Chapter II

It's your day to play. It's your morning to make the most of. It's your way to live. It's your climate to consider. It's your answer to what should I watch? It's your money to save. It's your song to analyze line by line. It's your 10 ways to find a little calm. It's your world to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com/yourworld. Chapter 2 One of my first phone conversations with John before we met, I asked him if he thought it was possible that maybe Capron Bird hadn't killed anybody. If it was possible that the murder he contacted me about was actually just a rumor, a fiction. No, John said. There was little down his mind that it was true. And then, by way of explanation, he launched into this parable. Let me tell you something I saw at one time. I should admit that at the time this story was completely lost on me. Me and Roger Price went up with the truck stop together to get a little dinner. We came back by, it was passing by the South 40 trailer park. So, Roger is one of these dudes he's a darn transmission mechanic. He's not really talking to him, he's a good dude, but he just, you know, he only has one tooth. And it's really amusing to see how he can balance a cigarette on that one tooth. The whole time he's talking, it's cigarette. It's just bouncing around all over that one tooth and he never loses it some of the beach. So, we're coming by, this is welcome to South 40 Cent and there's this girl out there walking around in front of the damn side holding a cell phone and she's got own a pink top and nothing else. No fucking panties, no goddamn socks, barefoot. And I remarked that to Roger, I remember what I said, I probably said, "My God, look at her or something like that." And Roger's sage advice was usually when you see Joker's that look like that, they done something to get like that. That's the lesson. That went just straight through you. Like so many things having to do with John, it took me a long time to understand the meaning of this story, years. But I think I finally get it now. From serial and this American life, I'm Brian Reed. This is shit, Tim. My second night in Alabama, I finally get to talk to Jake Goodson. Jake's the guy who'd originally told John that Capembert had bragged him outside the little seasors about beating a guy to death. I sit with Jake and John's kitchen, asking him to rack his brain for any extra details that could help me solve this. It was a while ago he says his memories are fuzzy, but he makes a suggestion that, "I don't know, it seems crazy to me." I could get him and ask him and he'd be able to tell me. He'd probably come up here and talk to you about it. Capembert lives right nearby. Why not just get it from the horse's mouth? No. Probably so. It makes no sense. I would stick a microphone in his face and he would tell me about a guy he killed. Probably. He's basically burning up. Maybe it wouldn't know no better. It'd probably just laugh about it with you. I tell Jake no thanks, at least not now. I do not feel like I'm armed with enough information to confront Capem yet. Aside from seeming far fetched, the idea also just sounded potentially dangerous. For John, for Jake, and for me. But then the next night, a bunch of other people proposed the exact same thing. I'm not a hate-baring out. He's arrogant, dude. He don't give a fuck. He would talk to me about it? I don't know. He would. I'm pretty sure he would. Probably tell you. truth. I'm chatting with a few guys on a tattoo parlor. All of whom have heard about the murder. Some are pretty sure they heard it from Capem himself. You may call him and ask him. No, don't do that. Well, I'm not a pus, dude. I'll give a fuck. Apparently, I'm the pus, because I do not want the dudes I'm talking to to call Capem right now. Already, this tattoo shop does not feel like the safest place to walk into alone at night, trying to dig a bimp foe about a covered up murder by a guy everyone seems to know. All of which are things I've just done. The last thing I want right now is for the alleged murderer show up. I was invited here by Tyler Goodson, Jake's brother, who by Metton John's workshop while he was filing that chain saw. He's one of the owners. Tyler knows Capem, they're both in their early 20s, and I thought maybe some of Tyler's friends who hang out here might have more information about the possible murder. John didn't feel like coming with me because he doesn't like driving at night. When I walk in, at first it seems like a pretty small place, just a couple of tattooing stations in a little waiting area. But if you push the back wall of the shop, it swings open. It's a secret door, which leads into a hidden clubhouse in the back. There's a bar with some people around it, a pool table, a small stage with motorcycles parked there, and a brass stripper pole that's currently vacant. The shop is called Blacksheet Bank, and I'll learn that the guys who hang out here take the name to heart. They see themselves as a collection of misfits, of self-proclaimed criminals and runaways and hillbillies. And Tyler has built this place as a haven for them, a place to swap their tails of getting jerked around by cops and judges and clerks and bosses, and to cultivate a sense of pride in their status as the outcasts of their world. There's this gentleman, whose name I never do catch, who tells me, quote, "I'm so fucking fat, I don't care no more," and lifts up his shirt to show me the giant words he has tattooed on his stomach. Feed me. Tell him, give him a picture. I'm a six foot, 350 pound bearded man, and a John Deere hat would feed me on my belly. Just so y'all get a clear