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

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.