The Jingle Man, a story by Beverly Justice

The mid-September sun penetrated the storefront window, casting the mirrored lettering of The Minton Daily Register upon the metal desks and wooden floor. The small newspaper had served nearly ten thousand Ohio readers from the same location since the year of the Wright brothers’ famous flight.

Tony Franks (“Head Reporter,” his nameplate declared) shuffled some clutter to the edge of his desk to examine the morning mail. He arranged for his personal mail to be delivered to the Register after he had caught his landlady snooping through it. “I didn’t open it,” she insisted. “I just wanted to know who writes to you.” As if curiosity excused unprovoked prying!

Tony’s boss, Joe Hyde, was in Columbus all day for a seminar. Joe was editor and publisher of the newspaper, a position he acquired when the man formerly in that capacity was imprisoned for tax fraud. The town gossips nearly worked their tongues to death with that scandal. Two part-time reporters covered local sports, church, and school news. The only other full-time employee who shared the office with Tony and Joe was Debbie Gaines, who handled the advertising accounts, circulation, and other business dealings. She was in her early fifties but accomplished more in one hour than someone half her age could do in a day. However, she had one habit that grated on Tony’s nerves: her mindless chomping and popping of chewing gum. Grow up! He would fume silently. Do you know how ridiculous you look and sound?

Tony sifted through his mail: a credit card bill, the usual box store ads, a car dealership offer to buy his five-year-old subcompact. A small padded envelope with an unfamiliar return address caught his attention. What could it be? Of course! The eBay penny.

Tony was not a fanatical coin collector, as was his uncle, but he had a penchant for nineteenth-century American coins. For weeks, he searched for a 1849 Liberty braided-hair penny in pristine condition. He found one on the auction website but faced some stiff competition in the bidding. He won with an offer of thirty-two dollars. Robbery! he thought.

Tony opened the envelope and unwrapped the layers of tissue paper. Placing the coin on the desk, he admired its luster. The number “1849” bore no signs of wear. It could have been minted yesterday.

Tony noticed a piece of folded notebook paper jutting from the envelope. He unfolded the note and read the handwritten message: “Congratulations on your purchase of this rare coin. The legend is that this penny was found in the pocket of Edgar Allan Poe as he lay mortally unconscious on a street in Baltimore. May your luck with this coin be much better than his.”

“Ha!” Tony sneered.

“Whatcha say, Tony?” asked Debbie, with her constant sound effects of popping and snapping.

“Nothing, Deb. Just some joker trying to play me for an idiot.”

“By the way, Tony, Joe said to remind you of the Red Hat Ladies’ banquet tomorrow.”

“How could I forget?” he replied with a chuckle. “The home-cooked food always makes the boredom worthwhile. Last year, they were so pleased with my write-up that they gave me a gift certificate to Waldo’s Pizza.”

“Just one of the many perks of the business,” Debbie managed to say between gum pops.

Tony glanced at his watch. “I’m going to call it a day, Debbie, since I came in at 5:00 a.m. See you tomorrow.”

He cleared his desk and double-checked that his work was saved on the computer, nearly forgetting about the penny until a glint of sunshine made the coin glow like a beacon. Arising from his chair, Tony placed it into his shirt pocket.

Instantly, a novel sensation enveloped him, similar to awakening from a half-remembered dream. Suddenly, Tony, whose average alcohol consumption was one or two beers a month, needed a straight shot of whiskey immediately.

He strutted into O’Malley’s Bar with the aplomb of a seasoned drinker. What am I doing? A part of him asked. I never go to bars. He sat in a darkened corner and ordered two whiskey shots, “straight up.”

The dream-like fog persisted, but was joined by other mental gymnastics unfamiliar to Tony. He could see words floating in his mind: blunt words; polysyllabic words; French words; quaint words that his grandmother had spoken decades ago. The words swirled, danced, and spun like leaves in an autumn breeze. His mind’s eye watched the words take orderly form, as if directed by a drill sergeant. Soon, they formed elaborate rhyme schemes and fell into place as poetic verses.

Awed by the linguistic extravaganza in his head, Tony stared wide-eyed into the empty space in front of him. His behavior caught the interest of the bartender.

“Daydreaming never accomplishes much,” he scolded Tony from across the room.

Tony jumped at the sound of the harsh voice, then turned to face the smirking bartender. With no idea what would spill from his mouth, Tony countered, “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” He bolted to his feet, nearly tipping over his chair, and stomped from the bar, hearing the word “nutcase” behind him.

