City of Grudges

by Rick Outzen

  After two dozen oysters and half as many beers, Summer began to tell me why she loved the paper and put up with my bullshit.

  “I’ve never worked at such a cool place, where what we do matters,” she said in a voice that was maybe a little tipsy.

  “You’re a good fit,” I replied. “You brought some order to the business side of the paper.”

  Summer straightened up and said, “Well, I should. I majored in accounting and had half a semester to go on my MBA when I moved here with the asshole.”

  “I’m sorry about the check issue today,” I said, “but I appreciate how you handled it.”

  She leaned towards me. “Well, I used to be a dope dealer.”

  Yes, she had a slight buzz going. She threw the line at me as if it were a nerf ball, wondering if I would catch or drop it. I tried not to show my surprise.

  “I don’t do it anymore, but selling pot paid for college,” Summer said flashing a sly smile. “No one ever suspected a wholesome coed of being a big dealer at Eastern Michigan.”

  She explained how she had run her business, never letting anyone buy on credit, and avoiding trouble with her suppliers. She made it sound like she had sold Girl Scout cookies.

  “When I was in high school I smoked pot and sold really small amounts,” she said. “When my supplier learned I had been accepted to Eastern Michigan, she told me how much money I could really make and offered to give me six ounces at a time.”

  I looked around to see if anyone was listening to our conversation. Summer lowered her voice a fraction. “I would sell that in about ten days, keep about seven or eight hundred dollars, and return the rest of the cut to my supplier, who would give me another six ounces. I did that through undergrad and grad school.”

  I asked, “Did it impact your studies?”

  “No, although developing the self-control to not smoke all my stuff was the hardest part. The dealing itself wasn’t that difficult. It took maybe fifteen minutes to put everything into dime bags for the week, and you need organizational skills to work around people’s schedules and make deliveries.”

  “How did you find customers?”

  She laughed. “It was a college in icy Michigan. Everybody smoked weed. The most money I made was when I was an RA in the residence hall. People would literally come knocking on my door for drugs, and there were parties in the building every night. I was always in demand.”

  “And you made enough to cover your college expenses?” I asked.

  Summer nodded. “My tuition was covered by my scholarship. I paid for, like, almost all of my expenses through dealing. I used it to feed me, go out, cover my car payments, and buy all my clothing, books, and supplies.”

  “Do you miss the money?”

  “No, I miss the excitement, which is probably why I was attracted to the Pensacola Insider. You give me my excitement fix every day.”

  “You seem to really like the Insider team,” I said.

  “I do. Mal is so cool. She’s well-read and very organized,” Summer said.

  “She really is the brains of the paper,” I said.

  “She and Teddy are a great couple,” she remarked. “I don’t think there’s a more talented, creative couple in Pensacola. I’ve seen other alt-weeklies in other cities. The Insider is special.”

  I nodded my agreement with her assessment.

  She continued, “Roxie is the perfect salesperson for this paper. She fights for clients and challenges you on their behalf. And I love her clothes.”

  “How about Jeremy and Doug?” I asked.

  “You and Mal give Jeremy too hard of a time. He can be a box of kittens, but he knows art and music.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “It’s just too easy to pick on him, especially with all of his melodrama.”

  “Walker, he’s your A&E writer. Doesn’t melodrama come with the job?”

  I laughed. “You have a point.”

  “I also hate to see Doug and Mal always at odds,” she added. “But Mal is probably right. He isn’t really cut out for this paper. He has the coolest job in town—investigative reporter for the Pensacola Insider. Girls would love to date him and hear his tales, but all he wants to do is fish.”

  I nodded. “I’m hoping he will come around and see the value of our reporting.”

  “I don’t think it will ever happen,” Summer said, “but I love your optimism.”

  I ordered some edamame and a small house salad to get a little more food into her. She got her second wind and wanted to talk more about the paper.

  Sipping a water with a slice of lemon, she asked, “Has it always been this way? So, hectic and with such constant pressure?”

