40 Acres of Ink
When debt-strapped Tulsa reporter Roy Boudreaux and his teenage daughter uncover altered survey maps that deprived the Downing family of pipeline lease income, a routine obituary becomes a dangerous investigation. With his daughter and ex-wife holding him accountable, Roy rejects an eighty-thousand-dollar bribe and publishes despite beatings, threats, and retaliation that destroys his truck and jeopardizes the newspaper. After the oilman behind the intimidation is arrested, Roy prepares to hand the evidence to the family’s lawyer—without demanding anything in return—while the suspicious death that started it all remains unresolved.
By MyAudioBooks.ai ·
I called the dead man's westerns collectible, and June peeled a grocery-store sticker off one.
"How collectible?"
"Seventy dollars for the lot."
"You told his sister a hundred."
"She caught me before I'd finished thinking."
June put the book down. Late August in Tulsa, late afternoon, and my sixteen-year-old daughter had already heard enough sales talk. At forty-seven, I appraised books between assignments for the Red Fork Weekly. Neither occupation paid enough to make the other unnecessary.
The fifty-dollar appraisal fee covered part of my overdue electric bill. Child support needed more than that. I'd collected June from magnet-school practice while Carla worked an extra dispatch shift, although this wasn't my custody day. Her backpack occupied the passenger seat of my truck.
I still owed the weekly an obituary for Harlan Raines, whose library I'd appraised earlier that week. He'd died beneath a deer stand the next morning. His son, Dale, wanted something appropriate about generosity.
June went hunting for a charger cable in the tool tub behind my cab. She shifted a feed sack and uncovered a shoebox.
"More collectibles?"
Inside lay folded survey maps and an old patent bearing the Downing family name. June spread two sheets across the tailgate. The creek made the same crooked bend on both, but a pencil boundary crossed it in different places.
"Somebody moved the line," she said.
Forty acres changed sides between the sheets. I knew enough to see that much. Writing Harlan as merely generous could help bury something less flattering.
Earlier that week, he'd stood beside my truck while I carried books out of his library. He could have put the box there. I couldn't remember him carrying anything.
"We ask one surveyor," I told June.
"Before you write?"
"Before."
My driver's door stuck. I lifted it by the handle until the latch caught, then carried the box around to June.
I brought it into Ruth's diner, ten minutes away, and called Glenn Poteet from a booth that smelled of hot vinyl and coffee.
Ruth filled my cup despite the tab I hadn't paid. She set pie in front of June.
"We can take it with us," I said.
"She can eat sitting down."
June reached for her wallet. Ruth put a fork beside the plate and went back to the grill. June took her first bite before Glenn arrived.
He slid into the booth, pulled the maps toward him, and aligned two printed marks with his thumbnail.
"Same culvert," he said. "Same creek. This sheet puts the boundary where we actually found it. This one puts it where Harlan wanted it."
"You surveyed it?"
"I set those stakes."
"Across Downing land?"
"Land connected to the Downing allotment. That patent doesn't tell you who owns what today. Their lawyer has to untangle that." He tapped the revised line. "But this puts the pipeline corridor inside the Raines tract. Keeps the Downings out of the lease payments."
June stopped eating.
Glenn rubbed a fold flat. "Raines, Delaney, Pruitt. Everybody had an interest. It's lines and lawyers now. Nobody's losing a house."
"Somebody lost the money," June said. "You don't get to make that nothing."
Glenn withdrew his hand. I let her words stand.
"Will you say you set the stakes?"
He studied the two sheets again. "Use my name. I should've said it a long time ago."
He told me a Houston buyer was closing on the lease interests in nine days. They wanted the boundaries blessed again. Before leaving, he sent me the Downing family's lawyer's number.
I drove out to the lease road to see whether the culvert still matched the maps. June stayed in the cab with the box.
Duane Kellogg stepped around the locked gate carrying a shotgun.
"Leave the shoebox," he said.
I stopped several paces short. "You know what's in it?"
"I know you need to put it down and get the fuck off this road."
