Serial - S-Town - Chapter II

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

“Has anybody called you?” To get full access to this show, and to other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts.To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look behind the scenes, sign up for our newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter.Have a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on our shows? Email us at [e-mail] 

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 New York Times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you're already a Times subscriber, just link your account and you're done. Chapter 2 In one of my first phone conversations with John, before we'd met,

I asked him if he thought it was possible that maybe Capron Burt hadn't killed anybody. If it was possible that the murder he'd contacted me about was actually just a rumor. A fiction. No, John said, there was little doubt in his mind that it was true. And then, by way of explanation, he launched into this parable. Let me tell you something I saw one time. I should admit that at the time, this story was completely lost on me. Me and Roger Price, we went up to the truck stop together to get a little dinner.

We came back by, it was passing by the South 40 trailer park. So, Roger's one of these dudes, he's a darn transmission mechanic. He's not really talkative. He's a good dude, but he just, you know, he only has one tooth. And it's really amusing to see how he can balance a cigarette on that one tooth. The whole time he's talking, that cigarette is just bouncing around all over that one tooth, and he never

loses it, son of a bitch. So, we're coming by this Welcome to South 40 Cent, and there's this girl out there walking around in front of the damn sign, holding a cell phone, and she's got on a pink top and nothing else. No fucking panties, no goddamn socks, barefoot. And I remarked that to Roger. I don't remember what I said. I probably said, my God, look at her, or something like that. And Roger's sage advice was, usually when you see jokers that look like that, they've done something to get like that.

That's the lesson? That went just straight through you. Like so many things having to do with John, it took me a long time to understand the meaning of this story. Years. But I think I finally get it now. From Serial and This American Life, I'm Brian Reed. This is Shit Town.

My second night in Alabama, I finally get to talk to Jake Goodson. Jake's the guy who'd originally told John that Cape and Bert had bragged to him outside the Little Caesars about beating a guy to death. I sit with Jake in John's kitchen, asking him to rack his 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 don't know. I could get him and ask him and he'd be able to tell me. He'd probably come up here and talk to you about it. Who? Cabram. Cabram lives right nearby. Why not just get it from the horse's mouth? No. Probably so.

That makes no sense. I would stick a microphone in his face and he would tell me about a guy he killed? Probably. He's burned up. He wouldn't know no better. He'd probably just laugh about it with you. I tell Jake no thanks. At least not now. I do not feel like I'm armed with enough information to confront Cabram yet.

Aside from seeming far-fetched, the idea also just sounded potentially dangerous. For John, for Jake, and for me. But then, the next night, a bunch of other people propose the exact same thing. He don't talk to you, dude. I mean, he's burnt out. He's arrogant, dude. He don't give a fuck. He would talk to me about it? I know he would. I'm pretty sure he would. Probably tell you

truth. I'm chatting with a few guys in a tattoo parlor, all of whom have heard about the murder. Some are pretty sure they heard it from Cabram himself. You want me to call him and ask him? Nah, don't do that. Don't do that. I'm not a puss, dude. I don't give a fuck.

Apparently I'm the puss, because I do not want Well, I'm not a puss, dude. I don't give a fuck. Apparently, I'm the puss, because I do not want the dudes I'm talking to to call Cabram 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 alleged murderer to show up. I was invited here by Tyler Goodson, Jake's brother, whom I met in John's workshop while he was filing that chainsaw. He's one of the owners. Tyler knows Cabram. They're both in their early 20s, and I thought maybe some of Tyler's friends who hang out here might have more information about the possible murder. John didn't feel like coming with me because he doesn't like driving at night. When I walk in, at first it seems like a pretty small place, just a couple of tattooing stations

and 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, a small stage with motorcycles parked there, and a brass stripper pole that's currently vacant. The shop is called Black Sheep Inc., 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 criminals and runaways and hillbillies. And Tyler 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 outcasts of their world. There's this gentleman, whose name I never do catch, who tells me, quote, I'm so fucking fat I don't care no more, and lifts up his shirt to show me the giant words he has tattooed on his stomach. Feed me.

Tell him, tell him, give him a picture. I'm a six-foot, 350-pound bearded man, and a John Deere hat would feed me on my belly. Just so y'all get a clear picture here. There's a guy who's been wearing the same trucker hat for seven years. Seven years. Same hat. Then there's this guy. People call him Razor.

