by Ninie Hammon
A tobacco setter was a farm implement pulled behind a tractor that was used to plant burley. A man—two if it was a double setter—sat facing backwards on the machine only a couple of feet off the ground, feeding seedlings into the conveyor that dropped them into holes in the soil.
“Well, you could do that,” Billy Joe’d responded with a smile, trying real hard not to sound annoyed. “But I don’t know anybody ’round here plannin’ to grow a whole field of dope. When I started out, you could grow an acre maybe, here and there up in the hollows. Now, the Drug Task Force choppers would spot a whole field of weed before they lifted off the tarmac in Frankfort.”
“You could do it though, use a setter I mean, if you was plannin’ to grow a field of it?”
Billy Joe had allowed that yes siree, you surely could, if you didn’t mind spending the next 20 years as a guest of the state.
The fat man wouldn’t last a season, Billy Joe had thought. But he got paid whether that fool was busted or not. Got paid very well.
B.J.’d worked for Bubba for five years now, and he honestly didn’t know how much money he’d made. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. He didn’t keep records. What for, so the IRS could confiscate them? All he knew was that Bubba had made good on his promise; he’d made Billy Joe rich beyond his wildest dreams.
After he laundered enough money so he could pay taxes like a legitimate farmer, Billy Joe paid cash for everything—groceries, clothes, cars, dental bills, piano lessons—everything. He’d built a huge, rambling ranch house and purchased every nail, board, brick, door, couch, lamp, toilet and the swimming pool on the back deck with stacks of bills, used twenties and hundreds, not in numerical sequence, impossible to trace.
He looked at his watch and realized it was time to go by his mother’s and pick up Bethany. He smiled as the image of his youngest daughter bloomed in his mind—honey gold curls and round cheeks like her mother, dimples like her father. His little princess! Sometimes it scared him how much he loved that child. She was all he had now.
• • • • •
Jim Bingham’s daughter sat on edge of her bed, buttoning her blouse and yelling at herself. Not out loud. In her mind.
What were you thinking?
She’d been nuts even to consider Ben’s crazy idea. But she hadn’t stopped at considering! She’d quit her job and moved half way across the country, actually believed she could just pick up the reins of her father’s newspaper, yell giddy-up, and go riding off into the sunset. What had possessed her?
Oh, make no mistake about it, the thin woman with curly red hair had always admired her father. She just had sense enough to grasp she could never hope to be like him. Jim Bingham had been strong, out-going and confident; his only daughter was quiet, self-effacing and reserved.
Ben’s knock interrupted her mental tirade.
“Come on in,” she called out, “but don’t bring your sword because right now I’m looking for one to fall on.” Fumbling with the last button, she realized her hands were shaking. Not from MS; from SS—Scared Silly.
The boy entered the room laughing. “You’re not nervous are you, Eliza … I mean Sarabeth?”
They’d talked about her name as they drove across the Arizona desert. Sarah Elizabeth Bingham had been dubbed Sarabeth as soon as she hit first grade, courtesy of the southern penchant for double names. Her mother had switched it back to Elizabeth when they moved to California.
“But in Callison County I feel like … no, I am Sarabeth Bingham,” she’d told Ben, and he’d shrugged and said, “Sarabeth it is then.”
She’d tried during that long drive to tack words onto her feelings about returning to her hometown. Not about the newspaper job; they’d steered clear of that conversation. But about Callison County and what it meant to her.
“There’s something profoundly … good about Callison County,” she’d said. “No matter where I’ve lived, it always felt like home—that place you look back at and know you just fit there.”
Ben looked at his sister now, sitting on the edge of her bed. “What are you nervous about?”
“Let’s discuss what I’m not nervous about. The list is shorter.”
He laughed again, a gentle encouraging laugh. “You’re going to be fine, just fine.”
Someone else had said those same words to her, ten days ago at Joe Fogerty’s sentencing hearing.
Sarabeth wouldn’t let Ben go with her, told him it was something she needed to do by herself. The truth was she didn’t know how she’d respond to being in the same room with the man who had murdered her father and she didn’t want Ben to be there if she lost it.