picture here. There's a guy who's been wearing the same trucker hat for seven years. Seven years. Same hat. Then there's this guy. People call him Razer. Bam, bam, bam, it was back in the opposite parking lot side, rather than looking down at it, it's a sudden bit. He really rakes up. Yeah, Walter Odom come by, man, seeing land in the yards all he got. Yeah, ambushes are now what he called an ambulance. My ambassador's land there in the yard got out the potland side, six beers. He did shit face. I believe he's telling a story about his friend, Willard, who was impervious to death. You know, run over in three times and one fucking night. Three times dude, one night, the ambassador won't die. And then there's Tyler, who's been sleeping at the tattoo bar lately because he can't afford anywhere else to spend the night. He was 23 years old and has three daughters with three different women and who's been haunted his whole life by people assuming he's just like his father. His father who abused him and his siblings and his mother and who is a convicted sex offender for having sex with minor. One day, Tyler will tell me that he often wakes up in the morning in a puddle of sweat, having dreamt during the night of killing his dad. Tyler's friendly did me when I arrived, welcoming, but as I'm getting out my recording equipment, I hear murmurs from other people wondering who I am, wondering if I might be a cop. People are asking me questions, feeling me out. If you guys ask if I'll smoke a bowl with them out of some deer antlers, I don't want to be stoned, but I also don't want to seem like a narc. So I pretend to take a puff. I pretend to do a number of things that make me feel very uncomfortable in order to keep as low a profile as possible. Such as act like I'm not shocked or upset or scared when someone says this to me, a radio producer with a microphone, in the first few minutes that we're talking. At the risk of ruining any surprise, the statement is racist and nonsensical, replete with multiple uses of a terrible word. You know, we had a tax-free laborer who didn't have nothing to do with a bunch of niggers picking cotton and we worked our ass off and we earned everything we got. This is a tattoo artist who goes by Bubba. So now we have, if you got a tax plan job, you got to take care of some niggers wife that's in jail because she's drawing a child support check on each one of them. Later, Bubba will display a rather fluent knowledge of the differences between various white supremacy groups. Mind you, we're in a majority black city right now, Bessimer. About 20 minutes from Bibb County heading towards Birmingham. But everyone in here is white, including me. Someone mentions offhand that the small tattoo area in front is about as much shop as you want here in Bessimer. Otherwise, the place will be filled with black people who piss you off and won't pay anything. Hence the secret door. Before I left for Alabama, my girlfriend, Salange, now my wife, who's black and whose family is from the south, had insisted I make my Facebook and Instagram accounts private, because they're filled with pictures of us together. I told her she was being silly, overly paranoid. Now I'm grateful I decided at the last minute to follow her advice. When someone asked me what the women look like up in New York, I tell them they're all shapes, sizes, and colors. When someone asks what my ethnicity is, I tell them about the Italian part without mentioning the Russian Jew part. But there's no hiding the fact that I'm a Yankee. What's up? Y'all just as racist as we are. It's go quieter. There you are, left, I'm gonna fuck down here. In an effort to change the subject, I turn the conversation to one of the few things I know I have in common with these guys. Do you guys know John? Our mutual acquaintance. John B. McLemore. What do you have? He's a character. I ain't ever met nobody else like him. Nobody else like that from me. You've been bugging the PSO to you? What's that? I'm not there yet, but it's exhausting to hang out with him for a long day. He's a zombie. He's a zombie after all of those. Yeah, yeah. But John needs to try and use the slow to fuck down what you want to tell him. Slow down. They tell me John comes around the tattoo parlor pretty often and likes to lecture them and give them a hard time. He'll argue with them about their views on the south, on politics, on race. Bubba says he'll submit them to tie raids about the coming climate and energy apocalypse. about how it was running out of fossil fuels and the world was going to come to the fucking end. John tells off their customers for talking about what he sees as an "ane shit." Tells these guys that their lives are amounting to nothing, that their examples in the flesh of what's wrong with this place. Hey, thanks, everybody's a failure. Everything that's going on is a failure. This is another tattoo artist, Joel. He calls you guys "failures." Fuck, yeah, he calls us "failures," ain't it, little man? It's like jokingly or? No, everybody's a failure. Like, in his brain, everybody's a failure. For all I know you could be a failure. You know, sometimes I wish he kind of failed. These guys dish it out too. They teased John for his many peculiarities. Like, how he'll devour whatever leftover food is around, no matter how old or rock hard it is. His inability to buy new shoes to alleviate his athlete's foot, which he's allegedly had for three years. His extemporaneous solving of math problems. His utter reversion to being in a room with more than two or three people at a time. His living with his mom his whole life. His being a loner. It's friendly though. They