S-Town - Chapter II
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These first two episodes of s town are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and york times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. Chapter two and one of my first phone .

conversations with john, before we'd met, I asked if he thought I was possible that maybe keeper had killed anybody who was possible that the murder he contacted me about was actually just a rumor of fiction. No, john said there was little down his mind that I was true. And then by wave explanation, he watched into this parable.

Let me tell you something I saw one term.

I should admit that at the time, this story was completely lost on me.

Main Rogers press to work up with the truck stop together to get a little dinner. We came back back. IT was passing by the south forty trial, or park. So Rogers, what he do is to learn a transmission mechanic. He's not really talk to if is a good do, but he just know the only has one tooth.

It's really abused to see how I can baLance a cigarette on that one truth the whole time is talk get it's cigarette te is just pounced rain all over that one two and he never loses that some of the beach so we're coming by that is welcome to south forty seven and there's a girl out there walking around and further than i'm said, holding a cell phone and she's got on a pink top and nothing. Ils, no, fuck in pies. No, god, I am socks, bear foot. And I remarked that to rock what I say IT, i've probably said, my god, look at her work that and Roger sage advice was usually when you see jokers that look like that, they don't want to get like diet.

That's that's a lesson. And just strike through you.

Like so many things having to do a john IT took me a long time to understand the meaning of this story years, but I think I finally .

get IT now from cereal .

in this american life. I'm brian read, cause you should.

out.

My second night in alabama, I finally get to talk to jake goodson. Jake, the guy who originally told john the cape burt had bragged to him outside the little scissors about beating a guy of death. I sit with jacon john's kitchen, asking him to race's 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.

seems crazy to me. I get him and asking, and he will tell me if he's probed, come up and talk to .

you about IT. K room cabin lives right nearby. Why not just get IT from the horse's mouth? No friendly. So no sense. I would stick a microphone in his face and he would tell me about a guy killed for apply.

He's bed barn up who know no Better. He probably laugh about IT with you .

until jack nw, thanks, at least not now. I do not feel like i'm armed with enough information to confront cbm. Yet aside from promising far fetch, 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.

talk to you bar now is that he would .

talk to .

me about IT. And very, Sherry would probably tell you truth.

I'm chatting with a few guys in a tab two parler. All of them have heard about the murder. Sam are pretty sure they heard from cable from himself. You may all.

and you now don't do that. I don't you apparently .

i'm the push because I do not want the dudes and talking to to call cabin right now. Already, this tattoo shop does not feel like the safest place to walk into alone at night. Trying to dig up info 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 elegant murderer show up. I was invited here by Tyler goodson, jx brother, who by met and john's workshop while he was finding that chain saw.

He's one of the owners. Tyler knows cave room. They are both in the early twice. And I thought, maybe some of toddlers, friends who hang out here might have more information about the possible murder.

John dan feeling coming with me because he didn't like driving at night when I walk in. At first, IT seems like a pretty small place, just a couple of two in 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, small stage with motorcycles park there, and a brast stripper pole that's currently vacant. The shop is called black SHE pink. And I learned that the guys who hang out here take the name to heart. They see themselves as a collection of misfits, of self proclaimed miners and runways and pill billies. And Taylor has built this place as a haven for them, a place to swap their tales of getting jerked around by cops and judges and clerks and bosses, and to cultivate a sense of pride in their status as the outcome of their world. There's this gentleman who is name I never to catch, who tells me, quote, i'm so fucking fat, I don't care, no war, and lives up a shirt to show me the giant words he has tattooed on his stomach.

Feed me. Tell, tell. Give you a picture on a six foot hundred pty pounds, bear in mind. And a john 点 hat would feed me on my belly。 Just say, i'll go to .

clear picture there's a guy .

has been wearing .

the same .

trucker hat for seven .

years and then there's this guy people can't rather yeah what don't come on the york side years a shit face I believe he's killing a story about .

his friend willard, who is impervious to death.

You know, over three times won't fucking three times the best want that.

And then there's Tyler, who's been sweeping at the tattoo barter lately because he can't afford anywhere else to spend the night, was twenty three years old and has three daughters with three different women. And he has 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 Taylor will tell me that he often wakes up in the morning in a pudden of sweat, having drapped during the night of killing his dad. Toller's friendly to me when I arrive, welcoming, but doesn't getting on my recording equipment. I hear murmers from mother people, wondering who I am, wondering if I might be a cup.

