“I saw you slap a woman the other night.
Was that your wife?”
He grabbed me. So quickly, so skillfully that I wasn’t sure what happened till it was over. He flung me back across the sidewalk, propelling me into a corner mailbox.
He pulled away.
I shouted, trying to recover at least a modicum of dignity for the interested bystanders, “Was Muldaur sleeping with your wife? Was that why you slapped her?”
A guy the town seemed to employ as a wise guy-he’d always been here, I’d never seen him gainfully employed, he just kinda wandered around and made sarcastic remarks, a modern version of the Greek chorus-sd, “Good thing he took off.
Otherwise you would’ve killed him, McCain.”
The groundlings who were standing around all looked at me and laughed.
I wasted an hour walking around to the various print shops. Half of them were closed on such a baking Saturday afternoon and the other half claimed that they didn’t know anything about who’d printed the leaflets and the slick pamphlets that came from Muldaur’s church and were plastered all over town. Most people of all denominations found them disgusting and complained about them in The Clarion letters column.
In a small town like ours, you have to be very careful of who you offend. There were just enough Catholics that printing Muldaur’s hate mail could cost you any Catholic business you had.
But if anyone knew anything, they weren’t talking about it. Only one person gave me anything remotely resembling a lead.
He said that there was a former press operator who now had a small press in his basement and did odd jobs. He’d taken a full-time job in the Amana factory where they made freezers because the pay was so much better. The guy said he didn’t know if Parnell, the former press operator, had done the Muldaur work but that he was probably worth checking out. He gave me Parnell’s address. I thanked him. I’d gone to Catholic school with Parnell. We hadn’t been friends, but then we hadn’t been enemies.
Reverend Courtney was sitting on his church steps talking to a dowager in a summer frock and a large summer hat. They looked quite handsome, the church of native stone magnificent in the afternoon light, the large front lawn well-tended and very green, a watercolor cover from The New Yorker perhaps, even a breeze cooperating by fluttering the long blue ribbon that trailed from the dowager’s hat.
Her name was Helen Prentice, and she and her husband were not only wealthy but also generous. There wasn’t a hospital, library, or auditorium within a hundred miles in any direction that the Prentices hadn’t contributed substantially to.
“Hello, Sam,” Helen said, extending her hand. We shook. I’d met her at various soirees at Judge Whitney’s house.
“Afternoon, Helen.”
She checked her watch. “I need to run.”
Courtney, now in dark slacks and a white shirt, started to raise himself from the church step but she stopped him with a gloved white hand.
“The last time I checked, Reverend, I wasn’t royalty. There’s no need to stand.” She smiled at me. “George and I really enjoyed sitting with you at the Judge’s dinner table last month. You’re a very funny young man.” Then back to Courtney. “See you in the morning at the ten o’clock service.”
When she was out of earshot, or so he assumed, he said, “There goes one very rich lady, McCain.”
“I’d think that a man who’d dedicated himself to following in the footsteps of Jesus might also point out that she’s a very decent person, too. Very generous with her riches.”
“Nice to know you’re not afraid of being pompous.”
I said, “How was the food at The House today?”
He wasn’t intimidated. “I knew you were an unsuccessful lawyer. I guess I’d forgotten that you were an unsuccessful gumshoe, too.”
“You and Sara Hall just happened to be driving around last night and ended up at Muldaur’s church completely by coincidence?”
“That’s right, McCain.”
He looked vital and modern standing against the massive medieval-style doors of the church.
“I’m sorry I got you Catholics in a tizzy by quoting Dr. Peale. It’s a free country, you know. Or so they tell me, anyway.”
“Right now, I’m more interested in you and Sara Hall. What were you really doing out there last night?”
He smiled. He had great teeth, of course.
Movie-star teeth. “As I said, I’m told it’s a free country. Or didn’t they teach you that in that second-rate law school you went to?”
He came down off the steps and walked over to where a rake leaned against an elm. From his back pocket he took a pair of brown work gloves, cinched them on, and started raking.
As I walked back to my office, I noticed leaflets on car windows, placed under windshield wipers. A block before I reached my place I saw a boy of maybe twelve toting an armload of the leaflets and getting punched in the face by a much bigger kid. The Flannagan boy. Flannagan was no doubt displeased with the anti-Catholic nature of the leaflets. But mostly he just liked punching kids smaller than him. Flannagan, who’d played fullback on the Catholic school junior varsity squad until they realized he didn’t have any talent, was born to bully.
I got between them and gave Flannagan a shove.
“What’re you stoppin’ me for, McCain? You see that shit he’s got about Catholics? He says we ain’t Americans.”
“You’re a lot bigger than he is,
Flannagan.”
“I don’t care. He still deserves to be punched.”
Nice to know that Muldaur’s work was living on beyond him. He’d brought the town to a boil in life -andthe water was still hot now that he’d died.
“Who told you to pass these out?” I said to the kid. He wore bib overalls with a striped T-shirt. He had freckles and a cowlick and a squirt of blood in his right nostril from Flannagan’s fist. And bare feet. I was surprised he wasn’t dancing a jig.
“God told me to,” he said.
I almost laughed.
“God,” Flannagan said. “My ass.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that. Dirty, I mean,” the kid said. “My mom says Catholics and Jews talk like that all the time.”
Now I’ll double back on what I said earlier about the foolish side of evil. There’s nothing more frightening than a youngster who has been completely indoctrinated by his parents. He’s as soulless as a robot and as deadly as an assassin. You can’t reason with him because the “on” switch in his brain doesn’t operate. His parents turned it off permanently long ago.
“Why don’t you let me take those?” I said.
I reached for the leaflets and he jumped back a foot.
“No! You’re a dirty Catholic just like Flannagan here.”
“You call me a dirty Catholic again and I’ll knock you out.”
“Shut up, Flannagan,” I said. “Kid, I want the leaflets.”
“They’re mine and you can’t take them away from me.”
“Let me handle him, McCain,”
Flannagan said, “c’mon.”
And with that, not unexpectedly, the kid took off running down the sidewalk. Flannagan lunged, as if he were going after him. I grabbed him by the shoulder.
“I should be able to hit him if I want to,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s one of your inalienable rights. Punching kids who weigh forty pounds less than you do.”
“He hates Catholics.”