Bam, bam, ambulance back it up. I was parked on the side of the road. I looked down and I said, son of a bitch, he really rakes up. Yeah, Walter Odom come by, man, seen him laying in the yard and thought his friend Willard, who is impervious to death. And then there's Tyler, who's been sleeping at the tattoo parlor lately because he can't afford anywhere else to spend the night. Who's 23 years old and has three daughters with three different women, and who's 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 a minor. One day, Tyler will tell me that he often wakes up in the morning in a puddle of sweat, having dreamt during the night of killing his dad. Tyler's friendly to me when I arrive, welcoming,

but as I'm getting out my recording equipment, I hear murmurs from other people wondering who I am, wondering if I might be a cop. People are asking me questions, feeling me out. A few guys ask if I'll smoke a bowl with them out of some deer antlers. I don't want to be stoned, but I also don't want to seem like a narc, so I pretend to take a puff. I pretend to do a number of things that make me feel very uncomfortable in order

to keep as low a profile as 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 we're talking. At the risk of ruining any surprise, the statement is racist and nonsensical, replete with multiple uses of a terrible word. You know, we had a tax-free labor.

It didn't have nothing to do with a bunch of niggers picking cotton. And we worked our ass off and we earned everything we got. This is a tattoo artist who goes by Bubba. Later, Bubba will display a rather fluent knowledge of the differences between various white supremacy groups. Mind you, we're in a majority black city right now, Bessemer, about 20 minutes from Bibb County, heading towards Birmingham. But everyone in here is white, including me. Someone mentions offhand that the small tattoo area

in front is about as much shop as you want here in Bessemer, otherwise the place will be filled with black people who piss you off and won't pay anything. Hence the secret door. Before I left for Alabama, my girlfriend Solange, now my wife, who's black and whose family is from the South, had insisted I make my Facebook and Instagram accounts private because they're filled with pictures of us together.

I told her she was being silly, overly paranoid. Now I'm grateful I decided at the last minute to follow her advice. When someone asks me what the women look like up in New York, I tell them they're all shapes, sizes, and colors. When someone asks what my ethnicity is, I tell them about the Italian part without mentioning the Russian Jew part. But there's no hiding the fact that I'm a Yankee. What's that? Y'all just as racist as we are.

It's quieter. Hey, y'all left them the fuck down here. In an effort to change the subject, I turn the conversation to one of the few things I know I have in

common with these guys. So you guys know John? Our mutual acquaintance, John B. McLemore.

Oh yeah. He's a character. I ain't ever met nobody else like him. Nobody like him. Nobody else like that fucker.

They been bugging the piss out of you? What's that? They been bugging the piss out of you? I'm not there You been bugging the piss out of you? I'm not there yet, but it's exhausting to hang out with him for a long day. He's exhausting after all day. The brain needs to slow the fuck down is what you want to tell him.

Slow down for a minute. They tell me John comes around the tattoo parlor pretty often and likes to lecture them and give them a hard time. He'll argue with them about their views on the South, on politics, on race. Bubba says he'll submit them to tirades about the coming climate and energy apocalypses. How we was running out of fossil fuels and

the world was gonna come to a fucking end. John tells off their customers for talking about what he sees as inane shit. Tells these guys that their lives are amounting to nothing. That they're examples in the flesh of what's wrong with this place. He thinks everybody's a failure. Everything that's going on is a failure.

This is another tattoo artist, Joel. He calls you guys failures? Fuck yeah, he calls us failures, you know what I mean? Like jokingly or? No, everybody's a failure. Like in his brain, everybody's a failure. For all I know, you could be a failure. You know, sometimes I wish he'd kind of fail.

These guys dish it out, too. They tease John for his many peculiarities. Like how he'll devour whatever leftover food is around, no matter how old or rock-hard it is. His inability to buy new shoes to alleviate his athlete's foot, which he's allegedly had for three years. His extemporaneous solving of math problems, his utter aversion to being in a room

with more than two or three people at a time, his living with his mom his whole life, his being a loner. It's friendly, though. They like John. After all, John is the granddaddy of all black sheep. So this crew gets him. They truly seem to accept him.

Though that doesn't stop them from wondering. I'd love to know what he's worth. I'd love to know what he's worth, the Feed Me Guy says. Just not because I give a fuck. Just to know why does he live like that. You know what I mean? Poor as a church mouse. That's Tyler saying he lives like he's poor as a church mouse.

And Tyler would know. He and John are close. He's the only reason all these guys know John. Tyler helped build John's maze. He's done all sorts of different odd jobs for him. He's over there all the time. And as far as the church mouse, I did notice that John's refrigerator is pretty bare.

