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Walton, NY—four days before Billy's murder
A pale yellow piece of paper was lodged beneath the windshield wiper blade on the driver’s side of Billy Stillwater’s pickup truck. The vehicle sat in the rear of the parking lot that surrounded the Walton Diner, one of the true, old-fashioned diners remaining that had a traditional, stainless steel exterior. The diner was Billy’s favorite place to eat breakfast on a Sunday morning, and he’d just finished wolfing down a whopper: three-egg omelet, a double rasher of bacon, English muffin, and two cups of coffee. He belched loudly as he approached the truck, removing a roll of Tums from his pants pocket, and popping several into his mouth. Better late than never, he thought.
Walking over to the pickup, he removed the handbill from the windshield, unfolded it, and studied its contents carefully. The first words that caught his eye were “Pentecostal” and “speaking in tongues,” which is exactly what they’d been designed to do. Immediately, his head swam dizzily, and beads of cold perspiration ran down from his forehead, along his neck, and onto his chest, quickly soaking the front of his shirt. The palms of his hands were sweating, too, and he had to clutch the door handle to keep from falling to the pavement. He climbed inside the cab and collapsed against the back of the bench seat. In seconds, he was transported back to a time in his life that he’d spent over a quarter of a century trying to forget. He was a child again; in fact, he was exactly nine years old...
...It was a Sunday evening in Alabama, just outside Birmingham, and his mother had brought his younger sister and him to “church” to see his father, known simply as Brother Richard, preach for the very first time. It wasn’t really a church in the truest sense; there were no wooden pews, no steeple—not so much as a bell. In fact, there wasn’t even a building. His mother had always told him that his daddy was “special,” that he was a Pentecostal preacher; but Billy wasn’t quite sure what that meant. He only knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t legal—at least that’s what his mama said. That was why they always met in crazy places like this, and they were always “a few steps ahead of the law,” as his mama liked to put it. “The only place where it’s legal for your daddy to do what he does is Jolo, West Virginia, and we ain’t hardly goin’ there.”
The site of that night’s assembly was a clearing, deep in the woods on a mountainside, where Billy’s dad had parked a trailer that served as his portable headquarters. There was a wooden stage (at least that’s what it looked like to young Bill), with a crowd of mostly college-aged young people and a few older folks gathered around it. Raynette, Billy’s mom, held his hand tightly, along with that of his sister, as the three of them waited for their father to begin the service.
“You pay attention,” his mother said. “Your daddy don’t do this every time, and I expect it’s ‘bout time you seen it for yourself.”
“Don’t do what, Mama?” asked Billy. He’d always known his father was doing something “different” out in the barn behind their farmhouse, but he’d never been allowed inside to see. Whenever his daddy went out to preach, he’d always carried a wooden box from the barn to his truck before leaving for church.
“Hush, child. Just watch.”
Billy was filled with a sense of dread. Whatever it was that his father carried in that box, Billy didn’t know, but one thing was certain: it couldn’t be good. Why else would they be out there in the dark, in the middle of nowhere? He squeezed his mother’s hand tightly, holding his breath, with eyes closed, as he waited quietly for heaven knew what. His sister, too, was silent.
Presently, Billy could hear the sound of his father preaching. There was a good deal of emotion coloring his voice, which grew louder on occasion to emphasize a point, and then lower—almost to a whisper—as if to draw the crowd closer. After a while, there was some singing, followed by the sound of his daddy speaking in some foreign language. Billy guessed this was the “speaking in tongues” part that his mama had told him about. Then a growing restlessness filled the small crowd of worshippers, and Billy opened his eyes just the tiniest bit to see what was causing the disturbance. His father was standing over the wooden box, which had been placed on a folding table. People were whispering to one another, and some were making strange sounds, much like his daddy had been making.
Suddenly, a hush spread over the group of worshippers. Billy opened his eyes all the way and saw his father opening the lid of the box. A soft buzzing sound was coming out of it. It sounded to Billy as if someone were shaking a box of rice; that was the kind of dry, rattling sound it made. He watched, enraptured, as Brother Richard slowly reached his hand down into the box, his eyes staring intently at whatever was inside.
And then, at last, Billy knew what all the fuss was about.