2

The Hickory Inn sat at the junction of a main highway and a secondary road, surrounded by national forest. It was a log structure with a series of tourist cabins behind it. A neon sign in front promised ORIGINAL JAKE’S BARBECUE, but the almost empty parking lot implied that neither the cabins nor the barbecue were presently in great demand. Brady pulled onto the gravel and stopped in front of the door.

The woman on the phone had sounded young. There was a red Mustang next to a log truck on the far side of the parking area, and he wondered if the car belonged to his mysterious caller. Only one way to find out. He opened his door and went across the porch and through the doorway, into the restaurant.

“Yes, sir?” The waitress came forward. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, but he could tell it wasn’t the waitress’s voice he’d heard on the phone.

“I came here to meet somebody,” he said, looking around the room.

“You’re Mr. Brady?” the waitress asked with a pine hills twang.

He nodded, surprised. “That’s right.”

“This way,” she smiled and led him along a wooden railing to the far corner. And there, seated at a table, half-hidden by the shadows, was the woman.

“Mr. Brady,” she said, and there was no mistaking her voice. “Thank you so much for coming.” She rose to give him a hand, and he saw her face for the first time. She was mid-twenties, with coal-black hair and green eyes and skin the color of cream. She wore a frilly white blouse and a crimson skirt, and an almost indefinable scent of perfume stole out to tease his senses.

The waitress poured coffee into both cups and drifted away. Brady sat down.

“I have to admit, Miss Maguire, you’ve aroused my curiosity.”

“I guarantee, it isn’t intentional. But I thought maybe meeting with you away from your office would be best. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.”

“Well, not unusually so. But I do have a special edition to get out, plus next week’s issue, so if you don’t mind coming to the point …”

She nodded, pursing her lips. “Fair enough.” She leaned forward over the table and a wisp of black hair fell across her forehead. “Mr. Brady, let me start by saying that when I heard you’d bought the Express I was, well, surprised. I’ve read your stories for a long time. We studied them in journalism class. And then when you won the Pulitzer …”

“I’m flattered, but …”

“Please. I’ll get to the point as fast as I can. I heard you’d bought the paper, and it just happened to coincide with my own plans to come back to Troy to live. I’m from here, you see.”

Brady nodded and stirred his coffee. “And?”

“And, Mr. Brady, I want you to take me on.”

The editor blinked. “Miss Maguire …”

“No, wait. Before you say no, I have experience. I know almost everything there is to know about running a weekly, and I worked for two years on a neighborhood paper in Boston. Look, I have a scrapbook of my work …”

And before he could protest, she was dragging a portfolio up from under the table. “I did a story on runaway kids and …”

Brady reached across, put his hand on the scrapbook. “Miss Maguire, I’m sure your work is excellent, but the fact is …”

She pinioned him with her eyes and he found himself wanting to say yes. “Mr. Brady, listen, please. You’re good, I know you’re good. They don’t hand out the Pulitzer to morons. But you don’t know this town. I do. You need somebody like me. You’re trying to get out an issue for the town’s centennial, right? I know that because I know when the town was founded, and you mentioned a special issue. Okay. I can help you make that the best issue that’s ever been printed. I mean, I was born here. I know the people. Take Frederick Cantrell. I did a paper on him when I was in high school; his career as a writer and war correspondent. You have to have something about him. He’s probably about the most famous person that ever came from this parish. I could …”

Brady shook his head wryly. “Miss Maguire, everything you say is true. But the fact is, I don’t have the money to hire anybody just now. I have no doubt you’d be a tremendous asset, but when I bought the Express the circulation was at bare rock bottom, and I used just about all my capital, plus taking out a loan.” He lifted his hands helplessly. She gave a little shrug.

“Okay. Then how’s this: I’ll work for nothing, as a stringer. I’ll help you build up the circulation. And when it’s where you think you can afford it, then you can start paying me.”

Brady sighed. “I really couldn’t allow you to do that, Miss Maguire. I appreciate your willingness, but I can’t have you work for nothing, especially when there’s no assurance things will ever be that much better.”