  I took a gulp of my beer and looked out at the traffic on the bridge. “It’s like walking a tightrope without a net, but our reporting is important. The Insider is the equalizer for the powerless and voiceless in this community. Often it seems like we are the only ones standing up for justice and against corruption. But somebody has to be Horatius on the bridge, standing in the gap fighting off the horde.”

  Summer said, “I can’t imagine Pensacola without the Insider. I’ve seen how people look forward to their issues. I’m proud to say I work here.”

  “I make it sound more heroic than it is,” I said. “But we have done a pretty good job of keeping our finger on the pulse of the community and picking the right side of most issues. Financially, I think it will start paying off at some point. Advertisers follow readers.”

  She asked, “What’s your exit strategy?” Summer’s accounting and MBA sides were showing.

  “Originally our goal was to corner enough of the advertising dollars in this market to force Barnett to buy us out and merge the Insider with the Herald,” I said. “Then we were hit by hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, and Katrina. The economy fell apart. Barnett figured that putting us out of business was easier than buying us.”

  She asked, “What about your investors?”

  I laughed. “They are looking for an escape clause without losing the half million they invested.”

  “Surely they are pleased with the investigative reporting.”

  I shook my head. “No, they are more often upset that we uncovered their favorite politicians and the backroom deals of their friends. Our early board meetings were epic battles over editorial control and the finances. My investors haven’t written a check to help us in years.”

  “How have you survived?”

  “Hubris and credit cards,” I said.

  After I paid the tab I walked Summer to a cab and headed back to the loft, where Big Boy anxiously awaited his nighttime walk. Forty-five minutes later, we were in bed asleep.

  That night I dreamed of Mari.

  By the second semester of my second year at Ole Miss, Dare and Rory were an item. Dare had less and less time for me, though she got me dates with her sorority sisters for the big parties. Rory would finish law school soon and ask Dare to marry him. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but my feelings didn’t matter.

  I began working for the college newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. The juniors and seniors got all the cool beats and big stories. Sophomores did the fluff pieces unless we could scoop the upperclassmen with a story or topic that they hadn’t thought of. Scooping them became my obsession, of course.

  The New York Times published a story on the rise of suicides on college campuses that had gotten some attention. I went to interview the telephone operators that handled Ole Miss’s twenty-four-hour crisis line.

  That was how I met Mari Gaudet, a psychology major from Eunice, Louisiana. Petite, dark-haired, and olive-skinned, she had no interest in being interviewed, especially by a skinny frat boy in khakis and a white button-down shirt.

  Mari took the volunteer job seriously. Twice that semester she had talked students out of overdosing on pills. She had a calming voice and a big, genuine laugh. Her coworkers said she had regular callers, lonely students who needed someone to help them navigate adulthood.

/>   They also told me that she had recently broken up with a football player and had little interest in dating. They clearly didn’t think I was in her league. She was also a GDI, a God Damn Independent, who hated anyone tied to the Greek system. I later learned that Mari had dealt with too many suicidal coeds who had failed to make it through sorority rush.

  After three phone calls and two visits to the crisis center, she agreed to do the interview at the library. She refused to meet for coffee or a drink, not wanting to give me the wrong impression.

  I did my homework on suicide and its prevention. My knowledge on the subject and my questions impressed her. She even smiled a few times and laughed once.

  The article had a huge impact, making it to the front page, but below the fold. The Associated Press wire picked it up, and other student newspapers and a few dailies published the article with my byline. The chancellor even appropriated a few more dollars for the crisis center’s budget. The senior and junior reporters hated me, but I didn’t give a shit. I became addicted to journalism.

  I sent Mari a thank-you note but received no reply. I thought of dropping by the crisis center or even calling the hotline but chickened out. Dare might have helped me figure Mari out, but she was focused on picking out her dress for the engagement party in anticipation of the “big ask.”