His mom invited me to stay for dinner one night, so long as I didn't mind eating like po-folks, she told me, in a way where I couldn't tell she was joking. They live without air conditioning, without TV. It's mysterious to me, too, because at the same time, John has all these dogs he feeds and brings to the vet, this elaborate yard that requires constant upkeep. He mentioned to me that he spent more than $60,000 on the maze alone.

Feed me guy, says to Tyler. I don't understand why, if he's as loaded as you say, he's worth millions. Millions? Have you not done any research on John? Tyler explains that John's family comes from money. He says that one of his grandpas was a judge and that John got an inheritance,

played the stock market with it, and made even more money. Plus, aside from all that, Tyler says John made good bank restoring old clocks. All of that sounds like it could be true enough, but then Tyler and his friends start listing off John's assets, and I can't tell if any of that is real, or if they're just letting their imaginations fill in the blanks about their local Boo Radley. They claim John has $400,000 in cash, a hundred-some-odd thousand worth of tools in the workshop, all the antiques around his house.

You're going to get $150,000 if you sell that old-ass shit, Bubba says. Wear books in the basement. A single clock worth $10,000 that's just sitting on the floor in a plastic storage bin. Not to mention, says Tyler, Gold. His granddaddy's gold. His daddy's gold. He's got a bunch of money in him. Tyler's up on the counter of the bar, crouching. He has a brown briefcase he carries around with him.

He calls it his minister's case. It has a sticker that says minister slapped on the outside. And it's filled with his tattoo machines and a gun and his welder's cap and some nipple jewelry and his black sheep ink business cards and also his minister's license, which he got online because he wanted to found a non-denominational church where 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. Tyler stares down at us from the corner of the bar, like he's about to divulge a secret. When it comes to John, he says there's no telling. What he's got, because there's a lot of shit that I'm sure I don't know about because I've been finding stuff out

slowly over the years and there's damn secret little dungeons and shit under his damn house, man. I ain't playing. I've built gates for them. I've built gates for these damn dungeons. I've built gates for the dungeons, Tyler's telling me.

Dungeons in John's basement. He soon clarifies they're actually old crawl spaces. But the way John had him rigging them up, Tyler says, with tiny doors and these locking iron gates inside, dividing them into sections, what was the purpose of all that? It was creepy. Though Tyler digs creepy stuff, so he also thought it was cool.

That guy Bubba, the one who's 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 tattoos that John showed me abruptly at his workshop that cover his whole chest. He explains that being a tattoo artist is a lot like being a therapist. People sit in his chair for hours on end

and each person he works on is getting that tattoo for some specific reason. It's his job, if he sees it, to uncover that reason. Maybe it's a meditation, a milestone, an excuse to get out of the house, a new girlfriend, a death. John's motivation was especially bewildering to Bubba, because John had made it clear almost every time he came in the shop

how deeply he despised tattoos. If you got a tattoo on you, he'd tell you you wasn't shit. You're low life. You shouldn't have that on you. So'd tell you you wasn't shit. You're low life. You shouldn't have that on you. So as shocking as it was to me when John lifted up his shirt to show me all his tattoos, it was far more shocking to Bubba

when John strolled in one day at the age of 47 and asked him to start putting them there. I thought he was going to commit suicide. You know, that's what I thought in my mind. Why? Is it something you're completely against? You think fucking failures have tattoos. You know what that's what I thought in my mind. Why? This is something you're completely against. You think fucking failures have tattoos.

You know what I'm saying? Why in the fuck would you just start tattooing your whole upper body like that? You know what I mean? And around your neck. Pistons. Tattooing pistons on him. You know, redneck has tattoos, you know? So, I mean, first thought, I thought he was going to kill himself.

I thought he was going to get tatted the fuck up and blow his brains out or something. Fuck, I don't know. And then the more I got to doing it, you know, I realized, you know, we're in a rut. You know, we need some money, and he helped us out. I mean, he helped a lot.

Bubba and Tyler co-own Black Sheep Inc. together. And Bubba started noticing they'd have a bill about to come due for the business. They'd be wondering how they were going to pay it. And then conveniently, John would come in and hand over $300 or $400 and ask for another tattoo on his chest. Bubba says people around here don't throw down money like that.