The barrel remained low. His finger lay along the stock.
"Dale wants it back."
That answered more than the maps had. I walked backward to the truck, keeping my hands empty. Kellogg followed us out in his pickup.
I pulled into Polk's Feed rather than lead him to Carla's house. The store's lights were on, but the door was locked. By the time I got back to my truck, Kellogg had parked beside it.
My driver's latch stuck again.
He caught my shoulder and drove his fist into my nose. Something shifted inside my face. I struck the door pillar, and blood ran over my eyebrow.
"Give me the fucking box."
"Fuck you."
He hit me once more, hard enough to put me against the door.
From the passenger seat, June held up her phone.
"Delete that shit," he told her.
"No."
I pulled the handle while lifting the door. It opened this time. I fell onto the seat and got the engine started before Kellogg could reach inside.
June kept filming until we'd cleared the lot.
"Well," I said through blood, "that'll add to the repair—"
I couldn't finish. June passed me a practice shirt to press against my face.
"Drive to Mom's."
Carla put June in her own room, then brought me a bowl of water at the kitchen table. Before touching my face, she made me report the assault and send the video to the deputies.
"Hold still."
"I am."
"Your mouth, too."
She cleaned the split above my eye and drew it together with butterfly closures. My nose had swollen crooked. Every swallow tasted of blood.
"You took her to a man with a shotgun."
"I went to see a creek."
"And then you stayed involved."
I gripped the wet shirt. "I drove away."
"After taking her there."
Carla pressed a clean pad against my brow. I accepted it without reaching for an answer.
"The last story Dale bought out from under you concerned leaking tanks," she said. "You called killing it keeping the lights on."
"I needed the work he could take away."
"I know what you needed. I lived here."
I wanted her to stop cleaning the wound. I wanted her to keep doing it.
"He's going to offer you something," she said. "He budgets for people."
When she'd finished, she put both hands flat against the sink.
"You can leave. Or you can stay tonight. Staying doesn't put us back together."
"What do you want?"
"You. That hasn't made me trust you."
"I want to stay."
"With me?"
"Yes."
She took my hand and led me out of the kitchen.
After a short night's sleep, I woke with the butterfly closures pulling at my brow. Carla had dressed for work.
"Locked doors at the paper," she said. "No more lease roads."
Dale had left a message asking me to come to Morley Funeral Home that afternoon. Carla listened to it once.
"There's a dispatch entry I can bring you," she said. "Something about Harlan's death."
"What?"
"Refuse Dale first."
At Morley the next afternoon, June waited in the corridor while I went into the viewing room. I left the door ajar. The shoebox stayed under my truck seat.
Dale stood beside his father's closed casket. On a small table he'd arranged bundles of cash.
"Eighty thousand," he said. "For the maps and your trouble."
My nose throbbed beneath the funeral home's cold air.
"Kellogg broke my nose."
"He gets ahead of himself."
"That's your explanation?"
"That's an apology."
I reached toward the money, meaning to move a bundle, to establish somehow that I could touch it without agreeing. My hand stopped above the table.
Eighty thousand would clear what I owed Carla. It would keep my electricity on and replace a transmission that had been slipping since spring.
"June takes the early magnet bus at Forty-first and Union," Dale said. "Correct?"
I lowered my hand.
"Why do you know that?"
"People notice routines, Roy. You ought to be thinking about hers."
I went into the corridor. June stood against the opposite wall with her phone held at her waist.
"I recorded him," she said.
"You were listening?"
"The door's open."
From inside came the soft click of Dale straightening the cash.
"Are you taking it?" June asked.
"I wanted to."
"Are you?"
"No."
I stepped back into the doorway.
"Keep your money, Dale. I'm publishing."
He rested one hand on the bundles. "You haven't thought this through."
"I've thought about it."
June walked beside me to the truck. She gave me no congratulations, and I asked for none.
Before starting the engine, I messaged Carla that I'd refused, told her what Dale had said about the bus, and gave her our destination.