like John. After all, John is the granddaddy of all black sheep. So this crew gets him. They truly seem to accept him. Though that doesn't stop them from wondering. Look to know what he's worth. I'd love to know what he's worth the feed me, guys, says. Just not because I'll give a fuck. Just to know why does he live like that. I would know if I was poor. It's church, bro. That's Tyler saying he lives like he's poor as a church mouse. And Tyler would know. He and John are close. He's the only reason all these guys know John. Tyler helped build John's maze. He's done all sorts of different odd jobs for him. He's over there all the time. And as far as the church mouse, I did notice that John's refrigerator is pretty bare. His mom invited me to stay for dinner one night. So long as I didn't mind eating like po-folk, she told me. In a way where I couldn't tell she was joking. They live without air conditioning, without TV. It's mysterious to me too, because at the same time, John has all these dogs he feeds and brings to the vet. This elaborate yard that requires constant upkeep. He mentioned to me that he spent more than $60,000 on the maze alone. Feed me, guys, says Tyler. I don't understand why if he's as low as you say. Yeah, I'll take worth millions. Millions? Have you not done any research on John? No, it's not. No, it's everything up on him. Tyler explains that John's family comes for money. He says that one of his grandpa's was a judge. And that John got an inheritance, played the stock market with it, and made even more money. Plus, aside from all that, Tyler says John made good bank restoring old clocks. All of that sounds like it could be true enough. But then Tyler and his friends start listing off John's assets. And I can't tell if any of that is real. Or if they're just letting their imaginations fill in the blanks about their local boo-radly. They claim John has $400,000 in cash, a hundred-some-odd thousand worth of tools in the workshop, all the antiques around his house. You're going to get $150,000 if you sell that old ass shit, Bubba says. Where books in the basement, a single clock worth $10,000 that's just sitting on the floor in a plastic storage bin. Not to mention, says Tyler. Goat that has granddaddy. He's granddaddy's goat, his daddy's goat. Tyler's up on the counter of the bar, crouching. He has a brown briefcase he carries around with him. He calls it his minister's case. It has a sticker that says minister slept on the outside. And it's filled with his tattoo machines and a gun and his welder's cap and some nipple jewelry and his black-sheeping business cards. And also his minister's license. What you got online because he wanted to found a non-adonational church. When people of all backgrounds could come together and talk it out. This clubhouse is meant to be a version of that. He says it's his church. Tyler stares down at us from the corner of the bar like he's about to dive all just secret. When it comes to John, he says there's no telling. What? He's got. Because there's a lot of shit that I'm sure I don't know about. Because I've been finding stuff out slowly over the years. And there's a sacred little dungeons and shit under his down house, man. I ain't playing. I've built gates for. I've built gates for the main dungeons. I've built gates for the dungeons, Tyler's telling me. Dungeons in John's basement. He soon clarifies they're actually all crawl spaces. But the way John had him rigging them up, Tyler says, with tiny doors and these locking iron gates inside, dividing them into sections. What was the purpose of all that? It was creepy. Though Tyler digs creepy stuff, so he also thought it was cool. That guy, Bubba, the one who's especially outspoken about his racist views. As a night goes on, I put together that he's the one who gave John all his tattoos. The tattoos that John showed me abruptly at his workshop that cover his whole chest. Bubba, he explains that being a tattoo artist is a lot like being a therapist. People sit in his chair for hours on end. And each person he works on is getting that tattoo for some specific reason. It's his job, as he sees it, to uncover that reason. Maybe it's a meditation, a milestone, and an excuse to get out of the house, a new girlfriend, a death. John's motivation was especially bewildering Bubba, because John had made it clear almost every time he came in the shop, how deeply he despised tattoos. So as shocking as it was to me when John lifted up his shirt to show me all his tattoos, it was far more shocking to Bubba when John strolled in one day at the age of 47 and asked him to start putting them there. So I mean, first thought I thought he was going to kill us up. I thought he was going to get tatted to fuck up and blow his brains out or something. Fuck, I don't know. And then the more I got to do it, I realized we're in a rut. We need some money and he helped us out. He helped a lot. Bubba and Tyler co-owned Blacksheep Inc together. And Bubba started noticing they'd have a bill about to come due for the business. They'd be wondering how they were going to pay it. And then conveniently John would come in and hand over $300 or $400 and ask for another tattoo on his chest. Bubba says people around here don't throw down money like that. But John would, just in the nick of time, and then schedule another appointment for soon after. He might not have said I'm helping you out, but when you sit down and play me $2,000, $3,000 in a couple weeks' playing. You just helped me out. You know, you just caught my ball, my bill's called up. You just got everything back to where it needed to be. You know. And you