But John would, just in the nick of time, and then schedule another appointment for soon after. He might not have said, I'm helping you out, but when you sat down and paid me $2,000, $3,000 in a couple weeks span, you just helped me out. You know, you just got all my bills called up. You just got everything back to where it needed to be. You know.

And you think that's why he did it? Now I do. He keeps a book, man. He writes down everything. So he knows when we're having a bad time. He'd ask certain things like, what's the rent? You know, what's your power bill? When's it due?

And he already knows this shit because he writes shit down. And he just, you know, planned his tattoo out to where it pretty much paid everything up in increments. Wait, it was like that exact almost? Yeah. If it wasn't for John, we'd be shut the fuck down.

If it wasn't for John? Yeah, if it wasn't for John, I'd be tattooing at my kitchen table right now. And I think he sacrificed his skin to help us out. Bubba 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 them boys, man. He knows how his daddy was. I mean, the kid was laying block at five years old.

Tyler, that is. You know, on the job site, working. Not going to school, working. Go to school two days a week, work five days a week. You know what I mean? So he's just seen it, and he knows it wasn't right. He sees how Tyler's been programmed to be the way he is by his raising and his upbringing, you know, and feels sorry for him, I guess.

I don't know. Or knows that he's smarter than what he's letting on. I mean, I don't know. That Tyler is? Yeah. When John hires Tyler to chop down trees in his yard or build iron gates in his crawl spaces, he doesn't really need that stuff done, Bubba says.

He's just trying to find an excuse to put money in Tyler's pocket. When Tyler gets caught driving with a suspended license and ends up in jail, something that happens now and again, Bubba knows John's the one to call because he'll bail him out. He loves Tyler. I mean, Tyler's his boy. I mean, this is boy. You know, Tyler's brother, he cares about Tyler's little brother, Jake. You know, John can say anything he wants to, but he loves Tyler probably just as much as you would your own son, your own flesh and blood. And I ain't figured it out.

We're standing in the backyard as we're talking, behind the tattoo shop. A train whistle starts to blow in the distance. Eventually, someone comes out and tells me I might be interested to know that Cabram's sister, Cashenbert, is here. Like, right inside, 15 feet away from me. Why don't we just go ask her about the murder? This town.

I go to the bar, leave six bucks for my beer, and, careful to avoid Cabram's sister, head out the secret door, not knowing what I eventually will know months and months from now. That Cabram Burt didn't murder anybody. But also that before this is all over, someone will end up dead. More in a minute. This is Sarah Koenig, host of The Serial Podcast. More in a minute. who taught me the best ads are declarative, no puffery. So here goes. Serial shows are expertly reported and inventive. Nobody makes them like we make them. But Serial's great serials aside,

when you subscribe, you get all the Times shows. The Daily, Ezra Klein, Wirecutter has a new podcast. My advice, though, don't just get an audio subscription. Go big. Subscribe to the paper, all access, the whole audio subscription. Go big. Subscribe to the paper. All access. The whole magilla. Serial is part of the Times, so technically I work at the Times.

And honestly, I'm kind of cheap. But I subscribe for the news, obviously, and the games, and the cooking, and the magazine, and Serial. I think of the Times as a staple. Even my kids, who are not budding journalists and who don't even really listen to Serial, they both asked me for Times subscriptions. All the cool kids are doing it. So please, sign up. You can do it through Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or if you're already a Times subscriber, sign in. I'm a reporter. I'm here from New York. Is there somewhere quiet we could sit? It's a year later, and I'm pulling into K3 Lumber on a Friday morning, nervously asking if Cabram's around. I feel comfortable doing this only because I have finally determined that the incident John contacted me about, where Cabram allegedly got into a fight and beat a guy to death,

although it did in fact go down almost exactly as John and Jake and Skyler and others told me, was wrong in one relatively important detail. The to-death part. The guy Cabram 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 adjacent Tuscaloosa County.

A chief at the sheriff's department there read to me from a detailed case file showing that the police had investigated the fight thoroughly, that no one had been killed, and that they had closed the case not because they were paid off or anything, but because none of the guys involved wanted to press charges. And so here I am at K3 Lumber to ask Cabram why he would go around bragging to people

that he'd killed a guy he had not killed. He's with some co-workers in the lumberyard in a plaid shirt, green trucker hat, and dark sunglasses. Hey, I'm Brian Reed. There's a particular philosophy I've encountered down here and will continue to encounter. That is the fuck it philosophy. A belief that there's 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. It's a way of moving moment to moment through the world. And from the get-go, Cabram seems to be a subscriber. I show up with a microphone and

ask if I can talk to him on the record about a matter I've yet to name, and he's immediately game. Fuck it. And we walk over behind some stacks of lumber to be alone. What you want to talk about, bud? So basically, um, like, were you at one point going around telling people that you'd killed someone? No, a boy cut my buddy's neck right here with a knife. But no, like,

I beat the piss out of him. What happened was... What happened was, Capram says, they were at a party and he doesn't know how the fight started because he and almost everyone else were zonked out of their minds. Drinking and doing everything else under the sun. Like substance-wise. Like taking Xanax and mixing speed with it and stuff.