People are asking me questions, feeling me out. A few guys ask if i'll smoke all with them out of some deer answers. I don't want to be stone, but I also don't want to seem like an ark. So I pretend to take a puff.

I pretend to do a number of things that make me feel very comfortable in order to keep us lower profiles 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 were talking at the risk, ruining any surprise. The statement is racist and nonsensical, replete with multiple uses .

of a terrible word. We had A X free labor's picking cotton, and we worked our s off. And we get, we aren't everything we get.

This is a tattoo artist who goes by buba.

We have, if you get a text by in job, he got like care. Some neigh's wife is in jail because she's drawn a child sport check on each one of them. Later.

bubble will display a rather fluent knowledge of the differences between various White supremacy groups. Mind you, wear in a majority black city right now, best mer, about twenty minutes from biid county, heading towards birmingham. But everyone in here is White, including me.

Someone mentioned off hand that the small tattoo area in front is about as much shop as you want here in business. Or, oh, wise, the place will be filled with black people who pish you off and will pay anything. Hence the secret door.

Before I left for alabama, my girlfriend, so lage, now my wife, whose black and whose family is from the south, had insisted I make my facebook and instagram accounts private because they are filled with pictures of us together. I told her he was being silly, overly paranoid. Ed, 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 are all shapes, sizes and colors. When someone asked what my ethnicity is, I tell them about the italian part without mentioning the russian jew part. But there is no hiding the .

fact that i'm a yankee.

It's go quieter.

You, i'll left the foot .

down here in an effort .

to change the subject. I turned the conversation to one of the few things I know. I haven't common with these guys.

See, you guys know john, our mutual queens. jum. Mac.

more .

character. Nobody like you have been said. You've been to the side.

You i'm not there, yes, but it's it's exhAusting to hang out them for a long day.

They tell me john comes around the tattoo power are pretty often and likes to lecture them and give a hard time. He'll argue with them about their views on the south, on politics, on race, says he'll submit them to tie raids about the coming climate and .

energy apocalypses. I was run and out of fossil fuels. The world was going to a luck. And and john tells .

off their customers for talking about what he sees as a name. shit. Tell us these guys that their lives are mounting to nothing, that their examples in the flesh of what's wrong with this place.

Hey, thinks everybody is a failure. Everything is going on as a failure.

This is another ted to artist joe. He calls you guys failures.

Fuck yeah. He calls us failures in mind, like joking lear. No, everybody's failure. Like in his brain, everybodys a failure for all I know you could be a failure.

Sometimes these guys dished out too. They teased john for his many peculiarities, like how hel devour whatever left of her food is around, no matter how older rock hard IT is, is an ability to buy new shoes to alleviate his athletes foot, which he's allegedly had for three years. His extemporaneous solving a math problems.

His utter reversion of being in a room with more than two or three people at a time is living with his mom is whole life who's being a loner. It's friendly though. They like john.

After all, john is the granddad of all black sheep. So this crew gets them. They truly seem to accept them. So that doesn't stop them .

from wondering.

I'd love to know what he's worth to feed me guys says.

not because I give a foot we just to know one as you live like potch tomo.

That's Tyler saying he lives like his poor a church mouse and Tyler would know he is on her close. He's the only reason all these guys know john, tell her help build johns maze. He's done all sorts of different jobs for um he's over there all the time.

And as far as the church mouse, I didn't notice that the john's refrigerators pretty bare. His mom invited me to stay for dinner one night so long as I didn't need them like pow folk SHE told me in a way where I couldn't SHE was joking. They live without air conditioning, without TV.

It's mysterious to meet too, because at the same time, john has all these dogs eat fees and brings to the vet this elaborate yard that requires constant of keep. He mentioned me that he spent more than sixty thousand dollars on the maze alone. Feed me guys .

is to Tyler. And if he's as load as you say.

s.

Millions and title explains .

that john's family comes for money. He says that one of his grandpas was a judge, and the john gotten inherit dance, played the stock market weather and made even more money. Plus, aside from all that, Taylor says john made good bank restoring old clock.

All of that sounds like I could be true enough. But then thailand and his friends start listing off john's assets. And I can tell if any of that is real, or if they are just letting their imaginations fill in the blanks about their local bow.

