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Show page 113 Campbell drove away trying to recall the full history of the Wilhoyts. He parked in an alley beside Durango Jackson's long white clapboard funeral parlor, stepped past surplus signs stacked against the building advertising funerals from $159 to $459, and found Durango in his office, bookkeeping. Durango was a tall man, middle-aged, with a long smooth face and long sideburns. He wore his standard white shirt and black string bow tie, much like a professional gambler. He had assembled, during his business life, a good library on old and new families of our town. After Campbell explained his scheme, bought Durango a beer from the funeral home icebox in the refreshment sanctuary, an adjoining room of walnut paneling and framed Bible verses, Durango pulled out one of his family ledgers. "First thing," he said, "if a thing is haunted, I usually sure it stays haunted 'til it benefits me. I've had to haunt houses and barns, most everything, to get folks to pay their bills for the departed. I got a battery-operated tape recorder, tapes on everything from harps to curses. I never had occasion to rent it out before, but I will to you, 'cause Radcliffe makes bad whiskey, nearly paralyzed me once. Buy me another beer and I'll see what's in here." He tapped the ledger. "You may know it already, long as you been around." Campbell put fifty cents in a cigar box near the refrigerator, payment for the beer. "This funeral business is trying," Durango lamented, opening his beer. He began to read: "It starts way back. This John Almond Jr. comes home from |