According to the police report, it was a clear, moonlit night, about 4 or 4.30 in the morning, on August 4, 2012, just a few days outside the time window John had discerned from his records. Cabram says all he remembers is they were in the middle of the woods, chilling around a fire, a fight broke out, and then suddenly this dude Dylan, not Dylan Nichols, as John had told me,

he was not involved, but another Dylan with a different last name, came up from behind with a knife and cut Cabram's buddy Tim in the neck. So Cabram went after him, held Dylan's head down, punched him, hit him with a beer bottle. Tim got involved, might have bit the guy in the cheek. Dylan kept swinging his knife the whole time.

He stabbed Cabram too. Right up here. It's like up in your thigh there. Yeah, like I almost cut my gooch, mate. And then it was over. Cabram thinks the whole thing lasted maybe 15 seconds. It wasn't some beautiful, drawn-out movie fight, he says. It was a real-life fight,

which means it was scrappy, awkward, and quick, and left his friend Tim clutching a four-inch gash on his neck that was gushing blood. Did you think, like, Tim might be, like, it might be life-threatening? Yes, that is the craziest shit I've ever seen in my life. Cabram looked around and saw almost everyone at the party, maybe 30, 40 people, scattering. Tim was in a bad way, so someone had called 911,

and now people were driving away or hiding in the woods before the police got there. The ambulance came, carted Cabram and Tim to the hospital, and after getting a few stitches near the meat of his gooch, Cabram went outside to smoke a cigarette and bumped into a group of random girls from the party. Telling me all kind of crazy shit, like somebody had died. Like, oh, that boy you got in a fight with died.

What did you think? I was thinking, I don't think that boy died. He said, you wouldn't think so. Hell, the fight didn't last that long. But still you had, like, this part of your brain that was like, I don't think that boy died. He said, you wouldn't think so. Hell, the fight didn't last that long. But still, you had, like, this part of your brain that was like, maybe? Well, yeah, I started coming down off him Xanaxes, you know, and you get to thinking, like, oh, God, I hope I didn't do something stupid. I don't think nobody died, but if they did, I ain't going to hang around to find out.

Cabram says he was kind of wigging out, wondering if he killed someone. He called a buddy of his to come pick him up at the hospital. That buddy was in a motel room full of meth heads in Bessemer, Cabram says he was kind of wigging out, wondering if he killed someone. He called a buddy of his to come pick him up at the hospital. That buddy was in a motel room full of meth heads in Bessemer, Cabram says. And judging from police records and other sources, it seems possible the rumor that Dylan had been killed started in that motel room and then spread from there. Cabram says by the time he got to work on Monday, it had already taken hold. People were coming up to him at the lumber yard and one time and saying, yeah, I beat that guy to death to anyone?

Because I heard that you were bragging about it from multiple people. Number one, that wouldn't even be something to brag about. It ain't like a deer or something. You know? I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear you say that, I gotta say. So where would people get that from? Just a damn small town, man. Shit gets fucking twisted.

But saying that you told them directly to their face. Hell, I don't know, buddy. I don't know either. I can't tell if what Cabram is saying to my face right now is true or not. I spoke to Cabram's father too, Kendall Burt, and told him that John said he'd overheard him on the phone here at K3 one day saying something about how his son was guilty as hell and he knew it. And Kendall told me he doesn't know what John heard him say or if he heard him say anything, but that he's a tough love kind of guy

and that if his son had done something like killed a person, he would never cover that up. According to Cabram, there is a moral to this story. He shares it with me after I wonder aloud to him about something one of the police officers told me. Why did his buddy Tim, rather than pressing charges against the man who'd almost killed him with a knife, decide instead to shove his middle finger in the face of the cops