I they claim john as four hundred hundred thousand dollars in cash, one hundred thousand, one thousand worth of tools in the workshop, all the and teeth around his house. You're going to get one hundred fifty thousand books. Have we sold at old? As ship buba says, where books in the basement, a single clock or ten thousand dollars that's just sitting on the floor, a plastic storage, not to mention this Tyler gold.

that his granddad, his granddad, his gold, his dead, he's go tillers up on the counter of .

the bar crowd ing. Here's a Brown brief casey Carries around with them. He calls IT as minister's case.

He has a sticker that says ministers slept on the outside and it's filled with his tatoo machines and a gun and his weller's cap and some nipple jewellery and his black sheep ing business cards and also as minister's license, which you got online because he wanted to find an under nominative church with 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 tower. Stares downed us from the corner of the bar like he's about to divulge secret. When IT comes to john.

he says there is no telling because a because stuff slowly over the years and there's there are separate .

little .

dungeons and should .

his own house and playing up gates for more. I've built gates for this.

I ve built gates for the dunes teller telling me dunes in James, he soon clarifies that actually all cross spaces, but the way john e had a rigged m up telling says, with tiny doors and these locking iron gates inside, dividing them in the sections, what was the purpose of all that? He was creepy. The other diggs, creepy stuff. So he also thought I was cool.

That guy baba, the one, was especially outspoken about his racist views. As the night goes on, I put together that he's the one who gave john all his tattoos. The tattoo s that john showed me a property, his workshop, that cover his whole chest.

He explains that being a tattoo artist is a lot like being a therapist, people sydney chair for hours on end. And each person he works on is getting that tattoo for some specific reason. It's his job that he sees IT to uncover that reason, maybe the meditation, a milestone and excuse to get out of the house, a new girlfriend, a death. John's motivation was especially bewildering ababa, because john, he made IT clear almost every time he came in the shop, how deeply he despise tools.

You got a little love you shouldn't have. So shocking is IT to me when .

john lifted up his shirt to show me all the tattoos. IT was far more shocking to barba when john stroll, in one day at the age of forty seven.

and asked him to start putting them there suicide. You know, that's what I doubt a man, why is that sound me completely against you think book and failure tattoo, you know what i'm like, but would you just start tattle and your whole upper body like that? And around you, pistol and pistol.

So, you know, so I first thought, I thought he was going to kill this. So go get added to fuck up and blow his brains out or something. Fuck, I don't know.

Then more I got a done, you know, I really, you know we're in a in a right, you know, we need some money. And he helped to sell. He helped a lot bobber .

and Tyler coon black sheep ing together. And bob started noticing it'd have a bill about to come do for the business. They'd wondering how they're going to pay IT. And then conveniently, john would come in in a hand over three hundred or four hundred dollars and asked for another tattoo on his chest. But as people around here don't throw down money like that, but john wood, just in the nick time and then schedule another .

appointment for soon after, might not helping you out when you one thousand dollars, three dollars a couple weeks, you just helped me out. You know, you just cut up all my balls out. You just got every playing back where I needed to bat.

You know.

you think that's .

why you did IT? No, what do he keeps a boot? My only writes down everything. So he knows when we have in a biotite a certain things like, I know what is your power bill wins that though and he already knows his shit because he writes shit now he just, you know planned as tittle out. We're pretty much paid everything out and where .

IT was like that exact of.

If I went for john, we'd be shut to fuck now. IT wasn't for john.

yeah.

If I went for john, i'd be toone at my kitchen table at more. I think he sacrificed skin. I help us out.

Bob 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 in boy's man knows as daddy was I mean, the kid was lying on block at five years old Tyler, that is, you know on a job site working, not going on the school, working those school two days. We work by by a week on mean so just say he knows IT won't right? Says what how tol has been programmed to be the way years by as rising and is upgrading, you know.

Feel sorry for my guess. I don't know or knows that he's smarter than what he's let know. I know, I don't know.

The tiger is when john highest Tyler chop down trees in his yard or build iron gates in his crawl spaces. He doesn't really need that stuff done. Bother says he's just trying to find an excuse to put money in tail lish pocket when how they get caught driving with a suspended license and ends up in jail, something that happens now again, Bobby knows john on the call because hell .

bail them out last hour. I, tiger is boy, and this is boy, you know, tolerance, brother, he cares about talas little brother. J, you know, john can say anything he won't to do, but he loves tile. Apologies as much as you would your own son, your flesh blue. I figured IT.