The continuing days saw Tony’s head filled not only with the words, but also with certain compulsions. He actually took great pains to appear slovenly with mussed hair, wrinkled clothing (always dark colored), and a short, bushy mustache. His trips to O’Malley’s became daily events that lasted for hours. But the words still dominated. They streamed from his mouth with no control on his part. They flowed through his fingertips to the keyboard, revealing themselves in police reports and human interest stories. When Joe advised Tony that his writing was becoming too wordy and bombastic, he retorted, “The true genius shudders at incompetence—and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.”

Tony laughed to himself when his elocution and vocabulary daunted others. After Sheriff Danes complained that his turgid report of a minor burglary was “foolish,” Tony huffed, “I have great faith in fools—my friends call it self-confidence.”

It amused him that his landlady now trembled in his presence. Tony developed the habit of feeding the blackbirds every morning, just outside her window. In no time at all, a swarm of squawking, diving, clamorous birds would awaken the woman, who then pulled the curtain to peek at the ruckus. Then she would immediately retreat behind the curtain at Tony’s sharp glance.

As editor, Joe kept a careful eye on Tony’s transformation. He received a few complaints to “tell your reporter to write in plain English,” but overall, the readers found the style refreshing. High school English teachers reported that students were reading every page of the newspaper on their own time. A retired airplane pilot asked if Stephen King joined the editorial staff.

The powder keg in the Register office reached the point of ignition when one of Tony’s stories stirred the pot. Joe had sent Tony to cover the Daughters of the American Revolution patriotic program. Tony believed that the assignment was too insignificant to justify a front-page story with pictures, but one of the women was a friend of Joe’s wife; end of discussion.

Tony fulfilled his task by thoroughly covering every detail of the program, complete with a listing of all the patriotic songs and kinds of refreshments. The story would have passed for excellent small-town reporting if Tony had refrained from inserting one sentence, dripping in sarcasm, at the end of the article: “These womenfolk of Minton are proud of their ancestors’ link with George Washington. With their rutted faces and pallid locks, I doubt not that some have feasted at the very tables of the General himself.”

The phone calls began within minutes of the first deliveries.

“Franks!” Joe screamed, not bothering with Tony’s first name. “At my desk, now!”

As Tony passed Debbie’s desk, he heard (snap, pop) “Oh-o-oh!” He turned to face her and shouted, “May damnation find you, woman! Your bovine mastication rivals the methods used during the Spanish Inquisition!”

Debbie’s eyes widened to saucers, and she scooted her chair to a safer distance from the raging man. With nostrils flaring, Tony stomped to Joe’s desk.

“I’ve tried to be fair, Tony,” Joe said, shaking the offending front page in his hand. “What on earth possessed you to write this senseless drivel?”

Tony’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets, and the veins on his forehead throbbed like angry snakes.

“Drivel?” he shouted. “Perhaps you see yourself in the company of Emerson, the self-proclaimed ‘Sage of Concord.’ The appellation he bestowed upon me was ‘the Jingle Man!’” Tony emphasized with a pound of his fist on the desk. “To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness!”

Joe jumped from his seat and, with his face inches from Tony’s, blurted, “You come here every day reeking of whiskey. You’re nothing but a pompous, infantile drunk!”

For only a second, Tony glared at Joe as a dog preparing to attack. He then spun around toward the door and ran out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

Two Weeks Later

Joe heard the door open and looked up to see Sheriff Danes entering. “Hi, Sheriff, what can I do for you?”

“I have some news to share, Joe. That reporter who went off the deep end–”

“Tony.”

“Yeah. We don’t know why or how, but someone found him lying unconscious on a street in Baltimore a couple of days ago.”

“Baltimore, Maryland?” an astonished Joe asked.

“Yep. He was in pretty bad shape when they found him, but the doctors think he’ll pull through.”

Joe shook his head. “What a shame. He was a good reporter for years. I don’t know what happened.”

“The bartender at O’Malley’s said Tony could down more whiskey than a shipload of sailors. The guy must have had more problems than we realized. Oh, I nearly forgot,” said the sheriff, reaching into his pocket. “They found this in his shirt pocket. Since you are the closest thing to family that he has, I thought you’d like to keep it, at least until he gets home. See you later, Joe.”

“Bye, Sheriff.” Joe opened the tiny brown envelope and unwrapped the tissue paper. His eyes feasted upon the sparkling coin in front of him. “Perfect condition for a 1849 penny,” he muttered.

As the clock struck five, Joe cleared his desk and prepared to go home to a tasty, home-cooked meal. He did not want to leave the coin in the office or risk losing it, so he placed it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll keep it in my safe at home,” he said to himself.

As Joe arose to get his jacket, he felt slightly disoriented. He soon forgot about his wife and dinner waiting at home. Right now, he needed a straight shot of whiskey. And O’Malley’s was just down the street.//

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