when they came to talk to him in his hospital bed? I mean, nobody wants to be a tattletale. I mean, the dude almost died. He got stabbed in the neck. Cabram takes a drag of his cigarette. You're shrugging your shoulders. If you're going to live like white trash and shit, then hell, you might as well not tell on nobody

because if that's the life you're trying to live, you can't be mad when low-down dirty shit like that happens when you hang out with low-down dirty people. you there i'm here cool i'm waiting on tita ball do you have time to talk i have some stuff i'd like to talk to you about i'm sitting here right now are you busy yeah 25 my orange pants i'm waiting for tyler to get his ass back over here. I figured you was calling to lower the boom or some damn something. Go to town. Yeah, it's 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 narrate the story of the real crime back to him, almost a year and a half after he first told me about it, with details colored in and facts illuminated, including the rather germane one that Cabram did not kill anybody. After I'm done, John summarizes my findings. A bunch of fussing and fighting, snaggletooth, stolen trucks, meth labs,

stabbing, hooping, hollering, going to jail. I can't believe how much you've worked on this son of a bitch. And at the same time... My God. What? What's the sign? I'm sitting here looking out the window at the clouds going by just in loathe and disgust at the town that I live in and the fact that I didn't pack my bags and get the hell out of here decades ago. I think it's the part about hiding in the woods that did it.

That's just so classic Bibb County. I don't know how many times I've heard that expression in my life, hiding in the woods. I think hiding in the woods in Bibb County is like having your afternoon tea in London. You know, there is another way John could have responded to all this news. I dare call it the normal way. That sigh 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 that in fact law enforcement has done what appears to be a competent job responding to this incident. Shit Town, at least in this case, doesn't look so, so terrible to me. I don't know. Progress, right? But no. I've learned that sometimes you catch John in a spell of depression, sometimes you catch him in a bout of mania, and sometimes, like today, I think, you catch him in an alchemy of the two.

I'm trying to think of a snappy comeback to that. Because what is it if not progress? Oh, my God. Oh, Lord. It's just a clusterfuck of sorrow, isn't it? A clusterfuck of sorrow. It's kind of like progress is in ISIS is making progress. You know, it's that type of progress.

It's like ISIS. It's all I could come up with. Oh, shit. Damn, man, I'm over here busting my ass off. When you contacted me, you wanted to know what actually happened. So it's progress in that sense, right? It's progress. I am not saving the world over here. You are definitely not saving the world.

Climate change is not ending. I am not bringing jobs and sustainable employment to Alabama and lifting people out of poverty. But you asked me to try and figure out what happened here. On that front, I've made progress. I think you've done pretty goddamn good. Well, thank you. I guess if I sound like I'm disinterested today, it's firstly because I'm tired to wore ass out, and secondly because, you know, I just, I'm not the most cheerful person. You know, I spend most of my spare time now either studying energy or climate change,

and it's not looking good. So, yeah, sometimes it's hard for me to get focused back on something when the whole goddamn Arctic summer sea ice is going to be gone by 2017. You know, we're fixing to have heat waves in Siberia this year, and sometimes I feel like a total idiot because I'm worried about a goddamn crackhead out here in fucking, you know, shit town Alabama. So, yeah, that's just a personality disorder of mine. You know, sometimes when you call me, I'm kind of in an upbeat mood, and sometimes,

like today, you caught me in one of these tired, somber, you know, reflective moods where I've been, you know, sitting there, you know, mulling over climate change for about the past 10 damned hours. Oh, I mean, my God. When John says he's been mulling over climate change for the past 10 hours, what I think he means is that he's been mulling over climate change for the past 10 hours. I don't think he's exaggerating. It's like work for him, like he's made it his job. We've now been talking to each other for a year and a half, and while some of that time we've discussed the murder, there's been so much other stuff John wants to chat about. It's interesting stuff, but it's all over the place. Even if I haven't talked to 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've fallen out of the news. How many people are still concerned today about the Philippines? He's referring to Typhoon Heian from 2013. Or how about the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004, John says. Or the terrible flood in Pakistan year before last. You're not hearing a lot about that, are you? How about the fallout from the Ebola outbreak?

Or the nuclear disaster in Fukushima? Or a deeper cut, Chernobyl? The list goes on and on. And it's not just catastrophe. John also gives me lectures and sends reports on the systemic problems he sees, leading to complete breakdown of the social contract. Problems in our food production chain, our healthcare industry, our monetary policy. He also shares a variety of disturbing stories that he manages to dig up from all corners of the country, our healthcare industry, our monetary policy. All the fucking hedonic regression, geometric whiting.