  A month later, I skipped my afternoon political science class and headed to Rowan Oak, my favorite getaway on the edge of the campus. Rowan Oak, the ancestral antebellum home of William Faulkner, was built in 1844. The white, two-story house stood on over twenty-nine acres not too far from the square in Oxford. Rowan Oak was open from dawn to dusk. Five dollars covered the cost to tour the home, but walking the grounds was free.

  I liked to explore the grounds and had only been in the house once. A couple of times, I met the old groundskeeper who remembered Faulkner and shared a few stories about the odd little man who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

  The University of Mississippi owned the property and preserved his papers in the Faulkner Room on the third floor of the J. D. Williams Library. Every day when I walked from the Pike House on Fraternity Row to my classes, I read the Faulkner quote memorialized on the back exterior wall of the library: “I decline to accept the end of man . . . I believe that man will not merely endure, he will prevail.”

  When I sat on a bench at Rowan Oak, I channeled the man who wrote about a decaying South coping in the aftermath of its Civil War defeat, integration, and the Civil Rights Movement, a man whose works were rarely taught in Mississippi classrooms because he made the state come to grips with its past.

  In the dream, I did what I did once or twice every month during the four years I was enrolled at Ole Miss. I parked my 1969 blue Camaro at the gate and walked up the narrow driveway between two rows of trees. As I approached the brick walk to the house, I veered to the right and down a slope to a bench overlooking a creek. It was my private spot not visible from the house.

  Mari was sitting on the bench, just as she had twenty-two years ago, staring away, sobbing. She was upset because she had failed to prevent a suicide. I had helped her cope with the loss at the time. It had been the pivotal moment of our love, the one time I did something right in a relationship.

  I rushed to her, wanting to hold her in my arms, longing to touch her skin again, smell her hair, and kiss her lips one more time. The harder I ran the further she was from me. I shouted her name repeatedly, but she wouldn’t look my way. Then, as if an invisible tether had snapped, I fell forward flat on my face, got up, and rushed toward Mari. But I kept stumbling. I yelled, but she still didn’t hear me as I approached. As I reached out to her, Mari faded away. I stumbled over the bench and over a cliff.

  I awoke, covered in sweat, crying her name.

  15

  It was 5:00 a.m. I dressed, put Big Boy on his leash, and started running north on Palafox. I didn’t wear my headphones or bring my cell phone. The dog knew this outing would be different, but he willingly came along.

  I had to run Mari out of my system.

  We ran past the San Carlos Hotel, “The Gray Lady of Palafox.” Built in 1910, lumber magnate and shipbuilder Frasier Bingham envisioned it would rival the upscale hotels in New Orleans, Mobile, and Atlanta when it opened on the first day of Mardi Gras celebrations. Over the years, a series of owners would expand on the north and west sides of the hotel, adding a ballroom and office and retail spaces.

  For decades, Pinckney Hall ran his business and political empire from the penthouse suite of the San Carlos. He controlled railroads, banks, and lumber mills across the state. He hated unions, liberals, and Yankee carpetbaggers, and he kept his businesses racially segregated until Attorney General Bobby Kennedy threatened to shut them down.

  An infamous miser, Hall fired a manager for using two paper towels to dry his hands in the restroom. His First Gulf Beach Bank had marble floors and oriental rugs but not a single hot water tap in the entire eight-story building.

  Hall had a five o’clock weekday ritual. He and his business associates and buddies would gather for cocktails. They toasted “Confusion to the Enemy!” with Jack Daniel’s whiskey. When the CBS News began at 5:30 p.m., all conversation and movement ceased. Hall took his news and Walter Cronkite very seriously. After the news concluded, the group moved to the Executive Club for dinner.

  Hall died in 1991 at the age of ninety-four. The San Carlos Hotel ceased operations the following year and had been vacant for almost two decades. A proposal to convert it into retirement apartments failed to materialize. The current rumor said the federal government might buy it, demolish the hotel, and erect a new federal courthouse.

  As we ran past the hotel, I almost stumbled on a shattered piece of mortar that had fallen off the building.

