"What does that mean? Come back here. What are you saying?" Paul looked around on the ground to find something, anything, to throw at the receding figure. There were lots of things on the ground near his feet, but he knew it would only make things worse if he threw something.
"Just be aware. That's all I'm saying," said the man, walking away at a good clip. What did he say his name was?
"Next time I might bring the police with me." The man was 30 feet away and almost to his car.
"You can't just come around--here and--," Paul looked up to see, umm, Hank, that was it, Hank, get in his sedan and close the door.
"Wait a second," Paul shouted, but the man, Hank, was already starting up his car and shifting into drive.
"You can't just come here and say shit like that." Boom, Hank was gone in a spray of gravel and a cloud of white dust.
Paul was mad, madder than he'd been in a long time, and then suddenly, it was like somebody pulled a lever and all the energy just flooded out of him and trickled off into the weed filled ditch. He couldn't even finish his thought.
"Shit," was all he managed to say and that was barely audible. He wished he could physically fall to the ground in a heap and burst into bright flames, but the best he could do was let his arms drop to his sides and his chin to his chest.
"Shit, shit, shit."
Paul couldn't even hear the car anymore. It was probably due to all the bushes and how the driveway turned a hundred feet or so further down.
Well, that hadn't exactly gone well, at least from his standpoint.
If you’d just walked in on this scene, and you have, you probably would not have guessed, from his rapid-fire rejoinder that Paul makes his living with words. You caught him at a bad moment.
Normally, he had quite an eloquent and effective style, but the man, Hank, had just told him that if he didn't retract the article that he'd written in the local newspaper, accusing Roger Bedford, a City Councilman for Travers City, of graft, fraud and malfeasance, that he (Paul) would be in court defending himself against a Libel Suit and he would lose his house and land here and would never work as a journalist again.
What Paul should've said and was kicking himself about was that, the First Amendment to the Constitution protected Paul's right to write anything he wanted as long as it was not malicious and false, and Paul felt he was well within the boundaries of those borders. On the other hand, nothing in the constitution protects your right to throw rocks at cars, so he lucked out there.
Thinking more about it, Paul also would've added something like, if Councilman Bedford had anything to say to him, he should do so at his office at the newspaper, in person, in front of witnesses, and not send some guy named "Hank Something," who wasn't even a lawyer to threaten him at his very home, which is a man's castle. Hah! That's what he should have said.
Thinking all this got Paul hopping around the driveway again, and worked into a lather. He stopped suddenly and thought to himself that he needed to get into the house and write everything that Hank had said as exactly as he could.
He turned now, proud that he pulled himself into some kind of professional ball to take appropriate action.
He strode back up the slight grade to the wooden steps leading into the mudroom and kitchen of the old farmhouse he inhabited by himself. He walked straight through to the dining area that now served as his office and sat down in the old wooden rolling chair that showed a mark or dent for every one of its 80 years. Without looking he reached for a pen from the tray as he flipped to a blank sheet on the yellow pad and began making notes, with as much detail as he could.
After three or four minutes of writing, the old black dial telephone sitting next to his desk lamp rang with an urgency that only a phone with a real bell could. Paul barely heard it on the first ring even though it was only 24 inches away from him. On the second ring he reached up with his left hand and brought the receiver to his ear.
"Paul," he said, cradling the phone with his left shoulder and writing as fast as he could.
"Paul, it's Mel. Did Bedford send somebody to your place yet? If not, he will." It was Melvin Turnbull down at the Register.
"Yep. Some guy name of Hank. Can't remember his last name now. I'm writing some notes about what he said now. I figure--"
"Wait! Paul, what did he say? I mean, exactly." Mel spoke slowly, deliberately.
"He said, I needed to write a retraction and take back what I said about Bedford. He said, I'd be sued for libel if I didn't. He said, I'd be sorry and I'd lose my house if I didn't." Just saying this started to wind him up again. "I almost --"
"Stop, Paul. Did he say anything about the Register? Did he say the Register would get sued too?"
"Oh yeah. Good point. I forgot to write that down." He scribbled a quick note as he said this.
"Paul, what did you tell him?"
"Well, not a lot. It took me by surprise when he said it. I kind of did a spin out. Almost threw a rock at him. What I should--"
"Paul, listen to me. What are you going to do?" Mel asked quickly.
When Paul heard the question, he stopped dead in his tracks and for a moment he was confused.
"Mel. What do you mean? What am I going to do? I'm not going to write a retraction, if that's what you're asking." He put the pen down and looked down at the blotter.
"Paul.--"
"Mel!" Paul cut him off. "We talked about this, remember? We went over the documents and the interviews. Remember? We agreed that it was clear that Bedford was dirty and we had to do something about it. Remember? Mel?" He waited then. This was very disorienting. What was Mel asking about here?
"Paul your article went pretty far. I'm just not sure now that we were on firm legal ground. I mean some of the stuff could be just interpreted as maybe light favoritism. His brother-in-law is the only Redi-Mix in the area, you know. I'm just thinking now that maybe--"
"Maybe what? Mel, maybe what? We went over it and over it. Remember? You agreed. You said I was right. He was making big money off of the project. Bob said the same thing. I asked you. Should we go with it? What did you say, Mel?" He was starting to feel sick to his stomach. What was happening here?
"I know what I said, Paul. But now I'm saying, I'm just not as sure that we were ready to go forward. You know?"
"Do you want to talk to a lawyer now, Mel? Is that it? Do you want to go over everything with a lawyer and see what they say?"
"I'm sitting here with a lawyer now, Paul, and he thinks maybe we were a little hasty."
"You're sitting with a lawyer now? Really, Mel?
"Look Paul, you know that the Register's a small paper. We don't have any resources really. We're closer to the Little Nickle than the Washington Post." When he said this, Paul felt the floor shift from under him.
"Paul, we should have talked to the lawyer before we published. That's clear to me now, and you know that, well darnit, as an independent contractor to us, I mean, we can't cover you for something like this. You know Bedford's got some power here." Mel's voice trailed off as he said this last part.
"Independent Contractor." Technically, Paul wasn't employed by the Register, and Mel was going to use that to distance himself and the paper from what Paul had written.
"What do you want me to do, Mel?" He knew what Mel was going to say. He'd already said it. What had made him think he could write something like this and make it stick? Jesus, it was true. He'd be lucky if he got out of this with a place to live.
If Paul wrote this retraction-- well, he could not go on writing for this newspaper or any paper anywhere around here. Travers City was small but it wasn't in a coma. What did he have besides his credibility, and a retraction put that to a quick death?
"I'm sorry, Paul. I'm just talking with the lawyer here, and he thinks that it would be best for everybody concerned if, for now, you understand? Just for now. We could always--"
"Sure Mel. We could always write the story again later and everything would be different. I could do it under a different name, right?" His mouth was becoming so dry that he could hardly swallow.
"I'm sorry, Paul. I..." he trailed off.
"I'll get started on it, Mel. Later." He hung up the phone and put his face in his hands.
Paul laughed aloud, maybe he could get hired at the Redi-Mix plant.
* * *
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