She started to protest, saw it would be futile, and bit her lip. “I guess that’s final.”

“I’m afraid so.”

She nodded. “All right. But I have to tell you, I’m lousy at taking no for an answer.”

He smiled. “What can I say?” He got up. “Well, Miss Maguire, I really have to go. Good luck.”

He hurried out, glad to be back in the sunlight and yet oddly regretful at the same time. She was a pretty girl, and she probably would be an asset, but he hadn’t lied about his financial situation. Besides, he was unsettled by her means of securing an interview. It was devious, and yet there was something about Kelly Maguire that struck him as intrinsically honest.

Well, it was not something he could afford to worry about. Right now there was the matter of an interview with Professor Whiteside. Fortunately, the college was just twenty miles down the road, so the meeting with the Maguire girl hadn’t really been out of the way. Brady nudged his Galaxy to sixty and rolled down the window, breathing in the fresh ozone smell of the pine woods and coasting down the hills after his shadow. The forest was on all sides, a two-hundred-thousand-acre wilderness with just a few small towns and homesteads. It was one of the things that had made coming to Troy so attractive; it was red earth, sand hill, pine woods country, as unlike the New Orleans swamp as anything could be. When he looked out of the windows, he did not see Ozzie’s face reflected in borrow pits beside the road.

It was just after two when he reached Fletcher, the tiny community that hosted the college. Founded as a normal school in the early part of the century, the institution had expanded in the sixties and, with the oil glut that was ravaging the state, fallen on hard times in the eighties. Students were fewer, appropriations smaller; but the campus was still a pretty one, entered through brick pillars that framed an oak-lined main drive. Brady found the Humanities building, a red brick two-story structure that dated from the late forties, and parked. One o’clock classes were just letting out and a trickle of students passed him on the sidewalk. They all seemed so young these days, so contented, after the ferment of the sixties, when he had been in school.

He went through the big glass doors into a hallway smelling of wax. Whiteside’s office was on the second floor, and the door was open as Brady approached. The newspaperman knocked perfunctorily and walked in, to find the room empty. The walls were lined with history texts, everything from Schlesinger to Williams’s Huey Long. An attaché case rested beside a swivel chair and a conference schedule was open on the littered desk. Brady heard footsteps behind him and turned.

A medium-sized man with a shock of prematurely white hair was coming through the doorway, a sheaf of papers under his arm and several students in tow. He had a square, pleasant face with lively blue eyes, and when he saw Brady, he thrust out a hand.

“Dick Whiteside. You must be Pete Brady, the new publisher.”

“Afraid so.” The other man had a firm grip and Brady wondered if he worked out.

Whiteside turned to the students behind him. “If you have questions about the test on Monday, see Mr. Lowe, my assistant.” He smiled and closed the door behind him, shaking his head.

“Some things never change, like student alibis. But they’re a good bunch of kids, mostly. Sit down, Pete. I understand you’re putting together an issue on the centennial of the town?”

“Right,” Brady said, taking a straight-backed chair beside the desk. Whiteside flopped into his own chair and loosened his tie and collar. “I’ve read through your parish history, of course …”

Whiteside flashed a quick, self-conscious grin. “Parish historical society asked me to write it. It can’t exactly stand as one of the state’s foremost historical documents, but I learned a lot doing it.” He tugged an ear. “Would’ve been nice if the promotions committee had considered it more favorably. I wouldn’t have to be fighting for tenure again this year. But there is a difference between a book printed up by a local historical group and one published by a university press. It’ll never win a Pulitzer …” He chuckled and Brady forced a smile.

“Dr. Whiteside …”

“Dick, please …”

Brady nodded. “Dick, I understand Troy Parish was anti-secessionist during the Civil War, is that right?”