think that's why he did it? No, I do. He keeps a book, man. He writes down everything. So he knows when we're having a bad time. He asks certain things like what's the rent? You know, what's your power bill, when's it due? And he already knows this shit because he writes shit down. And he just, you know, planned his tattoo out. But we're pretty much played everything up in increments. Wait, it was like that exact-- Don't most-- Yeah. If it wasn't for John, we'd be shut to fuck down. If it wasn't for John. Yeah, if it wasn't for John, I'd be tattooing my kitchen table right now. And I think he sacrificed his skin to help us out. [MUSIC PLAYING] Bubba says John is an emotional guy, and sure a lot of that emotion is discussed. But there's also sympathy, in particular for Tyler. If he's helping the tattoo parlor, he's only doing it because of Tyler and his brother Jake. He's just watched him, boys, man, and he knows how his daddy was. I mean, the kid was laying block at five years old. Tyler, that is. You know, on the job site, working. Not going to school, working. Go to school two days a week, work five days a week, you know what I mean? So he just seen it, and he knows it wasn't right. And so he's what-- How Tyler's been programmed to be the way he is by his raising and his upbringing, you know? And Phil's sorry for him, I guess. I don't know. Or knows that he's smarter than what he's letting on. I mean, I don't know. The Tyler is? Yeah. When John Hires Tyler to chop down trees in his yard or build iron gates in his crawl spaces, he doesn't really need that stuff done, Bubba says. He's just trying to find an excuse to put money in Tyler's pocket. When Tyler gets caught driving with a suspended license and ends up in jail, something that happens now and again, Bubba knows John's the one to call, because he'll bail him out. They love Tyler. I mean, Tyler's his boy. And this is boy, you know? Tyler's brother, he cares about Tyler's little brother, Jake. You know, John can say anything he wants to, but he loves Tyler probably just as much as you would your own son, you know, on flesh and blood. All right, figured it out. We're standing in the backyard as we're talking behind the tattoo shop. A train whistle starts to blow in the distance. Eventually, someone comes out and tells me I might be interested to know that Cabrum's sister, Cachean Bird, is here. Like, right now. inside 15 feet away from me. Why don't we just go ask her about the murder? This town. I go to the bar, leave six bucks for my beer, and careful to avoid Caproom's sister, head out the secret door, not knowing what I eventually will know once a month from now. The Caproom Bert didn't murder anybody, but also that before this is all over, someone will end up dead. (indistinct) More in a minute. I'm Danny Blum, a journalist at The New York Times. I spend a lot of my time reporting on GLP1 medications. People call them weight loss drugs. They are doing so much more in the body, and there's a lot of hope pinned on them. I am spending part of truly every single work day making sure that I am up to date on the latest science. I really want to make sure that I am talking to the leading researchers, keeping an eye on trial results, and that I'm talking to people who are on these medications to learn more from them to translate the really messy and murky and shifting science into a way that people can understand. It's really important to have evidence-based answers to some of the questions that people have, especially about something as vital as a medication they're taking. That's what you get when you subscribe to The New York Times. If you already subscribe, thanks. If you'd like to go to mytimes.com/subscribe. (soft music) (upbeat music) - Here, I'm a cabron. - Hey, I'm Brian Reed. - How many days do you work? - I'm doing a radio story. I'm a reporter here from New York. Is there some quiet we could sit? - It's a year later, and I'm pulling into K3 lumber on a Friday morning, nervously asking if cabrons around. I feel comfortable doing this only because I finally determined that the incident John contacted me about where cabron allegedly got into a fight and beat a guy to death. Although it did in fact go down almost exactly as John and Jake and Skylar and others told me, was wrong in one relatively important detail. The to death part. The guy cabron beat up did not die. They just thought he did for a while. That's what I eventually gathered from talking to people more. Once I heard that, I started contacting law enforcement to find out what did exactly happen. It turns out the incident in question actually took place in adjacent Tuscaloosa County. A chief at the Sheriff's Department, they are red to me from a detailed case file, showing that the police had investigated the fight thoroughly that no one had been killed, and that they had closed the case, not because they were paid off or anything, but because none of the guys involved wanted to press charges. And so here I am at K3 lumber to ask cabron why he would go around bragging to people that he'd killed a guy he had not killed. He's with some co-workers in the lumber yard in a plaid shirt green trucker hat and dark sunglasses. - Can I get you a cabron? - Let me help you. - There's a particular philosophy I've encountered down here and will continue to encounter. That is the fuck it philosophy. A belief that there's no sense in worrying or thinking too much about any given decision, because life is gonna be difficult and unfair regardless of what you do. It's more than a belief really. It's a way of moving moments a moment through the world. And from the get-go, cabron