The hearing was held in the small, district courtroom on the ground floor of the courthouse. She’d slipped into the back of the room shortly before the bailiff called out: “All rise. Callison County Circuit Court is now in session. The Honorable Earl S. Compton presiding.”
The robed man who entered and took his seat in the black chair behind the bench looked like a judge. In his early 50s, he had dark hair with prominent gray at the temples and a thin face. He wore black-rimmed glasses and looked out over the top of them when he surveyed the courtroom. His gaze fell on Sarabeth and lit there for a moment before it moved on, as if he knew who she was. Maybe he did.
As everyone was seated, the bailiff announced: “The case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky versus Joseph Edward Fogerty.” Sarabeth gasped and that’s when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and there stood Billy Joe.
He slipped in beside her, took her hand and squeezed it as her eyes filled with tears. “Mama couldn’t stand to come, but I knew you’d be here,” he whispered. “You don’t need to be doing this all by yourself, Bessie.”
The family had been notified that Fogerty had agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder, though he maintained he had no memory of the crime or of anything else that happened that day after he started drinking.
Sarabeth was grateful there’d be no trial. What was the point? Fogerty had been found with the murder weapon in his pocket and her father’s hat on his head.
As soon as a sheriff’s deputy led the handcuffed man with shaggy gray hair into the room, Sarabeth began to cry softly and Billy Joe put his arm protectively around her shoulders. Through the sudden roaring in her ears, she heard the judge ask, “How do you plead?” and barely caught the man’s one-word response, “guilty,” before the judge slapped his gavel down and gave him 25 years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. For an old man like Joe Fogerty, that was a life sentence.
One frozen moment from the morning stuck with Sarabeth, like a snapshot captured in the glare of a flashbulb. When the deputy took his arm to escort the prisoner back to jail, he had turned and spotted her sitting in the almost empty courtroom. For a heartbeat or two, the two of them made eye contact. In that moment, and in the days since, Sarabeth had wanted to hate Joe Fogerty. Oh, how she had wanted to hate him! But it just wasn’t there. Truth was, he was a pathetic old drunk with a bloated face and rheumy eyes who’d killed her father in a blackout because the editor had published his DUI arrest in the court news. And he didn’t even remember the crime! Jim Bingham would have been just as needlessly dead if he’d fallen under a bus. All she felt was unutterably sad that such a circumstance had stolen her father from her.
When Fogerty turned away, she’d collapsed in Billy Joe’s arms, sobbing. He’d held her tight, rocked back and forth crooning in her ear, “Shhhh, now. Hush. You’re going to be fine, Bessie. Just fine.”
Ben crossed quickly from the doorway to the bed when he saw his sister’s eyes fill with tears.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She waved her hand and forced a smile. “No, it’s Ok. I was just … thinking about Daddy.” She reached up and wiped away a tear that had escaped down her cheek. Then she took a deep breath and repeated softly. “I’m going to be just fine.”
• • • • •
The day went south on
Sarabeth as soon as the farmer showed up with the potato.
She’d gone into the office early because she knew that walking in the front door of The Callison County Tribune would be the hardest part. Her father had been shot in the recessed doorway, had died there, and a part of her thought there ought to be some sign of that, like the ornate, gold and silver historic markers scattered all over town.
A National Historic Landmark sign near the Brewster Depot designated the spot where rogue Confederate General John Hunt Morgan’s youngest brother, Tom, was killed in battle during Morgan’s daring raid through Union lines across Kentucky and into Ohio in 1863. Another sign marked the house where the general himself rode his horse up the porch steps and into the parlor. The horse’s hoof prints were still visible on the porch—or so the owners said.
Allison Bingham had felt trapped in a little “been-nowhere, going-nowhere” town. Sarabeth didn’t see Brewster that way at all. She loved its history and heritage and admired its spunk. Though every retail business was located on the five blocks of Main Street, the community had scraped together funds to build an industrial park just outside town. No industries had located there yet, but it was a start.
