Dead Man's Song

“Do you want to know why?” Hangood tapped an inch of ash into a ceramic tray. “I’ll tell you. You see, the way it works around here is that I am the editor and you are the reporter. With me so far? Good. My job, in case you never had a chance to review the office handbook, is to decide which reporter should be assigned to which story, and then make some informed decisions on what they should write about those stories. Still with me?”

“Well, I—”

“As editor, I have the additional responsibility of reading each and every story that crosses my desk and making decisions on the correctness of the grammar, the completeness of the information, and…”

“Yes, but—”

“And…to decide if anything should be added or cut.” Hangood puffed blue smoke at him. “So if, just for the sake of argument, one of my reporters hands me an article that I think may be…shall we say…too biased, or too incendiary, or perhaps even a little unfair in certain regards, it is my job—my job, you understand—to either rewrite the piece, or ask the reporter to rewrite it. That’s clear enough, isn’t it?”

“Sure, but I—”

“However, there is another aspect to my job, one that I don’t always relish, but one that I am bound by both because of my job description and my obligations to the publisher—who, need I remind you, owns this paper—and that sometimes requires me to order either a total rewrite of the piece, reassign it to another reporter, or, in the case of this particular article, shit-can it.” With that he picked up Newton’s article on the deception and political games playing in Pine Deep and dropped it with great precision into his wire-mesh wastebasket.

“You can’t!” Newton cried, leaping to his feet.

“Ah, but I just explained that I, indeed, can.”

“You…you…”

Hangood held up a warning finger. “Watch your adjectives, sonny-boy. What you say now can affect your next paycheck, meaning that it will affect whether you will be getting one.”

Newton clamped his mouth shut but tried to telepathically project the long string of astonishingly descriptive vulgarisms that tingled like pins and needles on his tongue. Hangood smiled benignly around the stump of his cigar, then raised his hand again and stabbed the air with a thick finger, indicating Newton’s vacant chair. “Sit!”

Newton sagged back into the chair, his lungs emptying the unspent words as a long sigh of defeat.

“Good. Now listen to me.” Hangood leaned forward and rested his hairy elbows on the desk. “You are the golden boy of the moment, and I am fully aware of that. You’ve just given the Sentinel the biggest story we’ve ever had, and the sales have gone through the roof. The publisher and I are happy with you, and I think you’ll see an expression of our pleasure come payday. But that, as the saying goes, is yesterday’s news. Today you are sitting on the fence between continuing to be the golden boy and getting your ass bumped down to writing about dog shows and town fairs.”

“What’s going on, Dick? That article is—”

“Is what? Libelous? Incendiary? Needlessly provocative?”

“Isn’t that what we’re all about? Trying to expose the corrup—”

“No, it isn’t. What do you think this is? The Washington Post? We’re a small-town newspaper and that means we live and die on advertising dollars. The advertisers in small towns are almost exclusively local businesspeople, and in small towns the local businesspeople make up the entire body of local political power. Capiche? Not to mention the fact that our town, our sweet little burg of Black Marsh, can’t even sustain us—we get eighty percent of our advertising from Pine Deep. Now, do you really think it is prudent to run an article that attacks, even condemns, the mayor of Pine Deep, as well as the police department and the whole town in general? Especially when said mayor is being quoted and sound-bited by every media on God’s green Earth? Personally, I do not think that’s such a keen idea, Newt. I think that is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in a long time.”

“But it’s the truth!”

“So what? Since when did the truth matter in journalism? We write slanted and biased drivel so we can sell papers.”

“We have a respon—”

“Oh, please! What are you, a Boy Scout? You working on your Walter Cronkite merit badge?” Hangood sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Newt, you are actually a pretty good reporter, better than the average hack working for our little rag, but you’re only good when you stay the hell away from politics. You start writing about politics and suddenly you’re Oliver Stone writing a movie script. Conspiracies, hidden meanings, secret arrangements, black ops, and shadow governments. Christ, Newton, has anyone ever told you that you live in a small town? The extent of corruption around here is that the more taxes you pay the less you have to worry about parking tickets. This is not D.C., this is not Philly or New York. This is Small Town, USA. In Small Town, USA, we do not try to sell papers by smashing down local government and—no, don’t you dare try to give me your patented speech about the truth and the public’s right to know! The public around here wants to know which antique dealer is having a sale on Shaker furniture and what the Corn Growers Commission is planning to do about the newest tax bill. Forget politics, Newton, you don’t have the disposition for it, and I say that for your own good. I know you like to write about politics, and sometimes you are even right in what you say, but you get too worked up about it.”

“This story is the natural extension of the feature on Ruger.”

“I know it is, but it is injurious to the financial welfare of both Pine Deep and Black Marsh. That is a fact, and don’t bother trying to make an argument for truth over money, because the publisher cares a lot more about how well this paper sells than what it says. Sad, maybe, but true, and he does sign our paychecks.” Newton made a rude sound. He knew Hangood owned half of the paper himself. “Anyway,” Hangood continued, “that article you wrote yesterday was a dandy, and it was quoted all across the country. You are the first writer on the Sentinel to have a piece picked up, word for word, by all the major wire services.”

“So, doesn’t that give me leverage to—”

“No, it doesn’t, but it does give you some consideration. The article you wrote about the corruption in Pine Deep is dead, gone, never existed. It’s not even a rumor in this office. Accept that or resign.” Hangood waited, puffing blue clouds. Newton said nothing, his silence providing his grudging answer. “Okay. We’re done with that. Let’s start clean on the next issue.”

“Pray, what is that?” There was enough frost in Newton’s voice to lower the temperature of the room several degrees.

“I am going to offer you a very plum assignment. I talked it over with the publisher, and we’ve decided to assign you to writing a feature.”

“Oh no! No you don’t! Not another Daffodil Festival piece—”

“Shush! I am talking about a major feature, not some puff piece. A front-page feature with as many interior pages as you can fill.”

“On what?” Newton asked bitterly. “The secrets of how to make corn dollies?”

“Actually, no. I want you to write an extensive feature on the haunted history of Pine Deep and surrounding towns.” Newton stared at him, not believing what he was hearing. “Hear me out, Newton, hear me out. You’ve only lived here for about eight years, so you probably don’t know much about the history of the area.”

“Who cares about the history of the area?”

Hangood’s flat stare silenced him. “If you would like to try and be a reporter for a moment, I’ll explain. Good. Now, Pine Deep is the oldest town around here, much older than Black Marsh, Crestville, or any of the other burgs. It was settled way back in the Puritan days. Since it was settled there have been a series of weird and unexplainable events that have earned the town its reputation for being Spooksville, USA. Now, you may think that’s just boring stuff, and normally you would be right, but I have a little fact that just might whet your appetite.”

“Pray tell.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was another series of brutal murders in Pine Deep, long before this one. The reports differ, but the general consensus is that there were seventeen or eighteen savage murders in and around Pine Deep.”

“The Pine Deep Massacre, The Reaper Murders, the Black Harvest, whatever—I know this stuff already, Dick, the other papers have already played that card. Big deal. That was, what, thirty years ago?”

Hangood smiled. “There’s more.”