seems to be a subscriber. I show up with a microphone and ask if I can talk to him on the record about a matter I've yet to name. And he's immediately game. Fuck it. And we walk over behind some stacks of lumber to be alone. - What you wanna talk about, boy? - So basically, were you at one point going around telling people that you'd killed someone? - No, a boy cut my buddies net right here with a knife. But no, like I bait the piss out of him. What happened was? - What happened was cabron says. They read a party and he doesn't know how the fight started because he and almost everyone else were zonked out of their minds. - Drinking and doing everything else under the sun. - Like substance wise, like, taking Xanax and doing mixing speed with it and stuff. - According to the police report, it was a clear moonlit night, about 4 4 30 in the morning on August 4th, 2012. Just a few days outside the time window, John had discerned from his records. Cabron says all he remembers is they were in the middle of the woods, chilling around a fire, a fight broke out. And then suddenly the dude Dylan, not Dylan Nichols, is John had told me, he was not involved. But another Dylan, with a different last name, came up from behind with a knife and cut cabron's buddy Tim in the neck. So cabron went after him, held Dylan's head down, punched him, hit him with a beer bottle, Tim got involved, might have bit the guy in the cheek. Dylan kept swinging his knife the whole time. He stabbed Cabron too. - Brought up a pair of, up in your side there. - You know, like I almost cut my gooch meat. (laughs) (upbeat music) And then it was over. Cabron thinks the whole thing lasted maybe 15 seconds. It wasn't some beautiful drawn out movie fight he says. It was a real life fight, which means it was scrappy, awkward and quick, and left his friend Tim clutching a four inch gash on his neck that was gushing blood. Did you think like Tim might be, like it might be life threatening? - Yes, that is the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. Cabron looked around and saw almost everyone at the party, maybe 30, 40 people scattering. Tim was in a bad way, so someone had called 911, and now people were driving away or hiding in the woods before the police got there. The ambulance came, carted Cabron and Tim to the hospital, and after getting a few stitches near the meat of his gooch, Cabron went outside to smoke a cigarette and bumped into a group of random girls from the party. - Telling me all kind of crazy shit, like somebody had died, like up at boy you got in a fight with, died. - What did you think? - I was thinking, I don't think that boy died. Said you wouldn't think so, held the fight, it last that long. - But still you had like this part of your brain that was like maybe? - Well yeah, I started coming down off in Xanax as you know, and you get to thinking like, oh God, I hope I didn't do something stupid. I don't think nobody died, but if I did, I ain't going to hang around to find out. - Cabron says he was kind of winging out, wondering if he killed someone. He called a buddy of his to come pick him up at the hospital. That buddy was in a motel room full of methods in Bessimer, Cabron says. And judging from police records and other sources, it seems possible the rumor that Dylan had been killed started in that motel room and then spread from there. Cabron says by the time you got to work on Monday, it had already taken hold. People were coming up to him at the lumber yard and other places around town asking if he killed a guy. And so you never, I just want to ask you this again, you never maybe were drunk one time and saying, yeah, I'd beat that guy to death to anyone, 'cause I heard that you were bragging about it from multiple people. Number one, I wouldn't even be something to brag about. I ain't like a deer or something. You know, I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear you say that, I gotta say. (laughing) So where would people get that from? Just damn small town, my own shit gets fucking twisted. But saying that you told them directly to their face. Hey, I don't know, buddy. I don't know either. I can't tell if what Cabron is saying to my face right now is true or not. I spoke to Cabron's father too, Kendall Bert, and told him that John said he'd overheard him on the phone here at K31 day, saying something about how his son was guilty as hell and he knew it. And Kendall told me he doesn't know what John heard him say or if he heard him say anything, but that he's a tough love kind of guy. And that if his son had done something like kill the person, he would never cover that up. According to Cabron, there is a moral to this story. He shares it with me after I wonder allowed to him about something one of the police officers told me. Why did his buddy Tim, rather than pressing charges against the man who'd almost killed him with a knife, decided instead to shove his middle finger in the face of the cops when they came to talk to him in his hospital bed? - Well, he nobody wants to be a tattoo. - I mean, dude almost died, got stabbed in the neck. - Cabron takes a drag of his cigarette. - You're shrugging your shoulders. If you're gonna live like white trash and shit, then hell, you might as well not tell 'em nobody. If I still laugh, you're trying to live. You can't be mad when you low down dirty shit like that happens when you hang out with low down dirty people. - You there? - Not here? - Cool. - I'm like, don't take the ball. - You have time to talk? I have some stuff I'd like to talk to you about. - I'm sitting here right now. - Are you busy? - Yeah. - Who's 25? - My orange