see his red eyes glowing at me. I quoted him on that.
“Have you interviewed your client at the jail?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Don’t you have better things to report?”
“No sir. What was he wearing?”
“Well, he wasn’t naked.”
That was too good a quote to pass up, so I put it in bold print in a sidebar.
With a rapist/murderer, a corrupt Sheriff, and a radical lawyer on one side, and me standing alone on the other, I knew I couldn’t lose the fight. The response to the story was astounding. Baggy and Wiley reported that the cafés were buzzing with admiration for the fearless young editor of the paper. The Padgitts and Lucien hadbeen despised for a long time. Now it was time to get rid of Coley.
Margaret said we were swamped with phone calls from readers incensed with the soft treatment Danny was receiving. Wiley’s nephew reported that the jail was in chaos and Mackey Don was at war with his deputies. He was coddling a murderer—1971 was an election year. Folks were angry out there and they might all lose their jobs.
______
T hose two weeks at the Times were crucial to its survival. The readers were hungry for details, and, through timing, dumb luck, and some guts, I gave them just what they wanted. The paper was suddenly alive; it was a force. It was trusted. The people wanted it to report with detail and without fear.
Baggy and Margaret told me that Spot would have never used the bloody pictures and challenged the Sheriff. But they were still quite timid. I can’t say that my brashness had in any way emboldened my staff. The Times was, and would be, a one-man show with a rather weak supporting staff.
Little did I care. I was telling the truth and damning the consequences. I was a local hero. Subscriptions jumped to almost three thousand. Ad revenue doubled. Not only was I shining a new light into the county, I was making money at the same time.
CHAPTER 7
T he bomb was a rather basic incendiary device that, if detonated, would have quickly engulfed our printing room. There the fire would have been energized by various chemicals and no less than 110 gallons of printer’s ink, and would have raced quickly through the front offices. After a few minutes, with no sprinkler system and no alarms, who knows how much of the upper two floors could have been saved. Probably not much. It was very likely that the fire, if properly detonated in the early hours of Thursday morning, would’ve burned most of the four buildings in our row.
It was discovered sitting ominously, still intact, next to a pile of old papers in the printing room, by the village idiot. Or, I should say, one of the village idiots. Clanton had more than its share.
His name was Piston, and he, like the building and the ancient press and the untouched libraries upstairsand down, came with the deal. Piston was not an official employee of the Times, but he nonetheless showed up every Friday to collect his $50 in cash. No checks. For this fee he sometimes swept the floors and occasionally rearranged the dirt on the front windows, and he hauled out the trash when someone complained. He kept no hours, came and went as he pleased, didn’t believe in knocking on doors when meetings were in progress, liked to use our phones and drink our coffee, and though he at first looked rather sinister—eyes wide apart and covered with thick glasses, oversized trucker’s cap pulled down low, scraggly beard, hideous buck teeth—he was harmless. He provided his janitorial services for several businesses around the square, and somehow survived. No one knew where he lived, or with whom, or how he got about town. The less we knew about Piston, the better.
Piston was in early Thursday morning—he’d had a key for decades—and said that he first heard something ticking. Upon closer examination he noticed three five-gallon plastic cans laced together with a wooden box sitting on the floor next to them. The ticking sound came
“Have you interviewed your client at the jail?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Don’t you have better things to report?”
“No sir. What was he wearing?”
“Well, he wasn’t naked.”
That was too good a quote to pass up, so I put it in bold print in a sidebar.
With a rapist/murderer, a corrupt Sheriff, and a radical lawyer on one side, and me standing alone on the other, I knew I couldn’t lose the fight. The response to the story was astounding. Baggy and Wiley reported that the cafés were buzzing with admiration for the fearless young editor of the paper. The Padgitts and Lucien hadbeen despised for a long time. Now it was time to get rid of Coley.
Margaret said we were swamped with phone calls from readers incensed with the soft treatment Danny was receiving. Wiley’s nephew reported that the jail was in chaos and Mackey Don was at war with his deputies. He was coddling a murderer—1971 was an election year. Folks were angry out there and they might all lose their jobs.
______
T hose two weeks at the Times were crucial to its survival. The readers were hungry for details, and, through timing, dumb luck, and some guts, I gave them just what they wanted. The paper was suddenly alive; it was a force. It was trusted. The people wanted it to report with detail and without fear.
Baggy and Margaret told me that Spot would have never used the bloody pictures and challenged the Sheriff. But they were still quite timid. I can’t say that my brashness had in any way emboldened my staff. The Times was, and would be, a one-man show with a rather weak supporting staff.
Little did I care. I was telling the truth and damning the consequences. I was a local hero. Subscriptions jumped to almost three thousand. Ad revenue doubled. Not only was I shining a new light into the county, I was making money at the same time.
CHAPTER 7
T he bomb was a rather basic incendiary device that, if detonated, would have quickly engulfed our printing room. There the fire would have been energized by various chemicals and no less than 110 gallons of printer’s ink, and would have raced quickly through the front offices. After a few minutes, with no sprinkler system and no alarms, who knows how much of the upper two floors could have been saved. Probably not much. It was very likely that the fire, if properly detonated in the early hours of Thursday morning, would’ve burned most of the four buildings in our row.
It was discovered sitting ominously, still intact, next to a pile of old papers in the printing room, by the village idiot. Or, I should say, one of the village idiots. Clanton had more than its share.
His name was Piston, and he, like the building and the ancient press and the untouched libraries upstairsand down, came with the deal. Piston was not an official employee of the Times, but he nonetheless showed up every Friday to collect his $50 in cash. No checks. For this fee he sometimes swept the floors and occasionally rearranged the dirt on the front windows, and he hauled out the trash when someone complained. He kept no hours, came and went as he pleased, didn’t believe in knocking on doors when meetings were in progress, liked to use our phones and drink our coffee, and though he at first looked rather sinister—eyes wide apart and covered with thick glasses, oversized trucker’s cap pulled down low, scraggly beard, hideous buck teeth—he was harmless. He provided his janitorial services for several businesses around the square, and somehow survived. No one knew where he lived, or with whom, or how he got about town. The less we knew about Piston, the better.
Piston was in early Thursday morning—he’d had a key for decades—and said that he first heard something ticking. Upon closer examination he noticed three five-gallon plastic cans laced together with a wooden box sitting on the floor next to them. The ticking sound came
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