Though the elementary, junior high and high school buildings were old, they were well maintained. Kids’ test scores were higher than the state average and the drop-out rate was lower.
A major state road, KY 55, crossed Main Street at the traffic light by the post office and passed Callison County Hospital, renovated in 1986, and the new nursing home built last year. The town boasted a small park with two tennis courts, a baseball field and a children’s playground, and a nine-hole golf course out by the cemetery.
Sarabeth thought that, all things considered, Brewster, Kentucky, seemed like a really good place to raise a family.
The newspaper office was a block south of the courthouse in a two-story, red-brick structure with large picture windows on both sides of the front door. The building was probably 100 years old and had served as a hospital in the early 1900s and a flop house for much of the 1930s. The Tribune had just taken up residence there when Jim Bingham was hired as a reporter/typesetter/ad salesman/janitor a year to the day before Hitler marched into Poland.
The downstairs office space had tall ceilings with fans in every room. Her father’s office—her office—was large and comfortable, with a snuggly old sofa she suspected her father slept on most nights, two overstuffed chairs and a 5-foot-tall antique roll-top desk that might very well have been worth more than the whole rest of the building.
By the time her employees arrived at eight o’clock, Sarabeth was ready with a smile on her face and a sign to tape on the front door: “Sorry, we’re closed. We’ll re-open at nine o’clock.”
The five-person newspaper staff arranged themselves around the long table in the break room. Advertising manager Jonas Haskins, a grumpy old man with close-cropped hair the color of a gun barrel, sat frowning beside receptionist Harmony Pruitt, a pretty girl in her early 20s who was either several sandwiches shy of a full picnic or was running a good bluff. Wanda Lee, the circulation manager, eased her bad back carefully into a chair beside the composition manager, Beverly Thompson. If there was a living soul in Callison County Wanda didn’t know—and Sarabeth sincerely doubted that such a person existed—then you could bet Beverly did. The two middle-aged women had been friends since high school.
Wanda had brought a plate of brownies for everyone to share at lunch, and she smacked Bobby Wilson’s hand when he reached for one. Wilson was the part-time reporter who also covered sports, a gifted writer who could have had a real future in journalism if he hadn’t been so unashamedly lazy.
When everyone was seated, Sarabeth launched into a short speech that was designed to sound totally extemporaneous. She’d worked on it for hours. She didn’t stand when she spoke, kept her hands in her lap so no one could see how badly they were shaking.
After thanking everybody for their years of faithful service to her father, she told them how grateful she was that they had kept the newspaper running after his death. She said she planned to make no major changes in the newspaper operation in the foreseeable future and announced they’d each find a bonus in their paychecks at the end of the week.
The bonus part was the first thing that got a rise out of anybody. The women smiled and nodded; Bobby turned to Jonas and gave him a high-five.
“Any questions?” she asked.
Harmony had only ventured out of Kentucky one time, on a 4H trip to Cincinnati, and wanted to hear about what Sarabeth had done after she left Brewster.
Sarabeth’s pulse kicked into a gallop. She didn’t want to be dishonest, but it wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence in her leadership for her staff to know how precious little experience she had at real newspapering.
So she told them that after she’d earned a Masters Degree in Journalism from Stanford, she’d worked for the LA Times, that she’d gained quite a reputation there for writing kick-butt editorials. What she didn’t tell them was that as a “Contributing Writer” for a big-city newspaper, she’d ranted and raved about everything from Jerry Falwell’s defamation lawsuit against Hustler Magazine to the kidnapping of Terry Waite in Beirut and never once had to look a flesh-and-blood reader in the eye afterwards.
She told them about guest-lecturing on topics such as general and spot news writing, news and feature photography and front page design. She didn’t tell them she’d never actually done any of those things except as a college student.
She described teaching classes in newspaper management, but didn’t point out that she’d never been anybody’s boss until today.
“Are you gonna cover Elsie Bingo in Bear Claw?” Bobby wanted to know. “It’s always the first Saturday in September and that’s this weekend.”