pants, so I'm waiting for Tyler to get his ass back over here. - Five, bigger to use, collar to lower the boom or something to him, so. - Out of time. - Yeah, it's time I turn to talk a lot. I have a lot to catch up on actually. I'm excited to tell John what I've figured out. Finally, after all this time, I now narrate the story of the real crime back to him. Almost a year and a half after he first told me about it. With details colored in and facts illuminated, including the rather germane one that cabermed and not kill anybody. After I'm done, John summarizes my findings. - I bought your fuss and in fightin' snaggle tooth, stolen trucks, meth labs stabbing, hooping, hollering, go with a jail. - I can't believe how much you've worked on this son of a bitch and at the same time. - My god. What, what have you say? - I'm sitting here looking out the window at the clouds going by, just in love and disgust at the town that I live in. And the fact that I didn't pack my bags and get the hell out of here decades ago. I think it's the part about hiding in the woods that did it. That's just so classic. I don't know how many times I've heard that expression in my life hiding in the woods. I feel like hiding in the woods in Deb County is like having your afternoon tea in London. You know, there is another way John could have responded to all this news. I dare call it the normal way. That sigh he let out rather than being one of despair could have been one of relief. Relief that a young man has not been killed. That local officials have not been bought off by a powerful rich family. And then in fact law enforcement has done what appears to be a competent job responding to this incident. Shit town, at least in this case, doesn't look so so terrible to me. I don't know, progress, right? But no, I've learned that sometimes you catch John in a spell of depression. Sometimes you catch him in about of Mania. And sometimes like today I think you catch him in an alchemy of the two. I'm trying to think of a snappy come back to that. Because what is it if not progress? Oh my God. Oh Lord, it's just a cluster of fuck of sorrow. A cluster of fuck of sorrow. It's got a lot of progress. It's in I, this is making progress. You know, is that type of progress? I like ISIS. I like to come up with you. Oh shit. Damn man, I'm over your bust and mass off. When you contacted me you wanted to know what actually happened. So it's progress in that sense, right? It's progress. I am not saving the world over here. Climate change is definitely not safe for all of us. Climate change is not ending. I am not bringing jobs and sustainable employment to Alabama and lifting people out of poverty. But you asked me to try and figure out what happened here. On that front I've made progress. I thought you've done pretty good, damn good. Well thank you. I guess if I feel like I'm disinterested today it's first because I'm tired of war ASL. And secondly because, you know, I just, I'm not the most cheerful person. You know, I've been most spare time now either studying energy or climate change and it's not looking good. So, yeah sometimes it's hard for me to get focused back on something. When the whole goddamn Dardick summer sea ice is going to be gone by 2017. We're fixing to have heat waves inside the area this year. And sometimes I feel like a total idiot because I'm worried about a goddamn crack head out here and fucking, you know, shit down Alabama. So, yeah that's just a personality disorder of mine. You know, sometimes when you call me I'm kind of in an upbeat mood. And sometimes like today you call me in one of these tired, somber, you know, reflective moods where I've been, you know, sitting there mulling over climate change for about the past 10 damn hours. Oh, I mean, my God. When John says he's been mulling over climate change for the past 10 hours, what I think he means is that he's been mulling over climate change for the past 10 hours. I don't think he's exaggerating. It's like work for him, like he's made it his job. We've now been talking to each other for a year and a half. And while some of that time we've discussed the murder, there's been so much other stuff John wants to chat about. It's interesting stuff, but it's all over the place. Even if I haven't talked to him in a while, nearly every day he sends me emails about all sorts of global calamities. That he continues to keep up with, even though they've fallen out of the news. How many people are still concerned today about the Philippines? He's referring to Typhoon Haiyan from 2013. Or how about the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004, John says. Or the terrible flood in Pakistan year before last. Not hearing a lot about that already. How about the fallout from the Ebola outbreak? Or the nuclear disaster in Fukushima? Or a deeper cut Chernobyl? The list goes on and on. And it's not just catastrophe. John also gives me lectures and sends reports on the systemic problems he sees leading to complete breakdown of the social contract. Problems in our food production chain, our healthcare industry, our monetary policy. He also shares a variety of disturbing stories that he manages to dig up from all corners of the country, but the son of a US senator suffocating 21 dogs. Or a KKK branch giving out bags of candy to children as a recruitment effort in South Carolina. Or a guy down the street from John trying to kill his wife by running her over with a bobcat. I was at home, in fact, last night. The city of West Blokton has outdone vans as being the child molester per capita capital of Alabama. This is another data point John likes to send me now