops. “Are you sure? I stopped paying Aaron a good while back.”
“Tell Dad we’re gonna use the Heidelberg. Everything’s under control.”
“If you say so. He’s going to want to see the issue tomorrow.”
This is a warning against shining my father on. “No worries, Mom. Try to get some rest.”
“All right,” she says wearily. “Thank you.”
After I pocket the phone, Aaron says, “Duncan ain’t doin’ good, is he?” The press man’s eyes are filled with genuine concern.
“Not really, no.”
He grunts in a way that communicates many emotions at once, but empathy above all.
“What can I do to help you guys?” I ask.
Aaron grins. “You ever run an offset printing press?”
“I have not.”
Both men shake their heads. “Tell you what,” Aaron says. “You go back to town for an hour or two. Get yourself a drink. Finish making your deal to get the main edition printed. Let me and Gabe clean this old girl up, see if we can’t get her kickin’.”
“Are you sure?”
The old press man shrugs and gives me a lopsided smile. “Ain’t got nothin’ better to do this evenin’. But tell me this. Say you get this paper printed. Who’s gonna deliver it for you? I hear they done fired everybody downtown.”
“They did.”
“Your regular carriers still gonna stock the machines and stores? Or are you and your reporters gonna ride the routes?”
He’s got a point. “I hadn’t really thought about that.”
Aaron grins. “You better start. But if you don’t have no luck, I might have an idea about it.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“You’re also gonna need somebody to wrap our broadsheet around the main paper—if we get it printed. Ten thousand copies? That’s some work right there. You gonna need a crew in here to do that by two a.m. to be on the safe side.”
“Shit, I forgot that, too.”
Aaron gives me an expert’s rueful smile. “Easy to take that for granted up in the front office.”
“What about newsprint?” I ask. “I don’t know if I can get into the building downtown.”
“Gabe knows where he can find some. But the less you know about that, the better.”
I’ve found my ideal co-conspirators. “Look, you guys need to know one thing. If we publish under the Watchman masthead, the bastards who own the paper now are gonna sue me. I’ll never give you guys up. I’ll say I did all this myself. But they might try to make life as hard on everybody as they can. You have to know that before you do this.”
The brothers look at each other. Then Gabriel turns to me and says, “Your daddy paid me a check every week for forty-seven years. Wasn’t a big check. But I could count on it. And if I needed an advance, Duncan give it to me, no questions asked.”
I wish Dad could have been here to hear that. I figured these men would remember him as a hard, thankless taskmaster—as I do. But they were not his sons, and they knew a different man.
“Your daddy done a lot of hard drinkin’ for a lot of years,” Aaron says, almost to himself. “A lot like our daddy, really. Life wore ’em both down pretty hard. But I was with Mr. Duncan back in the sixties, when things got bloody. After Medgar was killed, and the movement hadn’t got goin’ yet. You couldn’t find a white man to stand up for black folk. Not in public. But old Duncan sat back in that little office with that Remington typewriter, and he set down how it was. He didn’t care if some white preacher cussed him in the street or a big store pulled their advertising. He said, The time has come to do what’s right. That might not sound like much today. But back then it was like a stick of dynamite.”
I don’t know what to say to this.
Aaron turns and looks back at the old press as though listening to a dialogue in his own head. Then in a soft voice he says, “Duncan tol’ me he needs a paper out tomorrow. So I reckon we gon’ print one. One last time.”
“Damn right,” says Gabriel. “Damn right.”
Chapter 36