Chapter 23

As soon as Rawle set the paper down, the phone began to ring.
It was early in the morning and he knew it could only be Jack Lee calling at this time of day.
He was so sure, he did something he never does, especially on the Gazette line. He answered with a dumb running joke where him and Jack pretended to be homos:
“Ooooohhhh, give it to me, Jacky,” he lisped.
It was not Jack.
It was an old croaking, grandmother-type voice. “What in Jesus is this?” it said.
For a second, Rawle thought Jack might be pulling some kind of joke, but the voice was much too realistic.
“I’m sorry…” he said, embarrassed. “Whoops. How can I help you?”
“Is this a screwin’ line? I wanna talk to the Gazette reporter. Rawly Power. This is the number they gave me, 6-7-9-3-7-0-1.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. That’s right…. It’s also my home office number …. I have a home office,” he stammered. “Rawle. My first name rhymes with Wall, not Wally… How did you say I could help you?”
“What are you talking about now? Are you the reporter or aren’t cha?” the grandmother growled.
“Yes, I am. How can I help you.”
“Good, so maybe you can explain how you put a story in the newspaper that some innocent person’s a tempted murderer?”
“… I’m sorry, a which…?”
“You called my son a Jesus arsonist in the newspaper. I’m talking to my lawyer, so we’ll see what he says about it.”
“Your son…. If you don’t mind me asking, what is your son’s name?” Rawle asked.
“’Don’t mind me asking…’” She mimicked, in a snitty voice. “Aren’t you precious? Did they teach you that in journalism school? Or did you even go to journalism school?”
Rawle winced. He hated it when people asked him about journalism school, ever since an incident a couple years ago. Rawle had interviewed the Premier of Nova Scotia when he was running for re-election and swung through the Valley on the campaign trail.
It was the first time Rawle had met the Premier and he stupidly let slip that he’d never gone to journalism school, but instead worked his way up writing freelance. That little tidbit of information went into some kind of political enemies’ database. Whenever he wrote a story from that day on that made the government look bad, a surrogate of the Party would call him up or call up the managing editor and complain about how Rawle never went to journalism school.
It was his Achille’s heel in the high-stakes world of rural journalism. For some reason, he found it very troubling to hear this woman bring it up too, probably inadvertantly.
Who is she?
“Who do you think my son is?” she continued. “Are you stupid too, besides being uneducated?” Her voice was getting louder and more gravelly, like a longtime smoker’s. It was filling with more hate and bitterness the more she spoke.
She must be Perry Paul Spalding’s mother, he thought, who else could be so horrible sounding a woman.
“Darroll Jack Jesus Missions!” she screamed into the receiver.
“Darroll Jack… Jesus.”
“Yes, precious. Did I jog your memory?”
Rawle felt his face blush hotly at her use of the N-word. He opened the morning paper that was folded and sitting on his crap-strewn staircase just off the kitchen.
He spread the paper out and rummaged for the section with his story in it.
“Just a sec...”
He found the story. Jack had indeed written something about someone named Darroll Missions, who he described as a 20-year-old convicted drug dealer from Melanson, Kings County. Missions was believed to have performed the firebombing legwork, Jack wrote, on the orders of Perry Spalding. Jack cited “two sources close to the incident,” which was about as vague sourcing as you could get. It was quite likely that the anonymous sources in the story were Jack’s police officer family members.
Rawle skimmed through the rest of the story, looking for more information, meanwhile giving Darroll Mission’s mother the standard reporter’s defense, designed to cover almost any transgression:
“I apologize ma’am, but we cited sources telling us this. We aren’t necessarily saying this ourselves, we’re simply informing the public of what our sources told us.”
But she didn’t like that explanation much. “Bull shit! And who you mean we? Who’s we?” she hollered. “You think you can blow me off with an answer like that? I’m bringing on a lawsuit for this, Baby Powder. A lawsuit on you and the newspaper, and I’m going after big money. You think I ain’t ever been before a court before? You pussy-sniffling little chink?”
Rawle physically flinched again at her colourful language. Did she just call me a chink?
“-It’s defamation. Or you figure out a way to make amends with me. I said hello?”
Rawle stayed quiet. This was not the first time he’d received an angry reaction to a story.
Valley Bureau even had a regular phone stalker, a convicted possessor of child pornography who regularly called Jack and Rawle spewing profanity and threatening lawsuits whenever they filed stories on his ongoing legal saga.
Rawle used to give the child porn guy a fair hearing, until he had a kid of his own. As soon as Athan was born, Rawle could no longer stomach talking to the guy. The last time he called, Rawle told him that if he ever called again he’d ‘crush him under a boulder.’
“-Darroll may be stupid, but he was nowhere’s nears that old cow and her stupid kids. You got it way wrong, you… You got it way wrong. He had nothing to do with it. I know that for a Jesus fact!”
Rawle said nothing.
“So? Where’s my apology? What’s my recourse? What you going to do to fix this?”
“Look…” Rawle was at a loss for words. There was something almost frightening about the woman’s tone of voice. The volume of her voice was incredibly loud and hoarse.
“What are you going to do for me?” She bellowed again.
“I can’t-“
“-What are you going to do for me? And quite sayin’ ‘I cannn’t’. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR ME!”
Rawle made an excuse about how he had to get off the phone and hung up. Her booming voice stayed for a moment, like a bell reverberating in his ears.
She’d raised his blood-pressure. He sat down on the staircase and forced himself to calm down.