The funeral for old Stu, held two days later, was a memorable event whereat it was proved that one could indeed enjoy an old joke twice, and twice again. The church lawn, before and after the brief memorial service, was filled with a great congregation of ordinary townsfolk, young and old, all recalling jokes the old car dealer had told them, as well as amusing anecdotes about his life, which in retrospect seemed funnier than when he was alive, and though most had shared in these events, especially the older generation, and so had heard all the stories before, the sudden violent death (“Talk about your punchlines,” someone said, and another added: “It’s like the one he liked to tell about the guy who took a leak at the power plant…”) of the town’s favorite raconteur had, just as suddenly, made them all new again: there was a lot of laughter out on the church lawn that day, sighs and tears, too, and expressions of alarm that such a thing could happen in this town, but even more laughter, and everyone agreed, they don’t build ‘em like ole Stu any more, that old boy was a vintage model. There were a lot of flowers in the church, as though to provoke the corpse into a resuscitative sneezing fit, but the service itself was a soberer affair, mainly out of respect to the widow, who seemed to have lost her sense of humor and was taking it all pretty hard. She’d obviously been hitting the bottle and looked haggard and distraught, and when John brought her into the church during the singing of “Amazing Grace,” she stumbled and nearly fell and those near her heard her hiss: “Stop that, damn you! Go away and leave me alone!” Who was “you”? Most knew. It was what she’d told the police: it didn’t matter who’d pulled the trigger, it was that old ghoul’s fault. The police had their own more mundane theories. No one had as yet been charged, but the manager of the downtown hardware store, who’d skipped town in dramatic fashion after the killing, was the prime suspect. Rumors of a violent past, a prison record, a falling-out with Stu over a lemon he’d been sold, money troubles. The general view in town was that Floyd might have done it, might not have, but nobody liked him anyway. Under the circumstances, it was something of a surprise when the fugitive’s wife turned up at the funeral and timidly took a seat in the back pew. She sat alone, others shying away as though they might catch something if they got too close, until John’s wife came in, no doubt straight from the hospital, and sat down beside her and took her hand in hers for a moment, which startled her at first, but then she calmed down. As always, a healing presence, John’s wife, and the pew soon filled up, people acknowledging that the poor woman was only trying to do the Christian thing and had herself been effectively widowed by the tragedy. As the preacher, whose own daughter was missing and feared dead, reminded them, the point of many of the deceased’s favorite jokes was that things were not always what they seemed and there was often a consoling surprise at the end, and he asked them to pray, in these times that tried the human spirit, for strength and guidance, recalling for many of the mourners, perhaps on purpose for he’d heard it told many times at his own expense, old Stu’s story about the young preacher and the old widow on their wedding night: “You just take care of the strength, Reverend, and leave the rest to me.”
Ellsworth, reporting in the revived Town Crier on the funeral of the popular owner of the Ford-Mercury dealership, whose life had come to such a cruel and senseless end, took note of the minister’s tribute to the dear departed’s renowned sense of humor, which had provided so much strength and consolation for others in the community in the past, adding, in his own words, that death may carry away the person, but the stories, like rocks dropped in a stream, remain. This relative immortality of the stories vis-à-vis their actors and tellers had been much on Ellsworth’s mind of late as he emerged from what he thought of as his “long dark night of the soul” to engage with the human world once more, this world of rock-hard stories and transient lives to which, as chronicler, he’d been so long devoted, but which, in his absence, had passed without report, a delinquency he deeply regretted and said so in the double issue that marked the Crier’s return, promising to fill in all the missing news items by way of “I Remember” columns from his readers, which he solicited in his apology and also in person wherever he went, at the car dealer’s funeral, for example. He reported on that funeral, and on the annual Pioneers Day parade (for which he found few reliable witnesses, but his files were full of suitable archival material), and on the burning of Settler’s Woods, which he’d observed at a distance from his own second-floor window (a shocking moment as light bloomed suddenly in the impenetrable night: where was he—?!), and the casualties ensuing therefrom, including the town photographer’s wife, who was also his professional assistant, a tragedy of immense proportions, which was all he would say about it, and on the deplorable accident at the humpback bridge (in a separate editorial he appealed, once again, for the removal of that perilous structure), and in short, on all the old news that he could gather in, catching up as best he could on all the deaths and births, the marriages and engagements, burglaries, accidents, operations, golden anniversaries, arrests, birthdays, Little League and bowling team scores, church attendance figures. What he couldn’t report on was where he’d been exactly or how long he’d been there, for, returning as though from another dimension as the fire rose and fell on the horizon and the terrible thunderstorm crackled and boomed around him, he did not know himself. Something had passed, but it hadn’t felt like time, and in a place that was more than a place and yet no place at all. After the storm had exhausted itself, he had, as though compelled, gone out to Settler’s Woods to gaze, aghast, upon a charred and misty dreamscape which seemed to have sprung directly from the dark abyss of his own imagination. He’d remembered something Kate the librarian had once said to him about this seeming interplay of art and life: the formal resonances between them, she’d said, suggest that both are organic human enterprises, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they sometimes seem to live inside each other. But he was surprised, and had felt dreadfully empowered and hopelessly vulnerable at the same time, and not just a little disoriented by his recent adventures. He had half expected to find the Stalker wandering there, blind and reproachful, but had discovered instead his old friend Gordon, standing alone in the mud at the edge of the smoldering woods, soaked through and staring blankly into the black wet heart of the devastation. “Are you all right?” he asked. Gordon, unshaven, hands in his pockets, continued to stare straight ahead. “The stillness …,” he said. There was a deep quiet all about. Of course the birds had fled. There were, here and there, a few deep green patches spared by the fire, but most of the treetops and foliage had been burned out, leaving only the blackened trunks and naked branches like scorched arms reaching up out of the earth in anguished horror. Nothing moved except the gray wisps of smoke snaking upward through the dripping branches. “It’s over,” Ellsworth said, with a finality that surprised even himself, and his friend somberly nodded.