Roadside Crosses

understand you can be factually right and still be wrong. Do you have to tell every secret in the world? Do you have to destroy lives for no reason—except your ratings?”
    “Please!”
    “Does the name Anthony Schaeffer mean anything to you?”
    Chilton’s eyes closed momentarily. “Oh.” When he opened them again they were filled with understanding, and perhaps remorse. But that didn’t move Schaeffer one bit.
    At least Chilton remembered the man he’d destroyed.
    Patrizia asked, “Who’s that? Who does he mean, Jim?”
    “Tell her, Chilton.”
    The blogger sighed. “He was a gay man who killed himself after I outed him a few years ago. And he was . . . ?”
    “My brother.” His voice cracked.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Sorry,” Schaeffer scoffed.
    “I apologized for what happened. I never wanted him to die! You must know that. I felt terrible.”
    Schaeffer turned to Patrizia, “Your husband, the voice of the moral and just universe, didn’t like it that a deacon in a church could also be gay.”
    Chilton snapped back, “That wasn’t the reason. He headed a big anti–gay marriage campaign in California. I was attacking his hypocrisy, not his sexual orientation. And his immorality. He was married, he had children . . . but when he was on business trips he’d call up gay prostitutes. He was cheating on his wife, sometimes with three men a night!”
    The blogger’s defiance was back and Schaeffer wanted to hit him once more, so he did, hard and fast.
    “Tony was struggling to find God’s path. He slipped a few times. And you made it sound like he was a monster! You never even gave him a chance to explain. God was helping him find the way.”
    “Well, God wasn’t doing a very good job. Not if—”
    The fist struck again.
    “Jim, don’t argue with him. Please!”
    Chilton lowered his head. Finally he looked desperate and filled with sorrow and fear.
    Schaeffer enjoyed the delicious sense of the man’s despair. “Read the statement.”
    “All right. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll read it. But my family . . . please.” The agony in Chilton’s face was like fine wine to Schaeffer.
    “You have my word on it.” He said this sincerely, though he was reflecting that Patrizia would outliveher husband by no more than two seconds—a humane act, in the end. She wouldn’t want to go on without him. Besides, she was a witness.
    As for the children, no, he wouldn’t kill them. For one thing they weren’t due home for nearly an hour and he’d be long gone by then. Also, he wanted the sympathy of the world. Killing the blogger and his wife was one thing. The children were something else.
    Beneath the camera Schaeffer taped a piece of the paper containing the statement he’d written that morning. It was a moving piece—and had been drafted in a way to make sure that nobody would associate the crime with him.
    Chilton cleared his throat and looked down. He began to read. “This is a statement—” His voice broke.
    Beautiful! Schaeffer kept the camera running.
    Chilton started over. “This is a statement to those who’ve been reading my blog, The Chilton Report, over the years. There is nothing more precious in the world than a man’s reputation and I have devoted my life to needlessly and randomly destroying the reputations of many fine, upstanding citizens.”
    He was doing a good job.
    “It’s easy to buy a cheap computer and a website and some blog software and in five minutes you’ve got a venue for your personal opinions—a venue that will be seen by millions of people around the world. This leads to an intoxicating sense of power. But it’s a power that isn’t earned. It’s a power that’s stolen.
    “I’ve written many things about people that were merely rumors. Those rumors spread and they became accepted as the truth, even though they weretotal lies. Because of my blog the life of a young man, Travis Brigham, has been destroyed. He has nothing more to live for. And neither do I. He has sought justice against the people who attacked him, people who were my friends. And now he’s rendering justice against me. I’m ultimately responsible for destroying his life.”
    Glorious tears were streaking down his face. Schaeffer was in purest heaven.
    “I now accept responsibility for destroying Travis’s reputation and those of the others I’ve carelessly written about. The sentence that Travis now serves on me will stand as a warning to others: The truth is