Death by Demons Unknown

The date of her death is easy to remember --- it occurred the day before the ninth birthday party of one of my sons, with which we had to follow through even though our minds were on my co-worker, Mary Catherine, whom the whole town knew as Sis.

Sis grew up in the town we lived in, the youngest child and only girl in a loving, athletic Catholic family. She married her high school sweetheart, who became the high school principal and their three kids were popular good students, anchored in the solid social standing of their parents and their church.

She had been managing editor of the local twice-weekly newspaper, a position I succeeded her in. She left the paper, which just a local newsrag without any wire service, to open the town's first professional photography studio, simply because she had a camera and there was no place for brides-to-be to go and have their engagement photos taken. But her heart was always in the newspaper business. When I advertised a sports writing position, she applied for it and I hired her.

We got along fine --- there was none of the second-guessing going on that sometimes occurs when a new person becomes the boss of someone who previously held the job. She loved sports and loved photograpbing the football, basketball, baseball and softball games that are the primary entertainment in a close-knit southeastern Ohio small town of 6,000-plus people, most of whom grew up together and/or were related to each other.

Her big love, of course, was track and field, because that had been her sport and the sport of her two daughters. She would travel with the local team and get out in the field with the kids to get the perfect shot of a beefy girl making a shot put or a lanky, gasping boy breaking the ribbon at the finish line. She taught me a lot of 35 millimeter photography, which was the type of camera we used back then.

I was new to the community, even though my extended family was so large that I couldn't even spit without hitting a second cousin once removed. Sis, with her thick eyeglasses and quiet, self-deprecating sense of humor, would step into my office when she knew I was writing about a certain subject, especially if it related to the school district and make suggestions, such as getting a quote from a specific person that I might not know about. She did this in a way that was never pushy or patronizing. I was young to be doing my job and appreciated having someone just old enough to be a mentor, kind of a nicer, much less batshit crazy version of my own older sister.

Our newspaper office caught fire one weekend and burned to the ground. Sis was there with me, while the firefighters operated their hoses, grabbing the cash register and cameras and computers and old bound volumes of the newspaper and bringing them to the street until we were ordered to stay out by the authorities because it was unsafe to go inside any more. When there was nothing else to do, she picked up her camera and documented the demise of the newspaper building.

Local TV news crews from Columbus, Ohio and Huntington, West Virginia flew up in helicopters to record the breaking news story and one of the reporters cornered me on the street and asked for an interview. She asked me, "Does this mean the end of the newspaper?"

I saw Sis out of the corner of my eye. She was photographing me being interviewed.

I don't know why I said it. Maybe it was shock or just sheer bravado. I smiled and said, "We publish twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our readers will read about this fire in our next edition, on Tuesday." I saw the flash of Sis' camera and looked over at her. She was still looking through the viewfinder but she had one thumb upraised.

The next two days, the publisher and I scrambled trying to find a new storefront for our office. Martha, our secretary-circulation manager, set up a card table out on the street and with the help of extension cords and a portable generator, handled subscriptions and classified ads. Sis plugged in a computer and put together the news, along with one other reporter.

I would come in at night and did my work under a streetlight. We did not miss a deadline and the edition after the fire became our best seller. The out-of-town news media did follow up stories on the plucky news team from out in the sticks.

A few years later, Sis' husband became a victim of school politics. A woman I'll call Naomi, a high-ranking female school administration official with a wealthy husband and a viciously creative imagination. had bribed some witnesses who were willing to accuse four school administrators, including the superintendent and Sis' husband, of being part of a homosexual cult that preyed upon boy prostitutes in another nearby town. Suggesting your enemies were queer was a common tactic in this part of the state and had been used to unseat a county sheriff with a wife and eight children back in the 1950s. It hadn't been used in a couple of decades, but since it was a tried and true method, it seemed ripe for using again.

Nobody who knew the four accused men --- every one of whom had families and were so obviously straight that it seemed ridiculous to even bring the subject up. But Naomi had influence and a particular grudge against Sis' husband, who had been chosen high school principal over the Naomi years before.

Everyone close to the situation knew about the political history and bad blood involved. Since I was a newcomer, I was in a position to write objective editorials and I tried to do so.

When I wrote that some of the accusations seemed based on hearsay, I started getting anonymous letters in envelopes with the scent of a strong feminine perfume surrounding them. The letters were typed. The messages basically suggested that I perform a physically impossible sexual act upon myself and that if I continued to interfere with the investigation, word of a certain illegal act that I had committed in my youth --- an accusation that was true but nonetheless embarrassing, even though I had paid my debt to society for it --- would be made known.

I showed the letters to Sis who sniffed them. She said, "That smells like Tabu (which was a rather inexpensive perfume popular with ladies of a certain age). Naomi's the only person at the school that I know who uses it. Cheap bitch. And she's always bragging about that new Lincoln Continental her husband bought her."

I talked the issue over with my then-wife and my parents and the next day I went to my publisher and told him about my personal history. I showed him the letter --- he wrinkled his nose and said something about it smelling like a cheap New Orleans cathouse --- and told me to get my ass back to work.

I asked Sis to make a purchase for me that I did not feel comfortable making.

The next school board meeting, I told my reporter to take the night off because I was going to cover it myself. There was a big crowd --- rumors of a salacious nature always draw the curious to the scene of a potential disaster. As I took my seat, Sis handed me a bag with the item I had asked her to get for me. I watched as Naomi took her seat in the front row and saw her smile and wave at couple of people, one of whom was one of the "witnesses" against the accused school administrators.

The meeting opened and followed its agenda, toward the end of which there was an opportunity for questions from the public.

I stood and went to a microphone set up in front of the school board. I addressed them and said, "I have a question, but there's something I need to do first."