The historian nodded. “That’s right. It surprised me, too, when I came here originally. Oh, I’m not from this part of the state, you see. I guess I thought all the parishes in redneck country must have been solid Confederacy, but the fact is that Troy and several of the other parishes—Winn, Union, and so forth—had little in common with the secessionist cause, which they saw as a rich man’s movement, spearheaded by the wealthy planters and slave owners. This part of the state was settled very late, after the middle of the last century, and there never was that dense a population. People had all they could do to raise a few crops and stay alive without going to war about something that seemed to mainly affect the big landowners. There weren’t any plantations up here, except along the Red River. So the parish was Unionist, and, at the turn of the century, Populist.” Whiteside cleared his throat, settling into the lecture. “Now, don’t get me wrong. Unionist doesn’t mean Abolitionist and Integrationist. Most people in this part of the state still think the black man should stay in his place. And there was an active Klan during the twenties. But race-baiting here was never the kind of thing it was in some places. Take Huey Long, for instance. He was a demagogue, but the race issue simply had no place in his agenda. People were too interested in where their next meal was coming from to worry about the blacks.”

“Interesting.” Brady jotted a few notes in his little book. “There was something else you mentioned in your book, this business about Frederick Cantrell …”

“Oh, yes, Cantrell the writer.” Whiteside leaned back, his hands behind his head, staring at the top shelf of the bookcase over his desk. “There isn’t much to tell, but I’m sure you’ll have to say something in your paper. He was about the most famous person to ever come from Troy. Sort of an enigma, though. He was part of the Lost Generation, born just after the turn of the century. Ended up in Paris after the war, and came back in 1936. Settled down to write that book, American Epitaph, about his adventures as a hobo during the early Depression.” Whiteside cocked an eye. “He got a Pulitzer, too. Deserved it. Good book.”

“Yes,” Brady said. “I read it a long time ago.”

The professor nodded. “Sort of a prose Vachel Lindsay. His dispatches from the front in World War II were never quite as good. But you’ll want to talk to Rowena Forbes, the librarian. She’s the caretaker of the Cantrell Archives. I don’t think any of his relatives are left in the town; he came from a pretty poor bunch. They moved on during the First World War. Beats me why he even came back.”

Brady wrote Forbes—See re Cantrell. “Any other notable figures?” Brady asked. “Or events?”

“Well, of course, there was the formation of the National Forest in the thirties. Federal government bought a lot of land. Folks didn’t always want to sell. I’d tiptoe around that if I were you. Lots of people still remember. Ask your friend, Emmett Larson. He’ll remember. Man knows a hell of a lot more about the town than I do. Maybe too much.”

“Oh?”

“Well, he isn’t the most popular man in town, in case you hadn’t guessed. Abrasive. Opinionated. He could’ve written the parish history and maybe he should have. But they didn’t want to go to him. Too much trouble to deal with. I like Emmett, but I have to admit I was glad when I heard you’d bought him out. Nothing personal—just a matter of professionalism. You can’t lambaste the town on the front page week after week and expect people to buy it, even if you have good reason.”

The teacher leaned forward and glanced at his watch. “Well, if there isn’t anything else, I have to be in Alexandria in a couple of hours to catch a plane. I’m supposed to give a paper tomorrow at the regional historical conference in Atlanta. Beautiful Atlanta. One of the perquisites of being an academic.” He opened his attaché case and thrust the conference schedule into one of the pockets. “New Views of Plantation Life in Reconstructionist Louisiana. There’ll probably be all of ten people there to hear it. The things you have to do to keep your job.”

He shook Brady’s hand and the publisher thanked him.

When Brady got back to Troy, it was nearly four. His two staffers had come in, but he could tell by the relieved look on Mrs. Rickenbacker’s face that the afternoon had not been productive.

“Mr. Brady, I’ve been here twenty-five years …” the gray-haired, nervous little woman began.

The red-haired Ripley threw up his hands. “And haven’t changed anything since. My God, Mr. Brady, all I’m trying to tell her is that if you let somebody get by for sixty days without a payment notice …”

“Mr. Brady,” the beleagured bookkeeper protested, with a trembling lip, “I know the people around here. They may teach hard-sell tactics in college, but it doesn’t make you very popular. But if you don’t have any confidence in me, then maybe it’s time I did like Mr. Larson and retired. My husband needs me since his operation anyway.”