and again. The number of sex offenders per capita in his area. Vans and West Blokton are both towns in Bibb County. Vans is now one child molester forever, 192 citizens. West Blokton is for about every 60 to 40. Why do you check that statistic so often? Why do I check crude oil plus lease condensate production so often? Or why do I go pour over the tables from the ATCC so often? The IPCC being the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I was at the time able to come up with a table, as if I was flabbers on it. The other something. For the longest time, I thought the only connection between all of John's random interests was that it was all shitty. But the connection is deeper than that. He's distressed by the lack of outrage compared to the amount of shittiness in the world. To him that ratio is totally out of whack. That's why he was still upset about the chamber murmur even after I told him it wasn't true. Even though the murder and the cover of "want real", everyone's sure to believe they were. And still they did nothing. That part, the inaction. That's more disturbing to John than the idea of the murder itself. I really hate these kids know all the things that they know, and they just accept them as normal. I know that seems to really bother you. As accepted as something you can't do nothing about. The shitty misfortunes John fixates on. They're not a bunch of disparate things. They're all the same thing. His shit town is part of Bibb County, which is part of Alabama, which is part of the United States, which is part of Earth, which is experiencing climate change, which no one is doing anything about. It mansions John. The whole world is giving a collective shrug of its shoulders. And saying fuck it. What I admire about John is that in his own mis-entropic way. He's crusading against one of the most powerful and city-us-forces we face. Resignation. The numb acceptance that we can't change things. He's trying to shake people out of their stupor, trying to convince them that it is possible to make their world a better place. Yes, that lady over there, she's barefoot, and she's panceless. But we can lend her shoes. We can give her some pants. Instead of just putting our heads down and speeding past her and muttering that she must have done something to get like that, we can ask her if she's in trouble and we can offer her help. There is a different way. That's why John Ranson raves at the tattoo parlor. That's why John adopts dozens of stray dogs. That's why he devotes night after night to studying and writing about climate change. That's why he contacted a national radio show and asked me to come investigate. And that's why I now see John is devoting so much energy to what is arguably his most ambitious project of all. Radically altering the life of Tyler Goodson. Tyler almost embodies everything I hate about this shit tail in one continuous package. Have you ever thought of it that way? I bet you haven't tired. As the months have gone by since my trip to Alabama, I've heard more and more about Tyler. I've learned all about his tough childhood, the petty legal troubles that continued to dog him, his persistent financial problems, his struggle to support his three daughters whom he had by the age of 21 and whom he loves dearly. John has devoted his life to restoring old clocks, methodically and thoroughly. He sorts through the busted parts of these timepieces, trying to revive a sense of beauty and order. And in a way, that's what he's attempting to do with Tyler. Every time John picks up the phone and I ask what he's up to, Tyler's either there or he was just there or he's waiting for him to get there. It seems like he's giving him consistent work. John's also been accompanying Tyler to court and hiring him a lawyer to help him clear up some misdemeanor charges and get a driver's license back. And Tyler's recently moved to the trailer park across the street from John, so now he can easily walk to John's place. John's even talking about writing Tyler and his brother Jake into his will. I don't know if these two bastards know this, but when I fall over day at each one of them is going to get 20 ounces of gold each. I'll keep that secret. That's assuming that God damn cops don't come in and steal it. But John's relationship with Tyler is not just as a benefactor. I can tell that they get something more from one another. John will mention a walkie and Tyler took through the woods or an expedition they made to the junk yard to search for treasures or hope he'll recount some bit of their conversation. They like to spend time together. One day John was on the phone with me and he looked at his window and started listing off the flowers that were in bloom in his yard and the ones that were dying. He sighed and said, "It's tedious and brief." "It's a sundial motto. "Tatious and brief." Before we had clocks, we had sundials. And I never thought about this until I started talking to John, but watching a sundial, which could be as simple as a stick in the ground. As the shadow crept along, you were actually witnessing the rotation of the earth. It's so much less abstracted than a clock. A level closer to time. itself. Anyway, John told me sundows often have mottos engraved on them. John says tedious and brief is one. What do you mean? There are hundreds of these mottos. Life passes like the shadow. Make haste but slowly. Use the hours. Don't count them. Even as you watch, I'm fleeing. Soon comes night. These little reminders are out there, hidden in crannies around the world. I recently happened upon a sundial in the cemetery of an old Catholic mission next to a grave. Because