and she says, “But I don’t want you to cow down, either. That’s not our way. You do have a legacy to uphold, however battered it may be.”
Where does it come from, this stubborn resilience? That’s not our way. Is it the blood of Scots driven off their land generations ago? Old crofters who said, This far, but no farther?
“I’ll think about what to do while I’m riding out to the barn. But don’t worry about the house. I’ll find a way to keep it. Dad’s going to spend his last day here.”
She closes her eyes and lays her head on my chest.
“I won’t let you down,” I promise.
“Or him,” she whispers.
“Or him,” I echo.
She pulls back and looks toward the den once more. “I’d better get back in there. You be careful. Remember what Max Matheson told you about the accident on Cemetery Road. Duncan’s first family.”
“I do.”
“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