All Bedlam Courses Past (part ten)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

Chapter One

The Peculiar Nature of Logical Science

(part ten)

 

 

“Why don’t I ask Sanderson? The Horaces’.”

Miss Gremot suggested Beriah Sanderson hired as digger [Miss Towson recorded, Élucide astonished over her shoulder at the Christian name].

“I will run advertisements. I’ll do it at the Beacon’s expense.”

Faces turned to Charles Rowan. Before Miss Towson could quite murmur that time was a factor—

He finished. “Asking anyone with a relative buried in the old grounds to come forward.”

 

Her godmother poured lemonade. “The air is better here, away from the river.”

They were having a game of it, though Virginia was an honest woman…outside of slyness, when called discretion. The game was: What is Luce doing? Do Walter and Fern know what they’re doing?

“I haven’t had a headache for a while, no.”

“And you’re busy, with all that?”

If the mild, scandalized withdrawal had emphasized busy, Élucide would have answered snappishly, even bearing duty and age in mind. But she was used to the all that.

“Ma’am, I need to hire a man. The work is heavy labor.”

“A man… I’ll have to get my little book.”

Virginia stood, rummaged her skirt pocket, pulled out the little book, pulled out a stub of pencil, licked this (judgment, on the theme of profligacy, and daring to be judged, embodied in two minor characteristics), and repeated, “Heavy labor.”

“You know the old typhoid cemetery has got to be moved.”

“Oh, dear. That’s quite a thing to be involved with.”

“But Sanderson…”

“I don’t know about Sanderson.”

“Might suggest a name.”

“Well, he might. Gus would know if there’s anyone local in need of…what sort of wages?”

“The least. It’s public money. Miss Towson thought Richard.”

“Everard?” A cluck to bless Miss Towson’s faith. “God helps them that help themselves, Miss. And so does your godfather.”

 

 

 

10

 

 

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iii.

Light of Knowledge

 

 

Elevations in the neighborhood of Cookesville ran six hundred feet at their loftiest. On a topographic map this looked humble, laughable to some…

Indiana’s hill country, the beauty of it, being Cookesville’s boast. To be among these hills, to see them substantial, impressed on the viewer the hummocky separateness keeping neighbors in their place. The view was of farmstead roofs, the earthworks of a fort twenty years abandoned, and this institutional building, the asylum.

Ebrach recalled an island off the coast of Scotland. Long ago an enthusiast had led him to this ancient home—of crabbed hermits, his guide had mildly joked. Kiln-like structures, seaward gazing, winds wailing harmony with the gulls wheeling…

To Ebrach’s sensibilities, yes, a Presence. Its sad, wounded patience in bidding the visitor stay, felt to him like a leadenness in the feet. He’d thought of lying on the frost-heaved soil, until the song gained its words.

On this Indiana burial ground, nothing. But the memory had come. He never discounted coincidence.

“Here!” Kempf called, half-crouched over a stone.

Ebrach was allowing a wide berth. He hoped himself to be ever a cool blue, an unknown vessel seen to hoist the flag of an ally. A man like Kempf must come a touch acrid to the radiant field; to spirit sight, a harsh yellow.

Thoughts vibrate from the individual aura, heat and breath, illness and fear, agitations of the mind…

They do, and the divinities know—for having no bone and pulsing blood to distort their hearing—the inner speech of the living. Kempf was unwilling to have this talk. But Ebrach, who counted his gift all-enduring, could humor sceptics.

He saw Kempf’s marker chiseled with a number: 12.

“One of the original inmates,” Ebrach guessed. “But some, you’d told me, were lifelong…had been moved from the old barracks.”

Kempf’s face said, we don’t care about the numbering. “Dolphinus Braggert, yes. One of the cases. I think, frankly, if your conscience is troubled that researches must be done in accord with the scientific method, you have got a bee in your bonnet.”

Ebrach prompted: “The cases, then?”

“You’ve seen it yourself, what with old Tomlin, for a thought. The families suffer shame and helplessness, the demented pose a constant danger. If we are ever to understand infirmity, the nature of it, we must test…”

Kempf let aposiopesis linger, with a bee-swatting eye, but Ebrach said nothing.

 

 

11

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part eleven)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2023, Stephanie Foster)