“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.