I opened the bag and pulled out the bottle of Tabu that Sis had purchased for me. I turned around and walked over to Naomi and handed it to her saying, "I heard you might be running low."

Then I walked back to the microphone and addressed the school board:

"At my office, we hear lots of rumors, some of which are true and some of which are not. I'm relatively new here and so I don't know who to believe and who not to. So I do what I was taught to do in journalism school and ask questions of anyone I can think of who might have an answer or at least some insight into what's being said.

"Now, we all know about rumors accusing some of our school officials of improprieties. And I've talked to every one of them and they say it;'s not true. Our paper has tried to contact some of the people making the accusations, but they haven't been willing to talk to us. They've all been very nice, but they won't say anything. So we just printed that they had no comment.

"I suppose if there's been any criminal behavior, the legal authorities will look into it and take the appropriate steps if someone's done something they shouldn't be doing. So I'm not going to ask anyone here tonight about these accusations. I trust in our local justice system..

"But there is another rumor that has come to our office and I just haven't been able to get to the bottom of it. I'm not saying it's true or it's false. But since we're all here tonight and we all probably have heard the rumor, and since some of the people involved are here also, it seems like a good opportunity to ask and just get it out on the table."

I turned and walked over to Naomi and stood in front of her and everyone sitting behind her. I looked her in the eye and said, "We hear that you've been paying people to make accusations against the school administrators. Just to clear it up, is it true?"

One of the accusers started to say something, but someone next to him elbowed him and he shut his mouth. Naomi's mouth twitched a minute and then she smiled, in rather a mean way, at me. I saw the flash of a camera go off out of the corner of my eye.

Without either of us unlocking our eyes, she stood up and walked out of the room.

The next day, we ran an article noting that Naomi had "no comment" about the rumors I had brought to her attention. The article was accompanied by the photo Sis had taken of the staredown between Naomi and me. There was a slight but perceptible smear on one of her teeth. It looked like lipstick.

Yeah, I know, it was definitely a case of the news media being way too involved in the story and probably not being very objective about it. Sue me. Naomi didn't.

I had an enemy for life from that point on, and several friends in the school district, for the same amount of time. The rumors about the queer cult continued to pop up, but despite several executive sessions to discuss "personnel matters", the school board never officially discussed the matter on the record. And the county prosecutor never filed any kind of charges either.

In 1991, Sis and her husband invited my then-wife and I to go out to dinner with them on their anniversary. The evening was very nice and we laughed and joked about the things friends do. By this point, two of Sis' kids were married and she was a grandmother. She had shut down her photography studio and was concentrating solely on sports --- it was track season and she was excited about some pictures she had taken of a recent big event.

The next day, I heard Sis was in the hospital, in the intensive care unit. She had some kind of breakdown --- nobody knew exactly what the problem was.

I went to visit her and found her in restraints. She was emotionally out of control, sometimes recognizing me and sometimes not, occasionally screaming vulgarities. I spoke to her husband in the lobby. He was dazed and exhausted and said something about her doctor considering estrogen therapy. Something about the change of life and clinical depression.

Sis recovered, took some time off and then came back, full of smiles and energy. There was a special summer track event going on and she was headed out to take pictures. She dropped the film off at the office that evening. That was the last time I saw her.

Two days later, we heard on the office police scanner that an ambulance had been called to an address that sounded familiar. Martha said, "Ain't that where Sis lives?"

We all stopped and listened some more. Someone had fired a gunshot in the back yard. One fatality.

I got in my car and drove up to her house and saw the ambulance, police cars and the crime scene tape. I sat there with the motor running. The local radio station was playing country music and then the familiar voice of the guy who read the local news came on. This just in, he said. He was sad to report the tragic death of one of our town's best-loved newspaperwomen ...

Good reporting, I thought. Breaking news.

I sat there, but did not get out of the car. I watched the EMS workers carry a gurney to the back of the house and watched them come back with a body --- covered by a sheet.

I came back to the office and told everyone what I knew and what they also had heard on the radio. I told the reporter to get what information she could for a story. I had an editorial to write.

The next issue, we published every one of the track and field pictures that Sis had taken on her last assignment. My editorial talked about her devotion to community sports and to the town that she loved. On the front page, we published a laughing picture of her that captured her essence perfectly. I had an 8 by 10 version of it printed up and framed and delivered it to the funeral home for the family.

The next day, I received a telephone call from Sis' married daughter. She was full of tears and verbal abuse and berated me for the article which said her mother committed suicide. I was speechless and said nothing. When the call was over, I went into my office, shut the door, and punched my filing cabinet until I broke two fingers.

I forgot the family were Catholics and suicide is a mortal sin. It didn't matter what was said in our paper's tribute. We put it on the front page that Sis committed suicide and that was all that mattered.

I attended the funeral but none of the family spoke to me.

As I said, that was in 1991, nearly 20 years ago. My son, whose birthday party came the day after Sis' death, will be 28 this year. Sis' grandchildren are probably in college. There are little kids who call ME grandpa now. My wife and I divorced. I, who investigated the queer cult rumors, have since come out as gay.

I don't know what happened to Sis' husband or the rest of her family. As far as I know, Naomi is still there. She would be an old, old woman, probably as poisonous as ever. I do know she retired from the school system some time back, after the school board eliminated her administrative position and sent her back to the high school to teach English.

I've been to see Sis' grave one time, at the town's Catholic cemetery, where her family buries its own. I stood there and asked, out loud, "Why, Mary Catherine, why?"

The only answer I've come up with is Death by Demons Unknown.

For most people, a smile is just a smile. But for some, a smile is a mask that hides unspeakable things. Since the death of Sis, I've never been able to accept a smile at face value.