At the Red Fork Weekly, I carried the maps inside. June brought her phone. Her backpack stayed in the cab.
The editor approved the story by telephone, then reminded me that Pruitt Feed and Equipment bought the weekly's last substantial advertising space. I told him I understood. Saying it cost nothing yet.
Through the evening I wrote what we could support. Glenn confirmed his account over the phone. We photographed both maps, keeping the common marks visible. I described a manipulated boundary and unpaid lease interests, not a settled title. Harlan's fall remained a reported fall. His access to my truck remained my recollection, not proof that he'd planted the box.
June corrected where I'd called Kellogg's assault an altercation.
"He hit you," she said.
I changed it.
By two in the morning I'd sent the edition to our subscribers and put the story online. The weekly kept a small press for short runs, and June helped me square the sheets before feeding them. Ink marked her fingers.
Carla came through the front door carrying gas-station coffee and a folded page. I locked up behind her.
"I called the deputies before I left," she said. "They're coming here. I told them about the bus threat and reminded them who hit you."
"How long?"
"Call went in about fifteen minutes ago."
She put the page beside the maps.
"Dispatch entry. A deputy reported Kellogg at Harlan's ranch gate that morning. Before the body was found."
I read the line she indicated.
"That doesn't prove he killed him," I said.
"No. It gives somebody a question to ask."
"You could get in trouble for bringing this."
"That's mine to deal with."
A blow shook the front glass.
Dale stood outside with his fist raised. Beyond his shoulder, across the narrow drive in the separate lot, Kellogg opened my truck door.
"Open up," Dale said.
I stayed beside the brick doorjamb. "The deputies are coming."
"Then let me in before they do."
Kellogg leaned into the cab. When he stepped away, flame showed beneath the dashboard. It spread across the seat.
"My backpack," June said.
Carla caught her by the elbow and took her behind the press, clear of the frontage.
"Stay inside."
I moved toward them, then Dale struck the glass again.
"You think putting it on the internet ends this?"
"Get away from the fucking door."
He pulled at the handle. The lock held.
Through the side window I could see fire filling the cab. June's backpack sat where she'd left it, against the passenger door. I took one step toward the entrance before the heat cracked the truck's windshield.
"Roy," Carla said.
I stayed inside.
She opened the rear exit, checked the alley, and kept that route clear. June crouched beside the couch with her phone.
"The funeral audio's going up," she said.
"Stay away from the glass."
"I'm away from it."
Dale pounded again. I put my shoulder against the brick beside the frame, close enough to hear him without standing in front of him.
"Open this fucking door," he shouted. "I'll burn the place with you in it."
The truck burned across bare pavement. No flame reached the office, but smoke drifted past the glass and found a gap around the frame.
We waited through another pull at the handle, another threat. Carla kept June near the rear exit. My legs shook, and I braced one foot against the wall.
When the deputies arrived, Dale turned toward them with both palms raised. I heard him start with my name. Then one deputy pointed him away from the door while another crossed toward Kellogg.
I unlocked only after a deputy told me to. Carla gave them June's recordings. I showed the fresh blood dried into my shirt and the message I'd sent before coming to the office.
They separated Dale and Kellogg. Through the front window, beside the press, I watched Dale being led away in handcuffs.
"Three families," he shouted at me. "Do you know what you've done to three families?"
I let go of the doorframe.
By the time the fire was out, the truck's cab had collapsed into blackened metal. My keys remained in my pocket. June's school things had burned with the backpack.
Pruitt's advertising space filled nearly a page of the edition stacked beside the press. Next week's page would need something else.
June slept on the couch, her ink-stained hands tucked beneath her cheek. Carla set a coffee beside me.
"She comes home with me," she said.
"All right."
"And you print another edition."
My brow pulled when I nodded. Carla stayed beside the couch.
I took the maps to the desk phone. Glenn's message gave me the Downing family's lawyer's number. I would offer the originals and the recordings, without asking for an exclusive or a place in whatever came next.
My hand shook against the cradle. I steadied it, then lifted the receiver.