“You bet. I’m all over it.” She had no idea what Elsie Bingo might be.
“And the trials Monday morning?”
“What trials?”
“Dope trials. Three of them on the docket. Circuit court starts at nine o’clock.” He caught Jonas’ eye and grinned. “So you’ll be out before lunchtime.”
“Three drug dealers can be tried in one morning?”
Sarabeth had spent two semesters monitoring the judicial system for a college court-reporting class, watched murder, burglary, assault and drug trials. The drug cases sometimes took weeks to try.
“Not dealers, Honey, growers,” Wanda said with a nervous, twittering laugh. She was a small, compact woman whose little spurts of movement reminded Sarabeth of a squirrel.
Dealers, growers, whatever. That’s still major swift justice!
Someone banged on the office door and Sarabeth glanced at her watch—nine o’clock.
“Today’s the classified ad deadline,” Harmony said. “Everybody wants to get their yard sale in the paper.” She and the others rose to go back to work.
But the person at the door wasn’t looking to purchase a classified ad. From her office, Sarabeth could hear the conversation at the front counter.
“No, you gotta hold it like this here. Look. Now do you see?”
“Kind of,” Harmony said, and it was obvious she didn’t.
“Chin’s right there and his nose—you got eyes, girl? If you did, you’d see it your own self right there, plain as day.”
“Oh yeah, now I see!” Harmony actually squealed with delight, a high pitched eeeeeeh that set Sarabeth’s teeth on edge. “Jonas, come here, you have to come see this. This potato looks just like that profile of Alfred Hitchcock.”
No. Surely not.
Harmony appeared in the doorway of Sarabeth’s office holding a big, lumpy potato.
“Look at this!” The girl was as excited as a 5-year-old, which Sarabeth was beginning to suspect might be her mental age. “Look at this and tell me what you see?”
Sarabeth got up and peered at the potato, and in truth she could sort of pick out facial features.
“Come on, what do you see?”
&
nbsp; Sarabeth sighed. “Alfred Hitchcock.”
“Didn’t I tell ya!” the farmer bellowed in triumph. Dressed in dirty bib overalls and a Massey Ferguson cap, the man looked—and smelled—like he hadn’t had a bath since shortly after the earth cooled off. He stepped to the swinging half-door in the middle of the counter and looked at Sarabeth. “Where’s yore camera?”
He couldn’t actually believe she was going to put a picture of his potato in the newspaper!
“I don’t think this looks as much like Alfred Hitchcock as that other one, the one that looked like Abraham Lincoln,” Wanda put in. She turned to Sarabeth. “Your daddy put a front and a side view of that one on the back of the A section.”
“It wasn’t Abraham Lincoln,” Haskins grumbled from across the room. “It was Lyndon Johnson.”
“No, you’re thinking ’bout the tomato last summer,” Wanda said. “Mrs. Rutherford from Black Gnat brought it in and she gave us all sacks of fresh tomatoes out of her garden, too, remember?”
“I grew me a tomato onct looked just like the Pope,” the farmer said.
Sarabeth bit the inside of her lip so hard she drew blood in an effort not to burst into giggles. If this was the kind of news her father covered, what in the world had he meant by the cryptic message he’d left for her the night he died? Sarabeth had played it over and over just to hear his voice. And not just his voice, but his voice so alive. He was energized like she hadn’t heard him in years. Excited and enthusiastic.
She could recite the message from memory.
“Hold onto your hat, Baby Girl, ’cause your daddy’s got big news. I’ve wanted to tell you about this a dozen times, but I had to be sure first. I’ve been working on a story that’s going to make national headlines! Just have to keep my mouth shut for another week or so. Only a couple more i’s to dot and t’s to cross and then I’ll break this story wide open. When I do, the national press is going to be all over Callison County! Call me as soon as you get this message and I’ll tell you about it. I love you, Honey. Bye.”
But what big story could possibly come out of a newspaper that published potato look-alike pictures?