  At the Wright Street intersection, we moved past the Perry House. Charles A. Boysen, Swedish consul to Pensacola, began construction of the two-story house with porches that wrapped both floors in 1867. Governor Edward A. Perry completed the house in 1882 shortly before he became Florida’s fourteenth governor, serving from 1885–89.

  A Massachusetts native and a graduate of Yale, Perry moved to Pensacola in 1856 to practice law. During the Civil War, he joined the Pensacola Rifle Rangers, which elected him captain. He later commanded the Florida Brigade in General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Twice wounded, he was discharged as a brigadier general.

  While he was governor, Florida adopted a new constitution and cleared out the last visages of Reconstruction. An outspoken opponent of the carpetbaggers, Perry made sure the Northerners never owned his home that overlooked downtown Pensacola. He bequeathed it to the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. His antebellum home had been the Scottish Rite Temple in downtown Pensacola for more than a hundred years.

  Big Boy and I began to run up the hill. My anger about our cash flow issues, Bo Hines’ irritating confidence that he would be cleared, and the possibility I could lose everything prevented me from slowing down. Big Boy seemed to understand and didn’t lessen his pace. The grudges of Hall and Perry drove us harder.

  Breathing hard, I pushed us past the “Our Confederate Dead” monument in Lee Square that was erected in 1891 and ran across Cervantes Street into North Hill.

  Once there, I fell to the ground in Alabama Square. My chest was nearly exploding. Big Boy laid panting beside me. Getting up, I cupped my hands and gave the dog water from the fountain. His tail began to wag again. I sat on a bench and watched the sun rise.

  In my head, I heard Mari say, “Why is everything a fight with you? Why can’t you let go of some things?”

  I said aloud to no one, “Because I have to,” as I petted Big Boy who had his head in my lap.

  When Big Boy and I walked down from the loft, we found Summer at her desk working on the Best of the Coast database. She wore a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and white jeans. She looked up and smiled but stayed focused on her work. Big Boy crawled under her desk, exhausted.

  On the blog, I post
ed a teaser for tomorrow’s cover story:

  INSIDER HAS ECSO PAYROLL

  This Monday, the Insider received the Escambia County Sheriff Office’s payroll. A sortable database will be uploaded for viewing on Thursday.

  When I finished reading the daily newspapers online, I clicked back on the blog. I had a dozen comments in less than an hour, none of them complimentary of Sheriff Frost. This issue would do very well.

  Summer walked over to my desk. She looked worried.

  “I wanted to check our bank balance because I didn’t want us to be blindsided again,” she said. “The check to the printer hit our account last night. We don’t have the funds to cover the overdraft. Plus, the bank will tack on a mountain of service fees if other checks bounce, too.”

  Dammit, I thought. When would this tape stop playing?

  “Okay, we’ve got until ten o’clock before the bank manager decides to honor the checks or return them,” I said. “That gives us two hours to round up $2,500.”

  Summer interjected, “$3,250.”

  “Ok, $3,250. Print out the receivables list. I’ll visit those within walking distance who have invoices for advertising older than thirty days. Everything we bill is due upon receipt, but we always have to chase down advertisers for checks.”

  “They’re good people but everyone is hurting,” said Summer.

  I replied, “That’s why we need the maritime park to help draw more customers downtown for these restaurants, bars and shops.”

  For the next ninety-five minutes, I walked the streets of downtown Pensacola. Several of the businesses weren’t opened yet, but I knocked anyway. After ten stops, I headed to the bank with six checks totaling $2,700 and handled the rest with the last of my savings. If we had a fair deposit today, I could drink tonight.

  Back at the office, I discovered that I had left my Insider staff unattended far too long. My “ace” reporter Doug Yoste hadn’t shown up for work. Roxie was battling a new wave of angry advertisers wanting to cancel their ads. Sheriff Frost must have stirred the business owners up. Jeremy was talking about moving to Austin, Texas, and checking job listings on Craigslist. Teddy had his headphones on, oblivious to the world while editing photos for the next issue. Mal remained pissed at everyone, particularly the absent Doug.