Free Piper by John E. Keegan

going on, but I’d overheard Dad say the paper was hurting. Everyone was getting as much news as they wanted on TV. “Print media is a dinosaur,” he’d told me, but that hadn’t stopped him. The Herald Stampede was the only paper in the country that had run a six-part series on “The Decline of Excellence in American Arts and Letters” under Tom Scanlon’s byline. He must have felt sometimes as if he were howling into the wind. Seven years ago, somebody had listened to him though because he was nominated for a Pulitzer prize in beat reporting for his series that led to the County Executive’s indictment for taking kickbacks on the construction of a sanitary landfill that never opened. The big papers had missed it.
    Business at the Herald was punk enough that they’d laid off several staff, and started using the press for printing junk mail, greeting cards, and school workbooks on the side. Although we never had much money, Mom always made sure we ate well, buying the best cuts of meat and organic fruits and vegetables. Now we were eating canned vegetables and ice milk instead of ice cream.
    â€œCarlisle wants to turn the paper into more of a high society thing,” I told Willard, saving him the messy details.
    â€œA what?”
    â€œYou know, personal interest stories about people who are loaded. Who just got back from Italy and who’s going next.”
    Willard had a puzzled look on his face.
    â€œIt’s a joke, Willard. There is no high society in Stampede.” My rice was done and I flipped off the back burner and slid the pan onto a newspaper. “Dad could have been a Pulitzer prize winner at the Washington Post and Carlisle’s got him babysitting a glorified handbill for the local merchants, running pictures of widows with wrinkled necks in costume jewelry.” I picked up the lid on the rice pan, forgetting to use a pot holder, and dropped it to the floor. “Ouch!”
    Startled, Willard’s egg went half into the Spam pan and half out as he cracked it. He licked the egg white off his fingers. “Them Carlisles could buy the Post .”
    â€œThat would take class and John Carlisle doesn’t have enough of that to shine his shoes.” I licked the burn on my thumb and waved it in the air.
    â€œThey say never argue with someone who buys ink by the gallon.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh. Sometime I would have to find out what he really thought of the Carlisles. He’d been around long enough to have seen the full cycle, from the homesteaders to the freeloader.
    I sat at the table in the nook to eat, not bothering with my book. Willard ate his fried egg sandwich standing up, as if he was in a hurry to get back down with the dogs. The catsup that he’d added to expand his food groups dripped onto his Scott towel. As he paced the floor and rattled on, I looked at his right ear, the cauliflower one that had been bitten off in a fight in the asparagus fields. Willard wasn’t that shy about sticking up for himself. Mom told me that when Willard lost his ear the doctor had to attach it to his groin so it would heal before they sewed it back on his head. I wished sometimes Dad had some of that spunk. The Irish were supposed to be the ones with the hair-trigger tempers, but Dad was always the consummate gentleman.
    â€œMy Carol was high society,” Willard said. “Almost didn’t marry me, you know.” He wobbled his head, pulling up his recollections slowly like a bucket from the bottom of a deep well. I thought he was going to tell me again about the wedding in the Okanogan Valley when he fired his rifle into the church ceiling. Willard had trouble remembering where Dad worked, but his memories of Grandma Carol were always resplendent in their detail. “I fixed a Valentine’s Day dinner at her house once when the parents were away. Chicken fricassee and rice. Put a cup of them candy hearts next to her