“Good evening, Mrs. T,” Fanta began, addressing the eighty-something woman who had taught him English lit in high school. “This is your former star pupil and former editor of the former Bad Axe Broadcaster.”

“Devoured by Babette’s Feast,” she growled. “And hideous, just hideous, that her little honyaker would try to take our sheriff’s job.”

“Honyaker?”

“Something that we used to call what is now, I believe, called a jerkoff, or possibly a fuckhead,” said the fearless Mrs. T. “Though I suspect that he is actually much worse. He was my pupil too, you know, three decades after you.”

“Not to be a tattletale,” Fanta played along, “but the candidate’s newest sign says VICTIM’S MATTER. With an apostrophe.”

“Perfect.”

“But hey, Mrs. T, it’s too late to call the county clerk, so I wondered if you could access current land deeds…”

He gave her the parcel numbers and waited.

Ah, yes, the Golly story. Or the almost-story. The gregarious brother, Jim, had been irate when Fanta had deep-sixed the profile piece he had been working on. When was this, 1994? They were homesteaders, new to the Bad Axe, and Jim had wanted the attention. Never one to turn down a people piece, Fanta had interviewed the brothers about their saga, which—Jim doing the telling—was that their car dealership in Jupiter, Florida, had been destroyed in Hurricane Andrew, and thus as early climate refugees they had used their insurance settlement to buy land as far away from hurricanes as they could find it. They planned to homestead in the heartland.

It had begun with all the ingredients of a good feature. The gist of Fanta’s early drafts, pre-fact-checking, was a mildly skeptical introduction to two eccentric bachelor brothers, businessmen from latitude 26.9, who approached “living off the land” as if that were something they hadn’t mastered yet only because they had been too busy selling cars. Fanta intended to imply, gently yet with certainty, that the land would have its say, but that no matter what difficulties the Gollys faced, Bad Axers, a welcoming people, would stand by to support. Warm. Cute. Hopeful. Wish the brothers well.

But their “facts” had not checked out. Simply put, Jim Golly was a liar. The “car dealership” had in fact been a nightclub that ran strip shows. “Destroyed” checked out, but Hurricane Andrew might have had the help of a professional arsonist, and “insurance settlement,” Fanta had come to suspect, probably amounted to lipstick on insurance fraud. Plus Jim Golly had five DUIs, two assaults, and a drug conviction.

Fanta had simply scotched the story. Not his business otherwise. Jim Golly had bitched and cajoled until he had seemed to comprehend that Fanta had his facts straight and was doing him a favor. The talkative Golly’s PR campaign had ceased. Jim’s twin, Jon, had seemed relieved.

Fanta blew smoke toward the creek, wondering if the Tercel could ford it without busting an axle.