We're standing in the backyards, were talking behind the tat shop. A train whistle starts to blow in the distance. Eventually someone comes out and tells me I might be interested to know that k berm sister cash burn is here, like right inside, fifteen feet away from me.

Why do we just go as curve about the murder this town? I go to the bar, leave six books for my beer, and careful to avoid cable room. Sister head out the secret door, not knowing what I eventually will know. Months, months from now, the cave bird didn't murder anybody, but also that before this is all over, someone will end up dead.

More in a minute.

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Hey, i'm brian read. I'm doing a radio story, a reporter here from new york. Is there somewhere quiet we could sit? It's a year later, and i'm pulling in the k 3 lumber on a friday morning， nervously asking if cats around.

I feel comfortable doing this only because I finally determined that the incident john contacted me about where cabrion allegedly got into a fight and be to get to death. Although IT did in fact go down almost exactly is john and jake and skylar and others told me was wrong in one relatively important detail, the to death part the guy can 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 a Jason tusa, lusa county, a chief at the sheriff department.

They are red to me from a detailed case file showing that the police had investigated the fight throughly, that no one had been killed, and that they had closed the case, not because they were paid off anything, but because one of the guys involved wanted to press charges. And so here I am at k three number to ask k room why he would go around bragging to people that he had killed a guy he had not killed. He's wisdom co workers in the lumber yard in a pledger Green trucker hat in dark sunglasses.

Aber, i'm brian read. There's a particular philosophy I ve encounter down here, and we will continue to encounter that is the bucket philosophy a belief that there is no sense in worrying or thinking too much about any given decision because life is going to be difficult and unfair regardless of what you do. It's more than a belief, really is a way of moving moment to moment world.

And from the deco cam seems to be a subscriber. I show up with a microphone and asked if I can talk them on the record about a matter i've yet to name. And he's immediately gain bucket. And we walk over behind some stacks of .

lumber to be alone. What you want to.

So basically um like were you at one point going around tell ling people that i'd kill someone?

No a boy cut my body's net right here with a nerve but not like I be to peace out of him.

What happened was what happened was kate um says they had a party and he doesn't know how the fight started because he and almost everyone else was zonked out of their minds.

Think and doing everything out under the song .

like substance wise.

like tysan ics and do in mixing speed with IT. And according .

to the police report, IT was a clear moon late night about four four thirty in the morning on August four, two thousand and twelve. Just a few days outside the time window john had discerned from his records, Cameron says all he remembers as they were in the middle of woods, chilling around a fire, a fight broke out. And then suddenly the stood Dylan, not Dylan nichole says john d.

Told me he was not involved. But another Dylan, with a different last name, came up from behind with a knife and cut kym's buddy tim in the neck. So give him when, after him held dolne head down, punched him, hit him with a beer bottle, tim got involved, might have bit the guy in the cheek. Dulin kept swinging his knife for the whole time.

He stabbed k room .

two right up in .

your side there, like, almost cut my good me.

And then IT was over. Kevin thinks the whole thing lasted maybe fifteen seconds. IT wasn't some beautiful drawing out movie file.

He says IT was a real life fight, which means that was scrappy, awkward and quick, and left his friend tim clutching a foreign gash on his neck that was gushing blood. Did you think like tim might be? Like that might be life threatening?

Yes, that is the crazy I should. I've ever seen him. A Kevin .

looked around and saw almost everyone at the party, maybe thirty, forty people, scattering tim was in a bad way. So someone to call nine one one. And now people were driving away or hiding in the woods. Before the police got there, the ambuLance came carded. Caber attempted to the hospital, and after forgetting a few stitches near the meat of his gooch, Cameron went outside to smoke a cigarette te and bumped into a group of random girls from the party.

Tell me a crazy shit like somebody had done, like up what we get to fight with. Dad.

what did you think?

Ying, I don't think that what we did, you wouldn't think so how the fact didn't asked that long.

but still you had like this party of brain that was like, maybe.

well, go, I started coming down off, zane, as you know, and you get to think about all god, I hope you do something. stop. I don't think nobody doub, but if idea didn't go hang around to find out.

Keep on says he was kind of waging out wondering if he killed someone he called the body of his to come pick up at the hospital. That body was on a mental room for the methods ambassage cabe says. And judging from police records and other sources, IT seems possible.

