A to Z Challenge 2025 - The Ripped Blade: “Foaming at the Mouth”

Denton Field, not that he really cared to brag, was kind of a big deal.

Readers across the southern regions of Maine had been reading him for years in the pages of The Notes. Denton was one of a number of columnists providing local color. Denton himself tended to specialize in Maine humor, the downhome charm that was easy, for locals, to identify with the state. He’d grown up in Lisbon Falls, Maine, where he’d apprenticed under John Gould in the pages of the Enterprise, until he set new roots in Freeport, and took request lighthearted shots at L.L.Bean culture, among other favorite topics.

He received a letter, one day, asking if he’d heard about the Kate Meadows case. Of course he had. Everyone had. But it hadn’t come up in his column because, well, he didn’t find much funny about it. 

He set the letter aside and forgot about it, but later, he found himself thinking about it, and coincidentally, he was struggling to come up with material for the next piece, so that was why he wrote about Kate Meadows for the first time.

That first piece was lighthearted, the same tone as everything else he’d written over the years, approaching the topic from the reliable vantage point of out-of-state vacationers. He conjured visitors asking him about the case, always sticking their noses in business that didn’t concern them, unlike all the tacky gift shops decorating the state, the yard sales, the restaurants full of lobster…

That one garnered an unprecedented response. Denton was ready to dismiss it, but a niggling thought inserted itself into his brain. Just write another one just like it. This is what he did. The response was even bigger, and far less complementary. He sensed it was impatience, to put it mildly. Folks just wanted reassurance. 

From there he took a more serious approach. Denton began to fancy himself a journalist for the first time. The responses began labeling him a crusader. He was less sure how he felt about that.

He worried. At the diner he felt eyes on him laced with silence and suspicion. The waitress took longer to refill his coffee. 

Denton looked at the new piece he’d written. He could no longer remember the last time he’d written about something other than Kate Meadows. He didn’t recognize a single word he’d written. He was deeply unhappy. He might as well be down in Boston writing for the Herald. Actually, he wondered, just then, if they would hire him. Then he wondered how much they’d written about Kate Meadows. He was practically the expert at this point.

And he’d become completely anonymous.