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CHAPTER 1
Everyone in Taterville knew Amos Grant.
But few of the simple townsfolk understood him.
The misunderstanding was mostly his own fault. That's what he told himself Monday morning in the red glow of his darkroom.
I enjoy playing with their little minds.
Before him, on a taut string, he studied the naked images of young Jimmy Clark, five prints in all. A deep sadness engulfed
him. To shake the feeling, his mind wandered to the past, as it often did, to a time two decades earlier when he worked for
the Orlando Sentinel, when he was alive, when he still had Helen.
Back then, in the 70s, professional writers regarded him as one of Florida's most talented young journalists. He was even
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. But that was before he returned home in 1985 to care for his mother and take over his deceased
father's weekly newspaper. Now, after ten years, he felt shackled. He was a modern-day man trapped in an out-of-date community.
Actually, he was one of the few men in town who didn't wear jeans and cowboy boots to work. The regulars at Hank's Bar
often traded stupid grins and laughed until tobacco juice dribbled down their stubby chins whenever he showed up in his elbow-patched
tweed jacket, sporting a bright red bow tie with a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. They'd listen as he placed his
order.
"Two shots of vodka with a twist of lemon."
Then someone would say, "That there's no drink for a real man."
He would grin. That was the exactly the reaction he expected, and wanted.
He regarded Taterville as a hot and dusty ignorant cow town, a throwback to the old west, complete with outdated hitching
posts that, as a kid, he had twirled around until he got dizzy from boredom. It was a place that languished forever in a coma,
seldom changing, barely growing, scarcely existing at all.
Taterville was simply Taterville.
Most stores had the same creaky wooden floors that had been put in place nearly a hundred years earlier. And of the 6,000
residents, many still lived in Florida "Cracker" homes, complete with tin roofs. Fifty miles from the nearest modern
city and fifty years behind in technology and creative thought, Darwinism was openly scorned in Taterville by a majority of
the Homo sapiens population who had not quite reached the intellectual zenith in the evolutionary pool.
His thoughts returned to the present and he stepped out of the darkroom and looked around at his surroundings. The Bugle
newspaper office had changed little since his grandfather first opened its doors. He had added a Formica top to the old wooden
counter, and the small desk in the corner as well as the larger one in his office now sported Apple computers in place of
Underwood typewriters. In the back room where his grandfather once ran a huge, clanky Heidelberg press for all his needs,
Amos brought in a small AB Dick 360 press for his business stationery and other personal short-run jobs. He also took in outside
work whenever he could. However it was rare for Taterville merchants or residents to avail themselves of his printing service.
As for the newspaper, he had 2,500 copies of his 24 tabloid-size pages printed on a large web press in a printing plant
near Orlando. He didn't mind the hour and a half drive to pick up the papers each week. He enjoyed being alone. It gave him
time to think-mostly he thought about how long he would be able to honor his dying father's wish. He had once tasted big city
life and the prestige of working on a large daily paper. Now, after ten years in limbo, he yearned to prove himself in that
large arena once more.
But he had obligations to meet. The time was not right.
Not today. But soon ...
For more details on Naked Lies, CLICK HERE!
Check out "Dead In Taterville." A revised edition.
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