The rumor that Dylan had been killed started in that metal room and then spread from there. Cameron says, by the timing out to work on monday, I had already taken hold. People were coming up to at the lumberyard and other places around town asking if he killed a guy. And so you never, I just wanted ask you this again. You never maybe were drunk one time and saying, yeah, i'd beat that got a death to anyone because I heard that you were .

bragging about IT from multiple people, one based about like a deer or something.

You know, i'm glad hear that. I'm glad to hear you say that I got. So where do people .

get that from? Just a small town, muni IT gets working twisted.

But saying that you told them directly to their face.

are you? I don't know, but.

I don't know either. I can tell if what caber is saying to my face right now is true or not.

I spoke to cabernets father too, kendall bert, and told him that john said he'd overheard him on the phone here A K three one day saying something about how his son was guilty as hell and he knew IT and candle tell me he doesn't know what john heard him say or if he heard him say anything, but that he's a tough love, kinder guy, and that if his son had done something like killed a person, he would never cover that up. According to the room, 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 what IT is body, tim, rather than pressing charges against the man and almost killed him with a knife, decide stead to shove his middle finger in the face of the cups when they came to talk to him in his hospital bed.

My nobody wants to be a title tail.

I mean, dude, almost dive. Got stabbed in the neck. Cable in, takes a drag of a cigarette.

You're struggling your shoulders if you to live like you might as well not tell him nobody if know if to laugh, you try to leave. You can meet when low down dirty sheet lock. That happens when you hanging out a low down dirty paper.

There.

now, there, cool. You have time .

to talk. I have some stuff I like to talk you about.

Are you busy? Yes, orange, like for, or back over here, the use coin to lower the bone, or sometimes. So the time.

yes, my 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 narrates the story of the real crime back to him almost a year and a half after we first told me about IT, with details coloured in, in fact, illuminated, including the rather german one that caborn did not kill anybody. After i'm done, john summarizes my findings .

about your first in fat and snag or tooth stolen trucks, that lab step in, open how and go on a jail. I can't believe how much you've worked on this the ditch. And at the same time. 那个 what what .

have 在 i'm still here .

looking at the window， at the clouds, going back, just in love and discuss at the town that I live in and the fact i'd impact my bags and get to hell out of here decades ago, I think, is the part about having in the woods that did IT. That's just so classic, that kind. I don't know how many times I heard that expression in my life hiding in the woods. I thought having in the woods in the county is like having your afternoon tea in london.

You know, there is another way john could have responded all this news, I dare call IT. The Normal way that side 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, the enforcement has done what appears to be a component job responding to this incident.

Shit down, at least in this case, doesn't look so, so terrible to me. I don't know. Progress, right? But now i've learned that sometimes you catch jon and a spell depression. Sometimes you catch him in about of mania, and sometimes, like today, I think you catch amin alchemy of the two.

I'm trying to think of a snappy comeback today.

Because what is that .

if not progress? Oh, IT is just a cluster fuck of sorrow.

With that a cluster fuck of sorrow come .

like progress is that I is is making process, you know which that is that type of progress.

Animal, your bus in my ass off. When you contact me, you wanted to know what actually happened. So it's progress in that sense, right?

I am not saving the world over here. Climate is not climate. Climate change is not ending.

I am not bringing jobs and sustainable employment, alabama, and lifting people out of poverty. But you asked me to try and figure out what happened here. And on that front.

i've made process. I like you pretty. I am good.

Well.

thank you.

I guess if I still look on this interest today is first because i'm tired, war is and secondly because, you know I just i'm not the most cheerful person. You know, i've been the most spare time now either study and energy or climate change, and it's not looking at good.

So yeah, sometimes it's hard for me to get focused back oneself when the whole god day and artic summer C I is gonna gone by twenty seventeen IT were fiction to have hate lives in the area this year and is sometimes I feel like a total lady because i'm worried about a god. I am crack here, there, out here, fucking, you know, shit time on obama. So yeah, that's just a personal order of mine.

You know, sometimes when you call me, am calvin up the moon? Sometimes, like today, you count me and while they tired samba, you know reflective modes where you know, sit there, you know, mulling over climate change for about the past ten thousand hours. Oh, how main my when john said .

he has been mulling over climate change for the past ten hours, what I think he means is that he's been mulling over climate change for the past ten hours. I don't think he's exaggerating. It's like work for him, like he's made IT his job.

