Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  “Nope. That’ll ruin several more lives. I’m willing to take the punishment for what I’ve done. But you? You’re a chickenshit. A weasel. You can’t take what’s coming your way. And you can bet your ass something is coming.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Pine said with a smile. “We’ll publish a nice farewell piece when you head back to D.C.”

  Sarcasm dripped from his voice, but as I turned toward the parking lot, I saw his mask slip. The smile on his lips no longer touched his eyes, which were those of an animal transitioning from predator into prey.

  I won’t describe what happened after I informed my mother and father what had transpired at the Watchman. There’s a shame in witnessing a proud man broken, reduced to penury and forced to confront the fact that he has failed to provide for his wife in her old age, and not only because of his own poor management, but also his misplaced trust in a friend. When you are that man’s son, the sight shakes you to the core. I will store my father’s breakdown in the same locked vault where I keep the events of the morning that the sheriff walked me into the same house to tell my parents that my brother had drowned.

  After the initial shock, Mom had to give Dad a nitroglycerine tablet for his heart, extra meds for his tremors, and a Xanax to try to blunt his anxiety. Yet still he remained distraught. His hands trembled constantly, and his extremities jerked in ways my mother had never seen before. Worst of all, he was crying, something I couldn’t remember seeing him do since the day Adam drowned.

  “Have you called Dr. Kirby?” I asked Mom.

  “He’s going to come by after he finishes at his office.”

  What emerged after Mom and I were able to question Dad in detail was simple and heartbreaking. After I moved home and started running the paper in earnest, Dad began to believe that if I stayed in Bienville, I might be able to turn the business around. His time had passed, he knew, but he thought my passion and experience might be enough to succeed where his had failed. If only the paper could stay open another year, he thought, I might get the Watchman back on its feet. What greater legacy could he leave than his family’s newspaper back on solid footing, free from the tyranny of any media group? To that end, he’d taken out one more major loan, securing it with the equity in his house and some securities he’d held back for my mother. Marty Denis helped him with all this; Mom had known nothing. Dad hadn’t told me, he said, because he didn’t want me burdened with financial worries. Of course it was that very attitude that had prevented me from working to save the paper from the day I got back.

  Mom couldn’t imagine that Marty Denis had betrayed Dad by selling the loans to Claude Buckman, but I told her they’d probably gotten their way with Marty the same way they did with everyone else. Pine told me Denis had “imperiled his position at the bank.” The Poker Club would have been happy to bail him out of his trouble. All he had to do to save his own ass was burn Duncan McEwan.

  “It’s my fault, all of it,” Dad whispered, staring dully at the switched-off television. “I wanted the paper to be there for you. I thought you were enjoying the work. I thought . . . you’d come around and want to stay and take it over.”

  “It’s all right,” I told him.

  “How much could I have gotten?” he kept asking. “Back when you pressed me to sell? That last time, seven or eight years ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Nine million. Maybe ten.”

  At some point after this he became hysterical, but thankfully the drugs kicked in, and he transitioned into a sort of muted daze. He reminded me of schizophrenia patients I’d seen in a Maryland hospital while writing a story on mental illness. He must have mumbled “I’m sorry” a hundred times, like a meaningless mantra he couldn’t stop repeating.

  My mother kept looking from him to me, then back again. I was afraid she might break, as Dr. Kirby had predicted she would after Dad passed away. The specter of poverty had to be working on her, even though she knew that I’d never allow her to go without. But she didn’t break. She merely rubbed Dad’s neck and shoulders, as she always did when he became upset. Time passed in near silence, and the afternoon sun moved across the sky, sending a shadow slowly across the den floor. Nadine called and texted me several times, as did Ben Tate and others, but I didn’t want to break the calm by answering or returning calls. I was hoping for some word from Jet, but my burner phone remained silent. I texted Nadine that I would get back to her when I could, then muted my iPhone and sat with my parents while the new reality settled over and into us.