“Calm down,” Brady commanded. “Mrs. Rickenbacker, I couldn’t do without you. Now why don’t you take off and we’ll discuss this tomorrow.”

When she had gone, he turned to the gloating student. “Ripley, why don’t you leave, too.” He sighed. “By the way, any messages?”

Ripley pointed to a cluster of message slips on Brady’s desk. “Nothing important,” he pronounced breezily and left before Brady could reply.

Brady settled into his chair and scanned the bits of paper. The first two notes were routine, about subscriptions. The third was from Frieda MacBride, inviting him to the cemetery working and picnic on Saturday. And the fourth was from Emmett Larson, saying it was nothing important; he’d come in Monday. Brady looked at the pile of work on his desk, told himself he ought to stay another couple of hours to finish it, then said the hell with it and locked the door behind him.

It had been a long week and the thirst was on him. Six months ago, it would have been a simple thing to make a pass by Totolino’s on Magazine. In the end, he had spent so many hours in the bar he’d had his own table in the corner, where only he sat. It was a time he didn’t want to think about, so he tried to keep his mind focused on the here-and-now of high school sports, births, deaths, and cemetery workings. Maybe, for relaxation, he’d drive into Alexandria for a movie tomorrow night. The only movie in Troy was the drive-in, which was still closed for the winter. He crossed the railroad tracks, the same tracks on which the writer Frederick Cantrell had returned to town over a half-century before, and started down Center Street. The redbuds were in full bloom, their blossoms bright pink in the late afternoon sun, and in the distance he could hear saws from the pulp mill on the other end of town. Troy had a rhythm, a cadence of its own, and he told himself that he would fall into it after a few weeks.

In the middle of the block, he came to his house. It was a comfortable wooden structure—three bedrooms and a bath and a half—with a couple of pecan trees outside for shade. He had a feeling he was paying more rent than he should, but it was convenient and well maintained. He collected his mail, opened the front door, and got a ginger ale out of the refrigerator.

He glanced over his mail. A couple of bills and a note from Robichaux at the Picayune: We all think fondly of you and we’re keeping your desk clear for when you come back. Brady smiled wistfully. Good old Roby. But he’d told them when he’d left he wasn’t coming back, and he meant it.

He downed the rest of the ginger ale, tried to tell himself it assuaged the deep craving he had for something stronger, and turned on the television. Then he remembered it was too early for news and he shut it off again.

He drifted into the front bedroom, which he’d converted to a study. He’d made up his mind to keep a journal, if for no other reason than, at the end of a given number of days, he could look back and remind himself that he’d been sober for that many pages. Already he’d entered the names of the people Emmett had taken him to during his initial visit: the mayor; the president of the police jury, or parish council; the judge; the district attorney; a couple of bankers; the undertaker who was renting him this house; everyone of consequence, in fact, except the sheriff, who had been attending a law enforcement seminar at the FBI Academy, a fact that several of Brady’s new acquaintances pointed to with pride. Now he had some more names to enter. He began with Frieda MacBride and beside her name he scribbled: unpleasant, troublemaker, gossip. Worse??? Then he wrote: Dick Whiteside. Genial. Perceptive. He thought for a moment, then added: A little old to be looking for tenure. Should be a full professor by now. Next he wrote the name of Emmett Larson. Of course, he’d met Emmett before any of the others, a couple of months ago when he’d first thought of buying the Express. But he’d gotten a new perspective on Emmett today, thanks to Whiteside. He pressed his pen carefully against the paper: Is Emmett Larson the loveable town curmudgeon or is he a truly angry man?

And, finally, there was the girl, Kelly Maguire. His pen poised and no words came. Then, hastily, he scribbled: Beautiful, mysterious, calculating, sincere (?). He was still looking down at the page in front of him, trying to think what else to write, when a knocking roused him from his thoughts and he stuck the journal in the desk drawer. Probably some neighbor, come to welcome him or invite him to a local function.

He made his way to the front door, pulled it open, and stood back in surprise.

The person on his doorstep was Kelly Maguire.