We've been .

talking to each other for half. And while some of that time we've discussed the murder, there's mean so much other stuff china wants to chat about. It's interesting stuff, but it's all over the place. Even if I haven't talked 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 .

fAllen out of the news. How many people are still concerned the day about the Philippine?

He's referring typhoon hay end from two thousand and thirteen. Or how about the sunni and three long? And in two thousand and four, john says, or the terrible flood in pakistan year before last here?

no. How about the fall .

out from the ebola outbreak? Or the nuclear disaster in fukashiro? Or a deeper cut to noble? The list goes on and non, and it's not just catastrophe. John also gives me lectures and sense reports on the systemic problems he sees leading to complete break down of the social contract problems in our food production chain.

our health care industry, our monitary policy.

a variety of disturbing stories that he to dig up from all corners of the country about the sun of A U. S. Senator suffocating twenty one dogs or K, K, K. Branch, gibing out bags of Candy to children as a recruitment effort in south CarOlina. Or guide down the street from john trying to kill his wife by running her over with a bob cab.

I was on home. Fact last night, the city of west blockin as outdoor fence as being the child minister per capital capital obama.

This is another data point jom likes to send me now again the number of sex offenders per capital in his area. Vance and west blocked energy towns and .

bid county vis one shop and forever hundred and ninety two citizens. West blockin is for a bad of our city to reform.

Why do you check that statistics so often?

Why do I check you crew hopelessly ast condensate production so often? Or why do I go pour over the tables from the apc c so often?

The ipcc being the united nations intergovernmental .

panel on climate change, is some people. For the longest time, I thought .

the only connection between all of john's random interest was that I was all shitty. But the connection is deeper than that. He's distressed by the lack of outrage compared to the amount of shitty ss in the world.

To him, that ratio is totally out of wac. That's why he was still upset about the Cameron rumor even after I told him IT wasn't true, even though the murder in the cover I won't real. Everyone should did believe they were, and still they did nothing. That part, the inaction that's more disturbing to john than the idea, the murder itself.

You know, 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 accept IT as something you can do nothing .

about the sitting misfortune john fix its on they're not a budget desperate things. They're all the same thing. His shit town is part of the county, which is part of an obama, which is part of the united states, which is part of earth, which is experiencing climate change, which known is doing anything about IT man's done the whole world is giving a collective shrug with shoulders and think, fuck IT.

What i'd admire about john is that in his own mythical pic way, he's crusading against one of the most powerful in city's forces. We face resignation, the num acceptance that we can change things. He's trying to shake people out of their super, trying to convince them that IT is possible to make the world a Better place.

Yes, that lady over there, she's very food and she's paneless. But we can lend our shoes, we can give some pants. Instead of just putting our heads down in speeding, pastor and murdering that you must have done something to get like that.

We can ask if she's in trouble, and we can offer her help. There is a different way. That's why john hanson raves at the tattoo parlor.

That's why john adopts dozens of straight dogs. That's why he devotes night after night to studying and writing about climate change. That's why he contacted the national radio show and ask 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.

Color almost embodies everything I hate about the shit tail in one convenience package. Have ever thought of that that well, that you haven't tired .

as the months have gone by. Since my trip to alama, I 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 has struggled to support his three daughters, whom he he had by the age of twenty one and who he loves dearly.

John's devoted his life to restoring old clock mathews, ally and thorough. He sorts through the busted parts of these time pieces, trying to revive a sense of beauty in order. And in a way, that's what is attempting to do with Tyler.

Every time I picked up the phone and I ask, what is up to tell? Is either there or he was just there or he's waiting from to get there. IT seems like he's giving him consistent work.

John also been accompanying tailer to court and hiring him a lawyer, tell them clear ups, some mismatch charges and get his driver's license back. Analysts recently moved to the trailer park across the street from john, so now he can easily walk to john's police. John even talking about writing Taylor and his brother jake e into his will.

I, I don't of these two bastards to know this, but when I fall over day at each one, arms gone, get twenty hours ago.

each keep that secret that's assume .

that got him copy al come instalments.

