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  I allocated maybe half a column covering this brouhaha in the Clarion, a few lines on an inside fold, but when I contacted Hiram for comment he tore into my ass like Nixon into Woodward, threatening to pull his advertisements along with whatever subscribers he influenced.

  I bought our local paper after being laid off from the Boston Globe. I had my own column at the Globe, “The Daily Take, from Clara Buchanan.” Had my picture topping the column, airbrushed to erase ten years from my actual age, a tumble of unkempt hair framing a face windburned from countless hours sculling on the Charles. That was before Hillary’s messy defeat and the layoffs at my newspaper. Before my brush with Speaker Ryan and precipitous fall from grace. I came back to Laureate thinking that at least in my own hometown I’d be released from restraints imposed by pusillanimous editors and lawyers. I’d be a free agent. Independent. In no man’s pocket! I’d write what I wanted to write without fear or favor, by God. Say whatever the hell was on my mind.

  Like Rachel Maddow.

  That was before my monthly survival hinged on display ads and the capriciousness of subscribers self-identified as zealots for Jesus, the Tea Party, or the NRA. I stood up to Hiram’s extortion for about two and a half seconds.

  “How ’bout I just print the minutes?”

  “Print one word, you’ll lose my ads and anybody else’s owes me. I’ll make damn sure.”

  So I pulled the story. Here I am, the big-shot reporter and one-time foreign correspondent, the woman who faced down drug lords and jihadists from Colombia to the Congo, a Pea-body winner, not to mention a regular on Meet the Press—but with a single threat to my wallet Hiram Lamb put me in a corner. I caved. The brothers Lamb beat me without throwing a punch, but they lost the opening round in their fight to take Butch’s half-acre inheritance. For a while, Butch could relax. There was no fresh incentive to take away his land and the Lamb brothers seemed disinclined for a second round with Sheryl Lee Pearson.

  But then came an unexpected opportunity.

  Was maybe a week after little Jenny’s green man ban-nered my headline that the Honorable Bull Putnal drove over from Madison to meet with Hiram and Roscoe and one or two hangers-on at the majordomo’s table in Carl Koon’s coffeehouse.

  Bull Putnal is the ensconced representative serving our district in the House of a rancorous legislature. I’ve known Bull from grade school when his name was still “Terrence.” I have no idea how Putnal acquired his bovine moniker. The man surely does not look anything like a bull. Our home-owned pol is shorter than average height and soft as putty with a triple chin that shivers like the wattle on a turkey. But he is an edacious son of a bitch. I’ve seen Bull devour a side of ribs and a pound of brisket in less time than it takes most people to swallow an aspirin. Not a dresser. He uses a Rotary pin to anchor a clip-on tie and I’ve never seen Terry in a belt. A pair of work suspenders wide enough to tow trucks hitches onto polyester slacks that bag around the man’s ankles like socks on a rooster.

  But I guarantee you, if Bull Putnal was thrown buck naked into a house full of thieves, he’d come out owning an emporium. I should disclose that I’m not one of Put-nal’s confidants. I definitely am not invited to his coffee-table confabs. In fact, during the particular soiree to be reported here, I was snapping pictures in the pasture outside the coffeehouse. But no conversation stays private for long, and even a rookie reporter could find sources to reconstruct that morning’s powwow.

  “Mornin’, Bull,” Hiram greeted the politician as he waddled up to join the Lambs and a smattering of other locals.

  “Hiram. Roscoe. Gentlemen. Connie, can I get a coffee?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Connie leaning far over a table to scoop up a tip and display her twin gifts. The family values candidate smiling his appreciation for that favor.

  “What you got, Mr. Putnal?” Roscoe Lamb guided the old goat’s attention back to the table.

  “Good news.” Bull settled himself grandly into a chair built for an ass about half the width of his own.

  “You found my dog?” Roscoe inquired.

  Roscoe had begun the morning’s conversation expressing distress over the loss of his favorite hound.

  “Best damn deer dog I ever had. Cost me a fortune.”

  “Cain’t do anything ’bout your dog, Roscoe.” Bull clucked sympathy. “But I might can help you recoup some of that fortune.”

