I did better than I thought I would collecting a retirement purse for Reverend Barnes, and we decided to give it to him early so him and Faith would know what they could count on. Easter was coming mid April that year and we decided that was when we’d hold the party for them. Nobody was pushing things except maybe Big Mary. Most of us, even me by that time, didn’t see why Convention had to make a theological issue of it, if that’s what was happening. After all, Pastor had preached ecumenism to us and it could be stretched to fit. But Isaiah himself was for due process, as he put it to me, the lawyer.
It was Clara, squinting into the early dark, noticed Big Mary going by most nights when the snow was cleared, driving up past Lookout Point. If I was behind the bar, Clara’d call out — whether I had a customer or not — “There she goes!” An hour or two later, Mary’d come down again. Clara was clocking her. I wasn’t. She figured Mary was taking him up a warm supper and looking for a little cuddling. I thought it’d be easier to cuddle with a giraffe, but I didn’t say so.
Spring always comes if you believe in it. The cardinal’s song was almost musical, the willow trees were getting yellower, and Isaiah Teague took to dropping by the inn late of an evening — well after Big Mary had come down from whatever she’d gone up for. We included customers if there were any, me fiddling and the reverend singing out the words of hymns we’d heard since childhood. Now and then I’d lapse into country, and once Clara picked up her skirts and skipped into a solo performance of the Virginia Reel. I remembered how she first got into trouble dancing wild with Reuben. The switch Maudie took to drive him out with was still in a corner of the bar. Sometimes Isaiah would tell us what it was like preaching and singing gospel and when he got carried away with the message, dancing for God. He showed us a step or two and you could tell he’d been a real prancer in his youth. Clara made bold to ask him right out if he didn’t have a wife and kids somewhere. He gave her that quick smile I’d almost forgotten and said, “Don’t you have a husband somewhere?”
Mind, all this congeniality didn’t go on for very long. The days were getting longer and I thought it a miracle Big Mary hadn’t walked in on us. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know how she’d’ve taken to it. She was a blood relative of Reuben White, and he was a live one. Alive, that is. I had a little legal business I could only put my mind to after Jeremiah was laid down for the night, and I must’ve missed the stories Isaiah told of preaching on the open road, stories that went to work on Clara’s imagination. She asked me once if I’d ever known of any women evangelists, and I told her what I could remember hearing about Aimee Semple McPherson. She was even before my time.
I don’t like to say it had anything to do with April Fool’s Day, but on the first Sunday in April, Pastor announced he had a letter to read us from Convention. I was in church because of a meeting afterwards of the retirement committee. There was a rumble of satisfaction at the dispensation they granted us to hire the Reverend Isaiah Teague. Isaiah sat up there alongside Pastor, stiff and straight, and kept that come-and-go smile under control, though I could see a twitch getting loose now and then. What Pastor didn’t read out was the Convention’s consideration that Reverend Teague expected to marry soon. The word got out almost as soon as if he’d read it. I guess we all knew who we thought leaked it, but we didn’t say so. We just congratulated Isaiah on coming through and thanked Mary Toomey for getting the petition to Convention in the first place. But it set me to wondering what else Pastor had kept from us over the years. I was thinking of how late he was called that night to Billy Baldwin’s and how he kind of groped his way through Billy’s funeral. And then I thought of how natural he took to the idea of retiring. If it was me, I thought — after all those years of ministering — I’d’ve straightened my back, spit in the wind, and stayed till they carried me out. It was as though he had something on his conscience he’d not been able to hand over to the Lord. It made me feel guilty, and then when I thought how much money people had come up with for the retirement gift, I was pretty sure a lot of Webbtown folk felt the same way I did.
I dreaded telling Clara the news, thinking how it meant an end to those cosy evening visits from Isaiah. We’d never talked to one another about why he came. We’d made fun of Big Mary’s courtship — I guess you’d call it that — never believing for a minute — I know I didn’t — that she’d win.
“Won’t make any difference,” Clara said. “He ain’t going to abandon us, Hank. We’ll just be his hermitage and she won’t ever know.”
“Clara, this ain’t New York City or Paris, France.” Where I’d been once after the war. The very idea of him coming up to us, a married man, made me feel guilty, even though there was nothing sinful in those visits. That I knew about anyway.
“I know what it’s like to be in prison, Hank. That’s what Maudie wanted to marry me into — and what I had fifteen years of when the only green I ever saw was when I stood on the toilet and looked out the window. He’s a wild bird, Hank. Big Mary’s crazy if she thinks she can keep him in a cage.”
I felt the same. I didn’t know what was coming, and I didn’t want to know.
Isaiah was to preach the morning of the retirement party. He invited Clara to attend, even threatened to come and get her himself if she didn’t come with me. I was of two minds, at least two minds, knowing how unpredictable Clara was, but thinking it’d be as good a time as any to introduce Jeremiah to the congregation, since he was already a Christian boy. When Clara said they’d be there, I went up to Ragapoo City and bought him a nice outfit out of my own pocket. Clara let me. She had money since the state bought a section of McCracken land, but she was saving every penny now for Jeremiah. I was nervous helping get him dressed on Sunday morning, even more when Clara came down wearing a dress I hadn’t seen for over fifteen years. It was black and fit her snug and just the way she wore it at her trial; she had a red handkerchief at her throat.
The ones in church ahead of us fell silent when we were ushered down near the sanctuary, Clara holding Jeremiah out in front of her like he was a little king. I don’t remember much about myself, except that I was wearing my good suit.
When Isaiah stepped up to the pulpit, he was carrying a bundle of letters. He made a little bow toward Pastor, who sat in his usual place aside so the pulpit didn’t block him from the congregation’s view, and said he had in hand the tributes of a grateful parish, which he’d present to Pastor by and by. I guess he said how grateful he was to all of us for promising to call him, and I know he did mention Mary Toomey by name. She was on the other side of the aisle from us. I saw heads turning her way, but I didn’t look and Clara didn’t look, I don’t think even at Jeremiah, just straight at Isaiah.
Then he told us what brought him to Webbtown.
He’d been preaching in a town he’d never heard of in the mountains to the south, and a woman stood up and told him of her terrible pain — she’d lost a son to murder and his name was Reuben White. Isaiah told us how he was able to help her and her family heal a wound festering a whole generation. They didn’t expect any peace in this world unless they got revenge. That’s what they lived for. I think this is what he said: “With God’s help I persuaded her family, one by one, to bring their anger to Jesus, and their suffering, and let go of their bitterness.” And I know he said this: “Shall I tell you the Lord’s message to me? He told me there was healing to be done in the town they moved away from, a whole town that needed healing but needed first to tell its sins and sorrow.” He preached for maybe an hour, straight out of the Bible, things we’d never heard just that way before. Even Jeremiah seemed to listen. Clara seemed dead alive, if you know what I mean, frozen.