Yesterday's News

being what it is. Others try the West coast, Naples if they got the dollars. We get more the midwesterners, or old Texas hides like me. What can I do you for?”
    “To begin with, what are those white birds that stand on top of the cattle?”
    Cabbiness hooted. “Those? Those are egrets. Believe they call them common egrets, the crows of the South. They got a museum over to the university, you need more detail.”
    “No, just curious.”
    “Didn’t figure y’all flew two and a half hours for that one.”
    “I didn’t. I’m wondering if you can tell me something about a reporter who used to work here.”
    “Might, might not. Name?”
    “Jane Rust.”
    “Ah, Janey. I remember her, indeed. What’s this all about?”
    “She’s dead. Cops say suicide, I’m trying to...“
    I stopped, because Cabbiness had taken off his spectacles and had rolled his rump up enough from the chair to draw a handkerchief from his back pocket. He wiped first the glasses, then his own eyes and nose. I found it a strikingly sincere gesture, and I waited until he spoke next.
    “Suicide, you say?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Janey was... oh, hell, worse to speak too well of the dead as too ill. Janey worked here just a summer, my first year as managing editor. She was an intern, between semesters.”
    “And?”
    “And she, well, I guess the sociology folks would say she fell in with a bad crowd.”
    “How so?”
    “Janey was kind of... impressionable. She wasn’t too well formed back then, kind of looking for a role model, I guess you’d say. Unfortunately, she found the wrong one.”
    “Who was that?”
    “Reporter here named Cassy Griffin.”
    “ Griffin , did you say?”
    “Yeah, F-I-N at the end. Born to raise hell, that one. All the time doing things she hadn’t ought to.”
    “For example?”
    “Well, we got us a little place on the West coast named Cedar Key. Kind of a resort town for this area, hour’s drive. Hemingway-type bars, dockside cafes where you can see the dolphins—or porpoises, whatever y’all call them up in Boston —hunting in pairs in the harbor. Janey fell in with this Griffin , idolized her, she did, and got herself into all sorts of tight spots down to Cedar.”
    “Drugs?”
    Cabbiness raised his chubby shoulders. “Drugs, drinking. Men, too, the wrong kind, and too many. You know much about this part of the country?”
    “You mean Florida ?”
    “No, but that’s what I mean.”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “People from up North say ‘ Florida ,’ they’ve got a picture in their head of Miami . Used to be beach and boardwalk. These days, cocaine and silk jackets, more likely. Gainesville now, this isn’t Miami . This is the South. The Old South. Oh, the kids all go to the same schools, and everybody can eat in the same restaurants, no muss or bother. But white or black, y’all go to church on Sunday and say ‘yessir’ and ‘nossir’ and respect your elders. And a paper here can’t tolerate behavior on its staff that the readers wouldn’t tolerate in their homes. I let Janey finish her summer, on account of I didn’t want a mark against her in the record, but I would have bounced that Ms. Griffin if she hadn’t up and quit on me a week before.”
    “Any idea where this Griffin woman went?”
    “Nope. Couldn’t have cared less, either, if you get me.”
    “Could I look at her employment records?” Cabbiness wagged his head. “Not even if we still had them, I’m afraid. But all the files from those days are already pitched. The paper keeps its old issues longer than its personnel files.”
    “Anybody still here who knew her?”
    He thought about it. “No, no everybody else from those days burned out or got kicked out. By me. Oh, there might be some production people who’d remember Griffin ’s name, but we get a dozen folk through here a year.”
    “Can you describe this Griffin to me?”
    “Well, let’s see. She was about... wait a minute.” He hoisted himself out of the chair and moved to the decorated wall. “Yes... no, no that’s not her, that was... yes, yes, this is her, with Janey at the staff picnic that year. Catherine Elizabeth Griffin, I believe, was her full name.”
    I got up, joining him at the wall.
    “Lordy, I did look some slimmer in those days, but then the lens, it can play tricks on you. Y’all know how they say the camera never lies? Well, don’t you believe them. It can, it surely can.”
    The photo showed thirty or so people arranged in