  “Roscoe’s always up for that,” the high school’s principal quipped.

  Hiram’s brother rewarding that familiarity with a cold glance.

  “You were sayin’, Bull?”

  Putnal smiled unctuously. “Ya’ll know that federal money the legislature was chewing over last session? For the schools?”

  “Ain’t the fed’s money,” Hiram Lamb chimed in to correct his representative. “It’s our damn money. Goddamn socialists wanta stimulate the ’conomy, let ’em waste somebody else’s earnings.”

  “You don’t take it, somebody else will,” Bull replied, smiling.

  “The hell you talking about?”

  “Four and a half million dollars is all.”

  “You mean $4.5 million dollars of pork.”

  The legislator waved his marbled hands over the table like it was a Ouija board. “Call it pork. Call it discretionary or stimulus. Call it whatever yer want to, but it’s out there and it’s gonna git spent. But you got to submit a bid.”

  “Bid? What bid?” Hiram was suddenly alert.

  Well, it turns out that a grant written by one of those despised bureaucrats qualified Lafayette County for federal funds dedicated to repair and renovate Laureate Consolidated School. Still chafing from losses suffered during the not-so-distant recession, Hiram and Roscoe Lamb were abruptly offered the lion’s share of a $4.5-million-dollar pie.

  I’m not sure that lions eat pie, but the Lamb brothers—?

  Let’s just say they were incentivized.

  “So we’re talkin’ a new cafeteria, here?” Hiram snapped open his Mont Blanc.

  “And some inside work on the main building. And the basketball court,” Bull confirmed.

  Hiram scribbling estimates on a napkin.

  “. . . I can build the cafeteria new and refinish the basketball court for under three million. Two and a quarter. Two and a half, tops. Should leave plenty for the electrical work and air-conditionin’ and so on. I don’t need those contracts.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see I’ve piqued your interest,” Putnal replied drily.

  “You’ll help us out, won’t you?”

  “I fully intend to lobby for your participation, Hiram.” Bull smiled. “Of course, I’m countin’ on ya’ll to help me too.”

  “We awready got that cat skinned,” Roscoe declared.

  “Oh, I know, I know.” The state’s rep dabbed at a spot on the table with his napkin. “You boys are on board. That’s not the problem.”

  “There’s a problem?”

  “More like a caveat.”

  “The fuck is a caveat?” Roscoe turned to Principal Wilburn to answer that question, but the conversation, at least by Laureate standards, kept racing along.

  “Got a issue related to landscape,” Bull declared, and nodded in the general direction of the school grounds.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Local Minister Says Evolution ‘Voodoo Science’

  The Clarion

  Carl Koon’s Coffeehouse & Café offers two views of our county’s consolidated school. One of Carl’s wide windows looks west over the playground to the high school, the cafeteria, and Butch’s store. The java shop’s rear window faces due north across a hayfield to the elementary wing situated on the far side. The field was swarming with activity on the morning of Representative Putnal’s visit, a sward littered with crepe paper, bunting and papier-mâché skirting flatbed trailers parked like so many bombers on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

  It was football season and the rites of homecoming were on full display. Start with the floats. Every homecomin
g week at LHCS, students from grades nine through twelve compete for the coveted honor of “Best Float” which means that once a year the hayfield behind the Koons’ place of business turns into a project alfresco with a fervor to rival Mardi Gras. The week begins with a school assembly and builds over a span of days to an elaborate parade, the homecoming queen and king installed in Confederate colors on some vintage convertible amidst a flotilla of trailers. The school’s band leads the procession, marching in full regalia past the courthouse on Main Street and all the way to the water tower on the edge of town.

  It’s football in the South, a Friday night fever set to peak with Trent Lamb leading the hometown Hornets against the Lake Butler Tigers. “Sting Them Tigers!” Trent and his brother, Danny, were pretending to help a cheerleader staple that banner on a rig of goal posts. Sheryl Lee Pearson was engaged with a pair of Latino students also working on the seniors’ float. Edgar Uribe, the man-sized migrant who crossed swords with the Lamb brothers, was completely absorbed in the final touches on an amazingly detailed sculpture of NASA’s lunar lander, shavings of Styrofoam lodging on his shirt and in his thick dark hair.

