Richard Stevenson: Chain of Fools

"Ruth Osborne. Who else? Doesn't it just sound like Ruth?"

"No."

"Then you don't know Ruth Watson Osborne."

"What proof have you got?"

He shrugged. "None."

"You're lying. You've got the morals of a virus. You're making this up."

He just grinned and slowly shook his gleaming head.

The judge at Ruth Osborne's mental competency hearing found her "understandably sad" but sane enough to remain on the Herald board of directors After the September eighth vote, however, her mental condition deteriorated rapidly, and three months later she suffered a stroke and, after a — week of hospitalization, moved into an Edensburg nursing home I never told Janet what Stu Torkildson had said about the idea of saving the Herald through a big drug deal having originated with Mrs. Osborne I ran it by Timmy, who just waved it away.

The Herald board voted, three to two, to sell the paper to Harry Griscomb. The deal was consummated within days. Griscomb assumed the Herald's huge debt, so each Osborne shareholder received, after taxes, just $12,114 Janet said hers would help pay for rebuilding the lake house, and adding a nursery. The other shareholders no doubt spent theirs on legal bills.

The following spring two things happened. Erica McCaslin Kotlowicz-Osborne was born on May 30th at Edensburg County Hospital Skeeter was there-his T-cell numbers were ominous but his health was holding steady, and he'd returned to work for the New York State Forest Service. Timmy was there too, pacing in the waiting room while Skeeter and I played hearts. Janet was present for the delivery- a highly unorthodox arrangement, hospital officials insisted, but they weren't about to tangle with Janet and Dale.

The other event that May was this: Harry Griscomb Newspapers suffered a financial near-collapse and the third generation of Griscombs seized control of the chain and sold it to the new newspaper division at United States Tobacco. Janet was fired a day later, as were two-thirds of the paper's reporters and all the copy editors. Tidy Osborne Puder-baugh was named publisher of the Herald — "to maintain the respected Osborne family traditions," the new owner said-and a new editor was brought in from the Maryville, Missouri, Epworth-Tribune The features and standards that had made the Herald great soon vanished from its pages-but it did gain a bridge column.