He also shares a variety of disturbing stories that he manages to dig up from all corners of the country about the son of a U.S. senator suffocating 21 dogs, or a KKK branch giving out bags of candy to children as a recruitment effort in South Carolina, or a guy down the street from John trying to kill his wife by running her over with a bobcat. I was on Home Facts last night. The city of West Blocton has outdone Vance as being the child molester per capita capital

of Alabama. This is another data point John likes to send me now and again. The number of sex offenders per capita in his area. Vance and West Blocton are both towns in Bibb County. Vance is now one child molester for every 192 citizens. West Blocton is for about every 63 or 64. Why do you check that statistic so often? The IPCC being the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For the longest time, I thought the only connection between all of John's random interests was that it was all shitty.

But the connection is deeper than that. He's distressed by the lack of outrage compared to the amount of shittiness in the world. To him, that ratio is totally out of whack. That's why he was still upset about the Cameram rumor, even after I told him it wasn't true. Even though the murder and the cover-up weren't real, everyone sure did believe they were.

And still, they did nothing. That part, the inaction, that's more disturbing to John than the idea of the murder itself. I really hate that these kids know all the things that they know, and they just accept them as normal. I know, that seems to really bother you. Accepted as something you can't do nothing about.

The shitty misfortunes John fixates on, they're not a bunch of disparate things. They're all the same thing. His shit town is part of Bibb County, which is part of Alabama, which is part of the United States, which is part of Earth, which is experiencing climate change, which no one is doing anything about. It maddens John. The whole world is giving a collective shrug of its shoulders and saying, fuck it. What I admire about John is that in his own misanthropic way, he's crusading against one of the most powerful, insidious forces we face. Resignation. The numb acceptance that we can't change things.

He's trying to shake people out of their stupor, trying to convince them that it is possible to make their world a better place. Yes, that lady over there, she's barefoot and she's pantsless, but we can lend her shoes. We can give her some pants. Instead of just putting our heads down and speeding past her and muttering that she must have done something to get like that, we can ask her if she's in trouble, and we can offer her help.

There is a different way. That's why John Ranson raves at the tattoo parlor. That's why John adopts dozens of stray dogs. That's why he devotes night after night to studying and writing about climate change. That's why he contacted a national radio show and asked 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. Tyler almost embodies everything I hate about this shittown in one convenient package. Have you ever thought of it that way? I bet you haven't dared. As the months have gone by since my trip to Alabama, I've heard more and more about Tyler.

I've learned all about his tough childhood, the petty legal troubles that continue to dog him, his persistent financial problems, his struggle to support his three daughters, whom he had by the age of 21, and whom he loves dearly. John has devoted his life to restoring old clocks. Methodically and thoroughly, he sorts through the busted parts of these timepieces, trying to revive a sense of beauty and order. And in a way, that's what he's attempting to do with Tyler. Every time John picks up the phone and I ask what he's up to,

Tyler's either there, or he was just there, or he's waiting for him to get there. It seems like he's giving him consistent work. John's also been accompanying Tyler to court and hiring him a lawyer to help him clear up some misdemeanor charges and get his driver's license back. And Tyler's recently moved to the trailer park across the street from John, so now he can easily walk to John's place. John's even talking about writing Tyler and his brother Jake into his will. I don't want these two bastards to know this, but when I fall over dead, each one of them is going to get 20 ounces of gold each. I'll

keep that secret. That's assuming the goddamn cops don't come in and steal it. But John's relationship with Tyler is not just as a benefactor. I can tell that they get something more from one another. John will mention a walk he and Tyler took through the woods or an expedition they made to the junkyard to search for treasures, or

he'll recount 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 bloom in his yard, and the ones that were dying. He sighed and said, It's tedious and brief. That's a sundial motto. Tedious and brief. That's a sundial motto. Tedious

and brief. Before we had clocks, we had sundials. And I never thought about this until I 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 sundials often have mottos engraved on them. John says tedious and brief is one. What do you mean? Your life is tedious and brief. All sundial mottos are sad like that. There are hundreds of these mottos. 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 in crannies around the world. Soon comes night. These little reminders are out there, hidden in crannies 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 motto. It read, Neil Boney Hodier, D.M. Perdidi.