of John I knew to look for the motto. It read, "Neil Boni Hodeye, the Emperor Dede." I did nothing good today. I have lost today. I thought I used to make sundials, but I made them for the mathematical exercise. I would pick difficult dials to do as a test of my abilities of geometry and trigonometry. These are things that wish Tyler and Jake could experience. There's a real excitement in geometry and trigonometry. I think when we was building the swing, I built a swing for Tyler's. This is one of the ways John and Tyler have been passing the hours together lately. They've been constructing an adult swing set, a giant rectangular frame to the side of John's house, not far from the apple trees, with a single John deer tractor seahanging from it. It has a 20-foot arch of action, John says, which I understand to mean it's a pretty gnarly swing. When John first told me about it, he'd said he was building it for himself, but now he amends that. Yeah, I think I built a swing for Tyler actually. I found out that the old man's safety when he swings the swing for about 20 minutes is back hurts and his knees hurt, so I didn't build it for me after all. Don't found that out. I thought I built it for Tyler. Fuck it. I want to build him a pull-up bar because he wants to be strong. I told him, well, it's nice to be physically strong, but you need to be strong between the ears because physical strength goes away. She needs to have strong neurons. I tell him you need to have a little bit of general algebra, but you should always have some trigonometry and you should have some G-onometry. What did he say? He never, I remember this conversation. He said he never saw how he had any fun. You could do much, please. I like imagining this odd pair, a polymathic middle-aged clock restoreer, and a tatted-up kid in his 20s with a Harley and a revolver in his briefcase. Out in John's yard on a summer's day, staking swings that pulls into the ground, the dogs circling around them, maybe a butterfly fluttering by. I like imagining John interrupting their work for a minute, to give Tyler a math lesson, feeling gratified that he is someone to give a math lesson to, and Tyler perhaps taking something from it, but at the very least, tumoring John, because he's grateful that John's helping him get his life together. I like knowing that this is how two people have chosen to spend an afternoon together in Bibb County, Alabama. Take the gifts of this hour, once on dial says, another, it's later than you think. And I point out the diagonal chain that was going to shore up the upright of the swing set. Yeah, I tell them the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the two sides. He hadn't used the thagrosis theorem. So they could calculate the length of the chain, without climbing up on the goddamn top of the pole and pulling them diagonal with a tight measure. That was my answer. And what did he say? Or something like that. Yeah, he has a lot of his daddy's mannerisms. It's often heard on the earth dot significant answer. Hold on, hold on. I'm on piss in the sink. I hope that's politically incorrect. That's something that flips Tyler out. Yes, I just pissed in the kitchen sink because I tell him if the phone had enough signal, I just went out there and pissed near one of the gardeners, the asagers, the comeders, the great murals because you know, they like that. But I didn't think the phone had enough signal. So instead of wasting three or four gallons to flush the commode, I just peed here in the kitchen sink and used about one cup for the water to flush the sink. And I got a little short dig, but I got a pretty good idea. So I can usually hang right for the center of that damn thing without splashing everywhere. Oh man. But any of that, what was the question I forgot? I forgot too. Hey, is Jake around? Is he a scholar? It's been a couple of weeks since I last spoke to John. And I just got a text from Jake Tyler's brother asking me to call him when I get a chance. Yeah, this is scholar. I was the one that called you, Jake. Take, did you want me? Oh, hey, has any? How do I just want to take him? Has anybody called you? No, not that I know. I have a few missed calls that don't think there for anybody down there. Why? Well, we have some bad news to tell you. Okay. John, they killed the silk Monday night. The summer is here at last. The sky is overcast and no one brings the rose for Emily. She watches her flowers grow. One of us come and go to give each other roses from her. but not the rose for Emily. Emily, can't you see this thing? You can do as you wish. There's love in every web of love for you. Who roses are fading now? She keeps her pride somehow that's all she has protected. She has protecting her from pain. And as the years go by, she will grow old and die. The roses in her garden fade away. Not one left for her grave. Not rose for Emily. S. Town is produced by Julie Snyder and me, with editing from Ira Glass, Joel Lovell, Sarah Canig, Neil Drumming, and Nancy Updike. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Starly Kind is a story consultant. Fact checking and research by Ben Falen. Seth Lind is our director of operations. Mixing by Lyra Smith and Matt Tierney is our technical director. The S. Town staff includes Emily Condon, Elise Ferguson, Julie Whitaker, and Kimberly Henderson. Music for the show is composed by Daniel Hart, Trey Pollard, Elato Negro, and Matt McGinley. Music supervision by Damien Grafe. Our website, stownpodcast.org. Special thanks to Bennett Epstein, Ted Scheinman, and Evan Smith. S. Town is a production of cereal and this American life. Not one left for her grave.