  It is the prerogative of graduating seniors to choose a theme for their homecoming parade, those motifs ranging in past years from “Just Say No” to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” This year the theme was positively geek, “Life On Other Worlds,” which meant that bales of tissue and logs of Styrofoam would go to the construction of extraterrestrial gags, gimmicks, or similar presentations.

  The discipline of students, haphazard even in ordinary seasons, was suspended entirely for homecoming. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors were allowed to skip class so long as they were engaged in some approved activity, and if they were working on a float the dress code was greatly relaxed, to the delight of coffeehouse patrons, mostly men edging to retirement, who gathered at Carl’s rear window to see teenage nymphs stretched over bunting or hiking up a stepladder to drape a truncated goal post.

  Caffeine-primed to catch a flash of leg, belly, or breast.

  “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that landscape,” Roscoe intoned and Principal Wilburn swallowed an embarrassed laugh.

  Bull Putnal waddled around in his chair to face Hiram.

  “But it ain’t the pasture’s in the way. It’s this here site. Right chere.”

  “You mean—the coffeehouse?” Hiram now leaning in close to the pol’s ear.

  Representative Putnal nodded. “Way the plans work, the school can’t expand south, and there’s already residences built on three sides. Only way to add construction is out front, toward Main Street, and with easements and all, that means Carl’s gonna have to relocate his business to accommodate the new construction.”

  “Don’t tell Carl,” Hiram warned. “Or Connie either, for that matter. They’ll try to milk the deal.”

  “Why I’m tellin’ you-all now,” Bull smiled. “Ya’ll oughta be able to convince Carl to move locations. Either that or buy him out. Which just leaves one piss-ant piece of land left to worry over.”

  “Another caveat? Where?”

  Bull pointed a finger fat as a sausage.

  “Candy store.”

  “Butch’s store?!” Hiram’s birthmark flushed with his face.

  “It’s in the way.”

  “A half-acre lot?!” Roscoe practically choked on his coffee. “Hellfire, we can build around him, for Chrissake. We can build over him!”

  “Wish you could,” Putnal said with a cluck. “But the way the plans work, that street out front—? Is gonna be cut off. The new cafeteria’s gonna be built across the street from where it is now. Right on Butch’s property.”

  “Butch ain’t gone sell that shack. Not for all the tea in China.”

  This assessment from Marty Hart, a weasel-thin guard employed at the prison north of town.

  “This is a private conversation, Marty.”

  “Private or not that store is Butch’s life,” Marty rejoined. “It’s all he knows.”

  Principal Wilburn removed his glasses in a weighty attempt to influence strategy.

  “But couldn’t Butch’s land, or the coffeehouse for that matter, be acquired under eminent domain?”

  “Could if the state really wanted it,” Bull said, nodding. “Or if this was a federally mandated project. But this is a grant, gentlemen, a dump of federal money contingent on caveats already agreed to by the state legislature. Which means the feds don’t pay if we don’t play.”

  Silence fell around the table. Leave it to Marty to voice what everyone else was thinking.

  “Gotta be some way to part a half-wit from a half-acre of land.”

  Representative Putnal pointedly ignored that bait.

  “How much time we have?” Hiram asked finally.

  “Bids are due first of December.” Bull hitched his thumbs inside his out-sized suspenders. “Course, with the holidays and all, you got some more time. But still . . .”

  “We can’t get the bid till we get the land,” Roscoe said, summing up the situation, and Putnal’s wattle shimmied with the nod of his head.

  “That’s about it.”

  An uneasy silence settled over the table, broken only when Correction Officer Hart in complete non sequitur posed the question on almost nobody’s mind.

  “What ya’ll think about Jenny O’Steen’s little green man?”

  The table groaned in unison, but then Representative Putnal’s reply cracked up everybody at the table.

