S-Town · Serial Productions

Chapter VI

March 28, 2017·45 min·3 clips

Olin got so angry that John dismissed his excitement over Brokeback Mountain that he went outside and pounded the ground.

Brian Reed’s last night in Bibb County starts in a car. After a long day running around Bibb County together, to the courthouse and the library, and past the Burt family compound just to have a look at it, he and John are driving his beat-up Mercedes back to John’s place, with a Little Caesars stop for John’s mother still tucked into the route. It’s getting dark, the ride settles into a rare quiet, and Reed says he’s going to miss John as the chapter drifts toward departure and distance. Then Olin turns to John’s backstory with William. He describes John meeting him in the late 80s on a hot summer day, beside a road crew working outside John’s house, where William seems to clock that John is hiding something and needs help. What follows is secret: John helps William by interpreting letters and writing checks, while William offers lessons about sex and how to come out of isolation as a gay man in that place, in Olin’s unusually clinical language. The chapter stays with the awkward, private exchange and the way help, secrecy, and intimacy can sit side by side, and it closes on the line about protection from pain.

As heard by us

A dusk-lit chapter that turns a simple drive into a quiet study of secrecy and care.

Chapter VI starts small: John and Brian drive through Bibb County at dusk, stop at the courthouse, the library, and Little Caesars for John's mother, and let an ordinary errand carry more weight than it should.

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Why you'd press play

You want one quiet drive in the dusk to open the episode.

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