Unnamed Drug Store Clerk 3

Although never named, the drug store clerk in "Uncle Willy" plays a large role in the plot. He arrives in Jefferson "about six months" before Reverend Schultz and Mrs. Merridew hire him to manage the drugstore while Willy undergoes drug treatment in Memphis (232). No one in Jefferson "knows anything about him," but he arrives in town with "letters to the church," which is apparently the basis on which he is hired (232). He completely transforms the store - making it attractive to the "town trade" that had previously shunned it (233). When Willy returns to town free from his addiction to morphine, the clerk surreptitiously provides him with his new drug of choice - whiskey - while continuing to run the drugstore. But all this turns out to be a kind of facade behind which the clerk robs the store of all its assets and disappears with the profits.