Dad’s right hand is frantically shaking, as though he can’t force his thoughts out through his mouth.
“Take your time, Duncan,” my mother pleads. “What are you trying to say?”
“That—won’t work. I’ve burned too many bridges. Everybody’s owned by a group now, and they’re all Trumpers down here. They’d love to see us beg.”
“Surely I can find somebody.”
“That you can trust not to call the Poker Club as soon as you hang up? You can’t give those bastards a shot at you. They’d find a way to stop you.”
“Well, what do you suggest?”
Dad’s head jerks to the left, then again. “I’ve still got the old press out at my barn. More than one. My collection.”
“Oh, Lord,” Mom says. “Those antiques?”
“They’re good machines!” Dad’s face has gone red. “And I’ve paid the Terrell brothers to keep them in mint condition. The old linotype especially.”
Linotype? I think. You want me to print a newspaper on a linotype?
Mom closes her eyes, looking more worried than she has in the last hour.
“What’s he talking about?” I ask.
Dad grabs my wrist again in his clawlike grip. “The barn, at my fishing camp. I’ve got three different presses out there—four, counting the old ABDick job press. With Aaron and Gabriel Terrell helping you, you could print a paper off any one of them.”
Surely he’s delusional. “What about electricity? Supplies? Interfaces? Tools?”
“I’ve got the barn wired for two-twenty,” Dad says doggedly. “Aaron and Gabriel have all the tools you need. And the expertise. They’re my old press men, for God’s sake.”
This sounds more like the fantasy ending of a Jimmy Stewart movie than a workable plan, but I don’t voice that opinion. To his credit, my father has always been a tinkerer, and mechanically gifted. As a boy I watched him repair and restore everything from old typewriters to a slot machine that a bartender brought him from a Louisiana honky-tonk. Dad’s “camp” is a twelve-acre tract of woods surrounding a little pond, about eight miles east of town, between Cemetery Road and the Little Trace. Until his Parkinson’s got bad, he puttered around out there with a garden and did some bream and bass fishing from a johnboat.
Despite gentle discouragement from both Mom and me, Dad refuses to drop the idea of printing a paper for tomorrow. His brainwave spurs a burst of physical activity, what my mother always called “thrashing.” Dad makes a call to Aaron Terrell, and in no time I have the old press man’s cell number and address in my pocket. My initial understanding is that Dad has committed me to ride out to his barn with the Terrell brothers and check the equipment. Then it becomes apparent that he intends to accompany us, which precipitates an argument between him and my mother. This escalates for about five minutes, until Dad faints in the bathroom, which thankfully settles the matter.
As I prepare to leave on my fool’s errand, Mom follows me into the kitchen.
“I still handle the household expenses,” she whispers. “I stopped paying the Terrells over a year ago. Keeping up that equipment seemed like a waste of money.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll figure a way to let him down easy.”
I start to leave, but I can’t go without passing on Arthur Pine’s warning: my parents can remain in this house only if I cease all activity that could harm the Poker Club or the paper mill deal. If I pursue the course Dad has suggested, this house could soon be only a memory.
“Would they really take it?” Mom asks.
I remember Arthur Pine’s face. “They wouldn’t hesitate.”
She looks back toward the den, where Dad sits clinging to one lifeline: the hope that I’ll use one of his treasured old presses to destroy the men who have ruined his life’s work. “I can’t tell you what to do,” she says softly. “Duncan bought this house in 1963. I’ve lived here since ’68. I love this old place. But mostly for my memories, when you and Adam were here. Once your father’s gone . . . I can live anywhere.”
“Washington, even?” I say hopefully.
She wipes her eyes with her fingertips. “That’s a big step. Let’s take things one at a time. I just . . . I’d hate to have your father find out he couldn’t keep them from putting us out on the street. I don’t think he’d survive that.”
I take hold of her arms, meaning to promise that I’ll find a way to buy the house myself. Before I can, her eyes harden,