Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

If I’d been paying less attention to Jeremiah those days, I’d have known better what was going on in the town. I heard that Reverend Teague had taken his trailer on a camp tour that summer, and then parked it by River Junction where he preached from a platform that was part of the old county fairgrounds. Prouty and Mrs. Prouty and some others went to hear him, watched a couple of baptisms. They thought he was pretty good. He knew the Bible a lot better than they did. But most of them thought they’d stick with Pastor Barnes. Big Mary went up and gave him a few amens, and he came down now and then for a meal at her house or Faith’s, but he wasn’t living there anymore. And when he walked in town with Mary, he wasn’t just sidling along with her the way he did at first. He walked with his back straight and he always wore his hat and was sure to take it off to anyone they met. He’d turn and smile to those who didn’t stop, even if it meant showing his back to Mary. Mary was as proud and patient with him as if he was a child. When I heard this, what went through my mind, in and out, mind you, was her asking Clara to give Jeremiah to her. I never thought it was a serious proposition, just something she said to rile Clara. But where did it come from? Anyway, like Nora Kincaid said, Isaiah Teague was beginning to feel his oats.

Halloween passed with nothing worse happening at the inn than the rain barrel being toppled. I was rolling it back into its place when Reverend Teague drove up, parked, tried to help me, and was no help at all. He followed me into my office. “I hear you have a baby here in need of baptizing.”

“That’s something you’ll have to take up with his mother,” I said.

“I’ve never met Miss McCracken,” he said.

“Well, why don’t you go around and introduce yourself? She’ll know who you are.”

“A friend of Mary Toomey’s.” He cleared his throat. He’d said something that could be taken for a joke.

“I’d just ask her about getting the baby baptized,” I said.

Isaiah quick-smiled at me. “She’ll never know, unless you’re the one to tell her — I was with Miss Mary when the call came from your parson’s wife. I persuaded Mary to come and help. I’d have come myself but Mary said she might become violent, seeing a man. But I’ve delivered a baby or two in my time.”

“That a fact?” I said. I knew now where Big Mary got the instruments she’d brought along. He’d softened me up a little, telling me. But why tell me, except he wanted me to tell Clara? I didn’t like him much better than the first time I’d laid eyes on him. “I’ll take you round and introduce you. Then you’re on your own.”

I gave Clara ten minutes at most to send this tent-Christian on his way. Two hours later, when I went in from my office, there he was in the lobby, rocking Jeremiah in his basket and mumbling, sing-song, something like, “You’re going to be a Christian boy.” Jeremiah was burbling with pleasure.

Clara was almost as perky as her son. “Hank, we’re going to have another christening. Remember the last one?”

I tried to remember if there’d been one in the last forty or so years.

“I don’t remember it either,” Clara made fun of me. “It was me, Old Hank, and you played the fiddle. You’re going to be the godfather, aren’t you, Hank?”

I knew I was too old to be anybody’s godfather for it to do him much good while he was growing up, but I didn’t like the way Jeremiah took to Reverend Teague. “I guess I can handle it,” I said.

After Teague was gone and she’d quieted Jeremiah down, I said to her, “You know Big Mary’s gone kind of sweet on him, don’t you?” I always took whatever news I could of the town up to her, and I might have had in mind to dampen her interest in him by mentioning Big Mary. But it was about as foolish a notion as I ever had. You could’ve said her smile was angelic if you didn’t know how much wickedness was in her. “We got a parson of our own in Webbtown,” I snapped. “It ain’t right trusting Jeremiah’s christening to an outsider.”

“Something I learned when I was away, Old Hank: It don’t matter who dishes it up, it’s what’s on the plate that counts.”

I left her to manage her own doggone inn and her own doggone baby, closed up my office, and went down to Tuttle’s. I hadn’t been there much lately. Prouty and Tom Kincaid were resting their elbows on the bar.

Tuttle drew me what used to be my usual, said it was on the house, hospitality to a stranger. It wasn’t as good as Maudie’s Own, but I sure liked drinking in their company. I took a long pull before I even said, “Thank you.” Then, like I had a chip on my shoulder, I said, “You know we got a baby up at the Red Lantern.”

“Congratulations, Hank, you old son of a gun,” Kincaid said.