"Ace In The Hole" (1951)

Sitting shotgun in the New Mexico sun Charles Tatum bakes in the glamour of his foreknowledge. The convertible drives on across the desert plains toward the sacred mountain, where a man named Leo is buried in its womb and waits his death slowly and assuredly. Leo went in there, despite the cautions of a local tribe, to find buried artifacts from long ago; but the mine caved in, and he was caught with his hand tightly grasping the priceless possessions of an ancient people. He's stuck, the top half of his torso left for the intaking of stifled air and arrested movement. The question is: how will he die? The sooner or the later? The later that the sooner gets better. Headlines perish on a day's whim. One day a story's worth gold, the next day it'll wrap a fish. There was once a time when a gathered multitude had to be fed, and there were only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish found in the crowd. A man was there sermonizing (Was he a man? No, he was more than a man; he was an ace in the hole.) The Son of Man took the loaves and fish and made them infinite: every man, woman, and child present was fed. The good news was spread afterward that to this day is still printed. That's the mark of a good story: feed the multitudes what they want.

Charles Tatum is a thousand-dollar-a-day newspaperman. From the New York Times he descends like an eagle on the Alberquerque Sun. He gives himself over for nothing.

He finds a story, a human interest story; he builds it up so big, as big as a holy mountain, that the entire nation comes to watch it. A carnival of gawkers and tourists wraps around the sacred mountain, and inside Leo waits for his benediction, and for death. Leo calls his helplessness, 'the indian curse.'

Minstrels stop for the carnival. They sing, 'We're comin, we're comin, Leo.' Work begins to dig Leo out of the mountain; but each day Tatum makes sure that Leo sits and waits, so that the possible resurrection could increase in momentum. The faithful need to wait a few days more for the big payoff.

Somewhere in the procession of the human carnival that wraps itself around the fate of a single man buried in the womb of a holy mountain, Charles Tatum shows his teeth. He slaps and strangles the sense into a vixen. He soaks in the discontent of the new yorkers who had banished him to New Mexico in the first place.

When Leo finally perishes tucked away in the purgatorial dark of the collapsed mine (while outside the happy clamor of the carnival goes on) the human interest story dies; so too does Tatum begin to see the end result of his 'human interest.' The ace in the hole uncovers its concealed heart, and he loses big.

Tatum like an eagle descended on Albuquerque. And like a thousand-dollar-a-day newspaperman he descends on the biggest story of his life and comes away with a corpse. Falls face flat to the ground. A single rotten fish wrapped in yesterday's headline. He, the once proud and generous son of newspapermen and a sighing nation of readers, could only feed himself at that point on the hard bitter salt of his conscience, and the multitude, no longer fed, goes off and away from the sermon, away from the sacred mountain, away from the dead and uncared for body of a man who died virtually alone. No Lazarus this time, no miracle. Just the desert wind and the harsh empty plains and the continuous baking sun.

Tatum was a thousand-dollar-a-day newspaperman and he gave himself for nothing. Absolutely nothing.