I did nothing good today. I have lost a day. You know, I told you I used to make sundials, but I made them for the mathematical exercise. I would pick difficult dials to do as a test of my abilities of geometry and trigonometry. And these are things I wish Tyler and Jake could experience. There's a real excitement in geometry and trigonometry that just, you know, I think when we was building the swing, I built a swing for Tyler. This is one of the ways John and Tyler have been passing the hours together lately. They've 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 John Deere tractor seat hanging from it.

It has a 20-foot arc of action, John says, which I understand to mean it's a pretty gnarly swing. When John first told me about it, he'd said he was building it for himself, but now he amends that. Yeah, I think I built a swing for Tyler, actually. I found out that an old man 50, when he swings the swing for about 20 minutes, his back hurts and his knees hurt, so I didn't build it for me after all. Done found that out. I think't build it for me after all. Done found that out.

I felt like I built it for Tyler. Fuck it. Oh, and I built him a pull-up bar because he wants to be strong. I told him, well, it's nice to be physically strong, but you need to be strong between the ears because physical strength goes away. You need to have strong neurons. I told him you need to have a little bit of general algebra. You should always have some trigonometry and you should have some geometry. What did he say?

I remember this conversation. He said he never saw how that had anything you could do much with. I like imagining this odd pair, a polymathic middle-aged clock restorer and a tatted-up kid in his 20s with a Harley and a revolver in his briefcase. Out in John's yard on a summer's day, staking swings that pulls into the ground, the dogs circling around them, maybe a butterfly fluttering by. I like imagining John interrupting their work for a minute to give Tyler a math lesson, feeling gratified that he has someone to give a math lesson to, and Tyler perhaps taking something from it but at the very least humoring John because he's grateful that 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 Bibb County, Alabama. Take the gifts of this hour, one sundial says. Another, it's later than you think. And I point out the diagonal chain that was going to shore up the, you know, upright. Of the swing set? Yeah, I told him the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the two sides.

He hadn't used Pythagoras' theorem. So he could calculate the length of the chain without climbing up on the goddamn top of the pole and pulling it in diagonal with a tape measure. That was my answer. And what did he say? Mm, or something like that. Mm. Yeah, he has a lot of his daddy's mannerisms.

Mm. It's often heard when there's not a significant answer. Hold on, let me, hold on. I'm on piss in the sink. I hope that's politically incorrect. That's something that flips Tyler out. Yes, I just pissed in the kitchen sink because I hope that's politically incorrect. It flips Tyler out. Yes, I just pissed in the kitchen sink because I tell him

if the phone had enough signal, I would just go out there and piss near one of the gardeners, the azaleas, the chameleons, or the crape myrtles. Because, you know, they like asking. But I didn't think the phone had enough signal, so instead of wasting three or four gallons to flush the commode, I just peed here in the kitchen sink and used about one cup full of water to flush the sink.

And I got a little short dick, but I got a pretty good aim, so I can usually aim right for the center of that damn thing without splashing everywhere. Oh, man. But in any event, what was the question? I forgot. I forgot. I forgot too. Hello? Hey, is Jake around? Is this Skylar?

It's been a couple 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 Skylar. I was the one that called you, Jake texted you for me. Oh, hey. Has anybody called you? Um, no. Not that I know of.

I have a few missed calls, but I don't think they're from anybody down there. Oh. Why? Well, um, we have some bad news to tell you. Okay. John Bay killed himself Monday night. The Summer is Here The summer is here at last The sky is overcast

And no one brings a rose for Emily. She watches her flowers grow while lovers come and go to kill each other roses from her tree. But not a rose for Emily Emily can't you see there's nothing you can do there's loving everywhere

but not for you her roses are fading now she keeps her pride somehow Her roses are fading now She keeps her pride somehow That's all she has protecting her from pain And as the years go by She will grow old and die The roses in her garden fade away Not one left for her grave S-Town is produced by Julie Snyder and me,

with editing from Ira Glass, Joel Lovell, Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming, and Nancy Updike. Whitney Dangerfield is our digital editor. Starley Kind is a story consultant. Fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan. Seth Lind is our director of operations. Mixing by Lyra Smith and Matt Tierney is our technical director. The S-Town

staff includes Emily Condon, Elise Bergersen, Julie Whitaker, and Kimberly Henderson. Music for the show is composed by Daniel Hart, Trey Pollard, Elado Negro, and Matt McGinley. Music supervision by Damian Grafe. Our website, stownpodcast.org. Special thanks to

Bennett Epstein, Ted Scheinman, and Evan Smith. S-Town is a production of Serial and This American Life. I'm left for her grave Not a rose for Emily Oh, Emily