  “Can I get the bastard’s vote?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Great Balls of Fire Seen from Porch

  The Clarion

  About Daddy. I bought the Clarion for more than three hundred thousand dollars, two hundred grand of that total borrowed on the back of my father’s property. Wasn’t a loan, really, I rationalized. Just an advance on my inheritance. Dad sold most of our land after mother died, but he still has a double-wide on one hundred and twenty acres of pine not far from Pickett Lake. That collateral in hand, I went to the bank ignoring any possibility of failure. After all, Laureate’s hometown paper has been in business continuously since the thirties. I am only its third owner.

  National trends favored me too. It’s a curious fact that as big-time newspapers have folded or gone digital, broadsheets and weeklies with local ties in modest markets have hung on. Some have even thrived. Surely the Clarion’s ledger would balance roughly the same as it had in earlier decades, I told myself. After all, Laureate’s web of kith and kin kept their paper solvent through the Great Depression—why wouldn’t they support me now?

  In fairness, my father warned me.

  “Be sure you know what you’re getting into, Clara Sue.”

  “I’m born and raised in Laureate, Dad,” I replied. “Folks will believe me before any outsider.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know damn well what it means. Folks here don’t want to hear you ragging on conservatives. Sticking up for queers and trans-whatevers.”

  “Daddy, I have run maybe three or four columns total on gay rights in my entire career.”

  “What about that business with Speaker Ryan?”

  Okay, that.

  I may have mentioned that Speaker Ryan and I had ourselves a small contretemps. That kerfuffle unfolded a couple of months before Senator Clinton lost her bid for the presidency when Ryan released yet another proposal to cut taxes and hobble health care. I had spent months looking for sources other than Paul Krugman to debunk the speaker’s supply-side fantasies and was surprised to find a broad spectrum of wonks who agreed that the speaker’s budget simply did not add up. The underlying assumption that tax cuts pay for themselves was not supported by facts on the ground, but, hey—!

  You just have to believe.

  “I want to know if Paul Ryan is simply a dogmatist who ignores contrary evidence, or whether he’s a shill for big money,” I told my editor. “Is he a man of blind faith or a ma
n blinded by faith? Or is he just a liar with a Lon Chaney smile?”

  “Don’t go there,” my editor chided. “No arguments ad hominem. Assume unsullied intentions and stick with the numbers. Even Republicans can’t change arithmetic.”

  So the Globe sent me to Washington to interview Speaker Ryan. I called in advance to get an appointment and made sure to confirm the date and time. I arrived at the speaker’s office ahead of schedule, but a buzz-cut aide informed me that Ryan had been called to the White House and would not be able to meet with me to discuss the details of his latest budget. I asked when I could get our appointment rescheduled and got a vague reply. “We’ll let you know,” the flunky assured me, but three days and half a dozen e-mails later it became clear that Speaker Ryan had decided to duck the interview.

  However, there is one gig the speaker never evades. On any weekday morning you can find Congressman Ryan leading a dozen or more mostly Republican acolytes through a grueling workout. It’s one of those pseudo military routines that are popular. P90X is Ryan’s go-to. I decided that if I could not get the speaker on record in his office, I’d ambush him at his gym. The problem was that Ryan’s gymnasium only admits members from the United States House of Representatives. In fact, until the mid-eighties even women elected to Congress were not allowed inside the House gym and the place remains, in my opinion, a nest of narcissists. You’ve probably seen Ryan’s photo. The wide smile. Barbell and biceps. A baseball cap turned backward and a torso hairless as a newt. Lots of “hormone therapy” going on, it seems to me. Politicians touting family values signing up for testosterone boosters like Boy Scouts for Jamboree.

  The lockers are located in a subbasement of the Rayburn Building. You descend into those bowels, show your credentials to a security guard, and proceed down a claustrophobic hallway to find what looks like a wide, sterile cave with a low ceiling of acoustic tile punctured at intervals with fluorescent lighting that makes everything look like stale paste. A vast hardwood floor lined along the periphery with weights, mats, medicine balls. Lots of treadmills. I wangled a day pass from my Massachusetts representative and a little before six thirty in the morning jumped Speaker Ryan just as he emerged from the men’s locker room.