The voice lacks for volume but not vitriol. I step closer to listen.
“Sit down, you,” Polk snaps. “Where’s your damn notebook?”
Obediently I withdraw it from my pocket.
“Open it,” he says. “Now put down that I was a fighter. Put down that I was all heart and gristle. I never gave up, no matter what those worthless quacks said.” He jabs the air. “Put it down now! In your notebook, Mr. Obituary Writer!”
As I’m scribbling, the old man has second thoughts. “Hold on now. Scratch ‘worthless quacks.’ My luck, one a those pricks’ll slap my estate with a libel suit. See what it’s come to? They’d sue a dead man with a hole in his throat, I swear to Christ.”
MacArthur Polk is shriveled and fuzzy-headed, with a florid beaked nose, stringy neck and papery, pellucid skin. He looks like one of those newborn condors that zookeepers are always showing off on the Discovery Channel.
After another drag of oxygen, he croaks: “Mr. Race Maggad didn’t want you on this story. Why is that, you suppose?”
“I gather he’s not a fan.”
The old milky eyes sparkle with overmedicated mischief. “I heard you called him some nasty names at a shareholders’ meeting. I heard you shook things up, Mr. Tagger.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“Because—” Old Man Polk emits a tubercular wheeze. “Because the reason Maggad didn’t want you on this story is the precise reason I insisted on it. What’d you call him exactly? I’m just curious.”
“An impostor,” I say.
When Polk laughs, his dentures clack. “Him and his father both. What else?”
“I might have mentioned his trust fund. The fact he never worked an honest day in his life. How he knows more about shoeing polo ponies than putting out a decent newspaper.”
The old man rattles a wet sigh. “God, I wish I’d been there. I believe I was in the hospital that day.”
“Dying,” I say. “That’s what Mr. Maggad informed the shareholders.”
“Hell, I wasn’t ‘dying’ that time, or any of the others. I was just resting. Screwing with their heads.”
“You dying now?”
Polk nods abjectly. “Unfortunately, this one’s for real, Mr. Tagger. I wouldn’t call you here to waste your time.”
I almost believe him, he looks so ghastly. For some reason I think of his wife, age thirty-six, and wonder what in creation the two of them talk about. The old man volunteers that she’s holding up like a champ. Considering her future net worth, I don’t doubt it for a moment.
“Mr. Race Maggad himself came to the hospital to visit me. Why is that, you suppose?” Polk asks, hacking feebly. “To see how I was getting along? Read me a bedtime story? Or maybe to apologize for ruining my family’s newspaper.”
Polk will get no argument from me. I hear myself asking: “So why’d you sell out to Maggad-Feist? Them, of all people.”
The old man turns away with a snort. “More on that later.”
“A lot of us in the newsroom felt… betrayed.”
Polk’s head snaps around. His eyes are hot. “Is that so. Betrayed?”
“It was a good little paper, Mr. Polk, and we were proud of it. Those people are raping its soul.”
“You’re not the most sensitive fellow, are you? Did I mention I was dying?”
Suddenly he sounds forlorn. Me, I feel like a shitheel.
“I didn’t think it was possible to feel any worse,” Polk gasps, “until you showed up. Hell, I’d hang myself with this goddamn oxygen tube if I could reach the curtain rod.”
“I’m sorry. I honestly am.”
“Aw, what the hell—you’ve got a point. But more on that later. Now, Mr. Obituary Man, “the old man says, with renewed spunk, “put down how I turned the Union-Register into a first-class outfit. And don’t forget to say ‘award-winning.’ Write that down! I got a list somewhere of all the prizes we won… ”
So it goes for an hour. MacArthur Polk’s endurance is impressive, as is his enthusiasm for self-aggrandizement. Fortunately he won’t be around to read the story, as I have no intention of bogging it down with mawkish deathbed ramblings. Three or four wistful quotes ought to do the job.