One person who wasn’t at the funeral was Clara McCracken. I might as well say now, I don’t think I’d have lived as long as I have if it wasn’t for Clara McCracken. I’m a lawyer, and I’ve practiced in Webbtown ever since I first hung my shingle upstairs of Kincaid’s drugstore, some six decades ago. I don’t have much of a practice left, but I’ve played the fiddle for pleasure all my life, and if I’m not better known for fiddling than I am for the law, I’m sure better liked for it.
McCrackens have run the Red Lantern Inn since the first of them came west after the War of Independence. One story says they were on the run from the revenue men during the Whiskey Rebellion. That sounds about right. The McCrackens almost died out twenty years ago, down to two sisters, Clara and Maud, maiden ladies. Maud, twice Clara’s age, was determined to marry her sister to a paint salesman who put in at the Red Lantern whenever he came through the Ragapoos. Clara wanted nothing to do with him. She wanted to run wild in the hills with young Reuben White, until the day he cornered her in the sheepcote. Maudie was accidentally shot dead that day, and Clara tumbled Reuben headfirst into the well. I defended her when she was tried for murder. She wouldn’t have any outside lawyer, and she wasn’t much use in her own defense, taking the jury to the well and showing them how she did it. She did fifteen years.
Reuben’s family didn’t get much sympathy from the town. They moved away — deeper into the hills; I suppose more in shame than sorrow — when most of the townspeople drove up to the county jail to see Clara off to prison. The one member of the family, a first cousin to Reuben, who did not move away, was Mary Toomey, Big Mary.
I brought Clara home after she’d done her time, and allowed myself to be made a silent partner so she could reopen the Red Lantern. Not much business, but it’s been going since.
If you wonder what all this has to do with the funeral of Billy Baldwin, I’ll tell you now. I’ll swear to the Almighty I saw Billy stoned — I think to death — on the veranda of the Red Lantern the night Big Mary and Nancy said he died at home after coming down from Lookout Point.
I woke up sudden that night and looked out my window. It was moonlight, cold and past midnight. A dozen or so women of the town passed under my window, silent except for their whispering feet. I knew where they were headed. There had been shenanigans, and as soon as I could get there I followed them and lay down in the hollow alongside where Billy Baldwin’s car was parked. The women were standing like statues beneath the steps, tinted pink from the light of the Red Lantern sign. I heard the commotion upstairs and saw lights going on. I heard Billy yelping and scrambling down the stairs, Nancy after him, yelling and beating at him as he plunged outdoors, naked as birth and his clothes in his arms. The women blocked the steps and picked up stones from the walk which they handed round among them. Then out from a side door came Clara, wispy as a ghost in a negligee the likes of which no woman of Webbtown had ever seen before. The women stood, stones in hand, until Clara went down the steps and got one too. Billy by then was on his knees, pleading with them, and one of the women took Nancy away. Clara threw the first stone and Billy went down in the barrage that followed. Didn’t move even when Clara went back up the steps and kicked him like he was a dead calf. The women picked up more stones and flung them at Clara. They hissed at her like snakes. When she made it into the inn I took off and never looked back.
After the funeral nobody, even at Tuttle’s Bar and Grill, where most of the men hung out, ever mentioned Billy. I felt things were hanging in a kind of delicate balance, but I could’ve felt that way because of what I’d seen. I didn’t know for a fact about Prouty or Reverend Barnes, but I was pretty sure I was the only man in town to know what really happened to Billy. It bothered me a lot at first, but after a while I got to thinking maybe I dreamt the whole thing. I sure liked it better that way.
There was a thaw in early January. It made the three-mile exit off the interstate almost impassable. I’d just come up from the town and waited on the veranda when a car and trailer pulled up in front of the Red Lantern. Both vehicles looked as though they’d had a long and hearty life. Which was more than I could say for the driver. He got out of the car and scraped his boots at the bottom step. He was tall and thin as a string bean, the eyes of a zealot, I thought. I’d seen his like among mountain preachers. His smile was practiced, on and off. His clothes were a dusty black, a topcoat that flapped open, trousers tucked into his boots. He tipped the brim of a high-crowned hat, and the first words out of his mouth were, “Are you a Christian?”
I didn’t like him asking that. “I am when I have to be,” I said.
But he took my words at their best value. “I’m the Reverend Isaiah Teague, but I’m not a prophet. I’m only a poor evangelist.” He offered his hand and I took it. I could feel the bones.
“I’m Hank,” I said, hoping it would be enough to get him on the road again. I didn’t offer him the hospitality of the inn. To tell the truth, I was afraid if I let him in, I wouldn’t be able to get him out, and Clara would kill me. I was glad I hadn’t been too hospitable when next he asked me if I knew of a lady named Mary Toomey in the town, and where he’d find her.
I looked at my watch. “I think you can find her at this hour at the bank.”
“She works at a bank?” he questioned and nodded approval.
“She’s president of the First State Bank of Webbtown.”
The smile came and went, and so did he.
Before he was out of sight, Clara came out to me. “What was that all about?”
“Looking for Big Mary. He’s a clergyman of some sort.”
“They know now where the money is,” she said. Which was more or less what I’d thought of him myself.
But Mary took to him from that first day. She helped him in more ways than we knew at the time. First, she did two good turns at once by getting him room and board at Nancy Baldwin’s. Billy hadn’t left Nancy more than a rabbit’s skin, and she hadn’t been the same since his death. The baby, too, was sickly. It cried most nights through, according to the neighbors. That stopped whenever the reverend was there. If you listened close you could hear him sing gospel at all hours, Annie Pendergast said, as sweet as any you ever heard on the radio. He’d go off for days at a time and come back weekends. He was laying out a summer tour of the campsites, it was told, and on one return when he stopped first at the bank, Big Mary came out and climbed into that woebegone vehicle of his and rode with him past the inn and up over Lookout Point. You had to say his attitude toward Mary was gallant, not exactly bowing and scraping, but so respectful it could turn your stomach. We didn’t begrudge her such attention, you understand. I suppose we even pitied her, the way you would anybody you thought was being taken advantage of.