But john relationship with Tyler is not just as a benefactor. I can tell if they get something more from one another general mentioned Walker and teller took to the woods or an expedition they made to the junky yard to search for treasures or hope accounts. Some bit of their conversation. They like to spend time together. One day, john was on the phone with me, and he looked out his window and started listing off the flowers that were in blooming in his yard and the ones that were dying, he said and said.

it's tedious and breathe. And for some out model, tedious and brief.

Before we had clocks, we add sundials. And I never thought about this until 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, sn out often have models and grapes on them. Johnson says, tedious and brief is one. What do you mean .

teus life and brief? All sundown models are, say that like that.

There hundreds of these models, 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 and cranes 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 model IT. Read neil bone hoodia. Dm, pd, D, I did nothing good today. I have lost today.

I used to make some, but I made them for the mathematical exercise. You know, I would pick difficult dive to do the test. And the buildings of geometry and trigonometry, and these are things that watch taller and jay could experience. There's a real excitement and geometry and trigonometry that just you, I think when we was built in the swing, I built a swing for tillers.

This is one of the ways john and Tyler have been passing the hours together. lately. They're 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 general tracor sea hanging from a IT has a twenty foot k of action, john says, which I understand me. It's a pretty nearly swing. When john force told me about IT, he said he was building a firm self, but now immense.

that I think I built a swing for taller. Actually, I found out that old man and fifty when he swings the swing for about twenty minutes back. And so I didn't build for me, after all, don't found that I like i've built IT for town or fuck IT I want I built him a pull up before because he wants to be strong at told him, well, it's nice to be physically strong, what you need to be strong between the ears because physically strike that goes away.

You know, you need to have strong neons, I told me, need to have them, but a general alter. But you should always have some trigger on on the trigger. You should have some G, R.

He never have remembred this converse. He said he never saw, had any thing you could do much. We have.

I like imagining the odd pair, a polymax hic middle age clockers store, and attacked up kid's twice with a hardly and a revolve in his brief case out in john yard on summer er's day, staking swings that pulls into the ground, the dog circling around them, maybe a butterfly fluttering by.

I like imagining john interrupting their work for a minute to give Taylor a math lesson, feeling gratified that he has someone to give a math lesson too, and Taylor perhaps taking something from IT, but at the very least tumoral john, because he's grateful the 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 bid county, alabama. Take the gifts of this hour once and dial says another. It's later than .

you think and I point out the diagnosing in that was going to shore up you know up right up the yeah I think .

of the square .

and the apart nose is equal to the sum of the square of the two sides he hadn't used the aggress there um so I could calculate the length of chain without climbing up on the god day on top of the pole and pull in dam dying with type measure. That was my answer.

And what did he .

say or is not my fight? Yeah a lot of daily manor's m it's I often heard on there, not significant. Hello, let me hello, i'm on piece in the sink.

I hope that's politically incorrect and something slip through. Taller I am. Yes, I just pissed in the kitchen sink .

because tell IT if the family had .

enough signal out just after in place near all the gordana, the asians, the canadians of the create murders, who you know they like as, but I didn't think found enough thing, and also instill a list and three or four gallows to flush the commode I just paid here in the kitchen sink and use about one cup for the water. Flush the sing look shortly.

But I got a pretty good anime, so I can usually any right for the center that damn playing without splashing everywhere. Oh, man, what was? The question I forgot.

I forgot to.

Hello, is jake around the 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 when I called you jack text. Did you want me? 嘿。 Has anybody .

called? No, not that I know. I have a few most calls I don't think of from anybody down there.

Well, we have some bad news for you. Okay, john.

they .

killed itself monday up.

The summer is here, at least the sky is so your cast, and no one brings a rose for. SHE watches her flowers, girl love come and go to give each other roles as from a tree.

Are fading now SHE keeps surprise somehow that all SHE 天空 放 平。

SHE will go old and die the roses. I want love for great. S town is produced by Julie snyder and me with editing from iraq lass, joe level saracenic, neil drumming and Nancy update. We need any danger field as our digital editor, starting kind as a story consulting, fact checking and research by ben fAiling settle linders, our director of Operations mixing by liver Smith and material is our technical director. The s town staff includes Emily condon, Alice berger son, Julie wildcard and kimberley henderson. Music for the show is composed by Daniel heart trade pilot, a lot of negro and map beginning music supervision by damian grave, our website, s town podcast that org, special things to bended estein ted shy men and evan smith. S town is a production of cereal and this american life.