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.
Aaron still has a key. He walks up to the building with confidence,