Cemetery Road

by Greg Iles

  “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, 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

  The shadows have grown long outside the barn, but when I climb into the Flex, I see yellow light spilling from the cracks around the big door. Aaron and Gabriel are already hard at work, and their commitment has inspired me. Yet I don’t feel like doing any of the things I need to do. Nadine is waiting to hear from me, but she’s not going to like the idea of me going to war with the Poker Club. I should call Ben Tate back to discuss tomorrow’s stories, and also Walter Parrish at the Natchez Examiner, to finalize a deal for him to print a paper for us. But as I sit in the Flex, looking at the barn where my father must have spent hours fiddling with his old printing presses while swigging Maker’s Mark from the bottle, it strikes me that I’ve been ignoring the obvious.

  Back on the street outside the Watchman building, I warned Arthur Pine I intended to destroy the Poker Club. By now Buckman and Donnelly and Holland and Russo and the rest know that I made that threat. I’d be a fool to ignore the fact that such men will not sit by while I take steps to send them to prison. After all, they almost certainly murdered Buck, and God knows who else over the years. Anybody who stood in their path got crushed one way or another. And they’re not the only threat I face. If Ben and I drop our story on the website tonight, how long will it take Max to show Paul the video of Jet and me making love? An hour? Less?

  I’m at that hinge point where characters in films do really stupid things, like sleep at their own house or go to places they’re known to frequent, such as Nadine’s shop or my parents’ house. As much as I’d like to drive home, log on to my computer, and start working with Ben on the PDF file story, that would be an idiot’s move. Especially given that Paul seemed only minimally stable this afternoon. The smart thing would be to get out of town for a couple of days. Not all the way back to D.C., but maybe to a hotel in Jackson or even Oxford. I can work on tomorrow’s issue from anywhere, so long as I have a computer and an internet connection. The problem is I can’t risk leaving Jet behind. If Max shows Paul that video—and I’ve abandoned the city—Paul might vent all his rage on her alone.

  Taking out my burner phone, I punch in a quick text to Jet: Find a safe place and call me. I need two minutes. URGENT.

  After sending this message, I speed down the gravel road and pull through the gate, then close it by hanging the wire loop over the post. I turn onto Cemetery Road, looking for one of the little winding lanes that runs south between it and the Little Trace. From there I can pick up another cut-through to Highway 36, which runs past the turn to my farmhouse.

  I’m on the Little Trace when my iPhone rings. To my surprise, the caller is Arthur Pine. After a moment’s hesitation, I answer and say, “Well, Arthur. You feeling the ice crack beneath your feet?”

  “Not at all. This is just a friendly call. I know you were upset today. That’s understandable. But you made some threats.”

  “I did indeed,” I reply, mimicking Ben Tate’s syntax.

  “There are different ways to handle problems, Marshall. One way involves men like me. The other . . . well, it’s the other way.”

  “Are you telling me Tommy Russo is going to send a button man to my house? Or are Wyatt Cash and a couple of retired SEALs gonna explain things to me?”

  “You have a vivid imagination for a nonfiction writer. Actually, I’d say your biggest worry is going to be your best friend.”

  “Possibly. But let’s talk about you. You’re getting closer to Parchman Farm every minute. And I don’t think you have the survival skills for that particular environment. Neither do most of your buddies. Let’s see how well you sleep tonight.”

  There’s a brief silence. Then Pine says, “We’re all vulnerable, Marshall. We all have people we love. And you don’t have many allies. I’ve got the whole town on my side.”

  “I guess we’ll see about that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Tick-tock, Arthur. You’d better start researching non-extradition countries. Your bosses will be asking for a list soon.”

  I hang up.

  When I hit Highway 36, I turn east and join the Jackson-bound traffic. After two miles I�
��ll pass Blackbird Road, the turn to my house. I’m tempted to go home long enough to run in and get my MacBook Pro, a change of clothes, and some toiletries. But that could be a fatal mistake. Tommy Russo could have a man sitting in my kitchen, waiting for me to open the front door. One silenced round through the forehead, and the Poker Club’s problems would be over. Or SEALs paid by Wyatt Cash could pour half a bottle of vodka down my gullet, then hold my head under a full bath, probably without leaving a mark on me.

  I don’t even slow down as I pass my turn. I can buy a new laptop at the Apple store in Jackson, new underwear and toiletries at Target. Hell, I can buy a computer at Walmart if the Apple store is closed. It’ll be a pain downloading some of the software I need, but most of my critical files are in Dropbox, so what does it matter?

  A mile past my house, I slow down to scan a great wall of signs that must have sprung up over the last day or two. Where a line of inexpensive ranch homes stood before, the new line of billboards blares: coming soon: t.j. maxx. opening 2019: chili’s. coming september: super target. After that it’s all a blur announcing that Bienville will soon look like every other interstate town in America. bed, bath & beyond. michael’s. bonefish grill. This, I realize, is one of the strips acquired during Beau Holland’s land grab. Most of my fellow citizens look at this development as a blessing, but I see, at best, a necessary evil.

  My ringing iPhone startles me out of my funk. It’s Quinn Ferris calling. “Hey, Quinn, how are you making it?”

  “This still sucks, but karma just shined on us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m with Buck’s friend from LSU. Dr. Jake Barnett. Those little clay balls you found at the industrial park are from a Poverty Point–era site, no question. They’re actually called ‘Poverty Point objects.’ They were used for cooking food underground, sort of like charcoal briquettes. Also for some other purposes. But that find is definitive, Marshall.”

  I realize my heart is pounding. “What about the rest of it?”

  “Bone, for sure. Human. Byron Ellis was right. The teeth, too. Dr. Barnett’s going to have to do some dating work, but he says the teeth show no sign of decay, which means they didn’t come from corn-eating Indians. He’s going to contact the Department of Archives and History in Mississippi. It’s a huge find, he says. Momentous.”