  After all that’s happened, it’s strange to sit quietly in the house where I grew up. In the five months I’ve been back, I’ve hardly done this. Despite Mom’s efforts to reconcile Dad and me, most of my time has been spent helping her do household chores, while my main method of assistance has been paying for professional sitters and taking care of errands outside the house so that she can remain at his side. To see Dad sitting motionless like this is a new and disquieting experience.

  In the silent den, I get up and walk along the shelves of the built-in entertainment center, perusing the spines of the book overflow from his study. Propped on one shelf is a photo of Dad and Hazel Brannon Smith, publisher of the Lexington Advertiser, in the newsroom of the Watchman. Another shelf contains personally inscribed volumes, an alphabetical treasure trove comprising a who’s who of twentieth-century journalism: Agee, Arendt, James Baldwin . . . Jimmy Breslin, Bob Capa, Rachel Carson, Cronkite, Walker Evans, Martha Gellhorn . . . Halberstam, Hersey, Sy Hersh, Langston Hughes, Stanley Karnow, Walter Lippmann . . . Murrow, Gordon Parks, Eric Sevareid, Bill Shirer, I. F. Stone, Curtis Wilkie. Some of these writers were friends of my father’s, others mentors. A few simply admired his stand during the civil rights movement so much that they sent him their own work with a thoughtful inscription.

  As I walk along the shelf, tapping the spines with my fingers, I find myself recalling some of his fiery editorials from the 1960s. My father’s voice on the page was reminiscent of the one Ted Sorensen gave John Kennedy in his greatest speeches. In his prime, Duncan McEwan could summon power and moral authority from sentences in a way that still eludes me after decades of writing.

  “You can’t let them silence you,” says a faint voice.

  I whirl from the shelves and see that my mother is as startled as I am.

  “Duncan?” she says, rubbing his arm. “Are you all right?”

  “Do you have more to print?” Dad asks, not quite focusing on me. “More on those Poker Club bastards?”

  I walk back and sit in the dining chair I pulled up next to his two hours ago. “I’ve got a photo of Beau Holland at the murder scene. And I’m sitting on some data Sally Matheson put together that could hit them pretty hard. There’s a lead in there that could hole them under the waterline. If I print, it might just inspire my source to send me even more damning evidence. But we’ll pay a price. A heavy one. War with the Poker Club means casualties.”

  Dad’s hand shoots out and grips my wrist. Then his head tilts so that he’s staring at me from the corner of his eye. “Get it out there!” he croaks. “I let those guys have their way for too long. Buckman and Donnelly and the rest. You can’t let them shut us down.”

  Dad never speaks of “us” when discussing the Watchman. Not since I was a boy, anyway. He’s always treated my running the paper as a temporary stewardship until he can get back on his feet. The obligation of a son to his father. Mom is clearly shocked by the intensity of his words, but she nods at me, which I take to mean that I should engage him in conversation, despite the risk of upsetting him further.

  “I know how you feel, Dad. But they own the paper now. They’ve won, at least in the material sense.”

  “No, no, no, no,” he drones. “That’s a battle, not the war. Find a way.”

  “A way to what?”

  “Print.”

  I haven’t even considered trying to print anything. “I was thinking of posting a s
tory to the web,” I tell him, “just under my own name. If I use our existing social media accounts, they’ll probably sue—”

  “Screw ’em!” Dad shakes his head violently. “That’s not good enough! This town’s full of old people, poor people with no internet. You’ve got to give them what they’re used to. A newspaper.”

  “Dad—”

  He points a rigid arm at the framed copy of the first Bienville Watchman, which I leaned against the wall after showing him I had salvaged at least that. “You’ve gotta get it into the machines,” he goes on. “The truck stop, the gas stations, the supermarkets. Not everybody gets their news off the goddamn computer.”

  “I understand. But we don’t have access to a press anymore. I suppose we could contract with a paper in a nearby town. Somebody might be willing to run off a daily for us, if we throw a little money their way. But not under our name.”

  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, 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 tel
l 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?”