Although I’d been around for less than two months, and though I’d gone to college up North, I had learned a few things. I knew that good papers were not served on people. They were mailed or shipped or hand?delivered, but never served. The papers were trouble, and I wanted no part of them.

“I’m not taking the papers,” I said, looking down.

The laws of nature require midgets to be docile, noncombative people, and this little fella was no exception. The gun was a ruse. He glanced around the front office with a smirk, but he knew the situation was hopeless. With a flair for the dramatic, he stuffed the envelope back into his pocket and demanded, “Where’s the funeral home?”

I pointed this way and that, and he left. An hour later, Spot stumbled through the door, waving the papers and bawling hysterically. “It’s over! It’s over!” he kept wailing as I held the Petition for Involuntary Bankruptcy. Margaret Wright, the secretary, and Hardy, the pressman, came from the back and tried to console him. He sat in a chair, face in hands, elbows on knees, sobbing pitifully. I read the petition aloud for the benefit of the others.

It said Mr. Caudle had to appear in court in a week over in Oxford to meet with the creditors and the Judge, and that a decision would be made as to whether the paper would continue to operate while a trustee sorted things out. I could tell Margaret and Hardy were more concerned about their jobs than about Mr. Caudle and his breakdown, but they gamely stood next to him and patted his shoulders.

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