Torsade Literary Space All Bedlam Courses Past (part fifty-three)
All Bedlam Courses Past
Chapter Three
An Object in Motion
(part fifty-three)
“Now what are we finishing up with, Fan?” Rutherford said.
“Lemon sponge. Go on.” A gesture for the maid. “But Joseph.”
“Ma’am. I grant you…I grant you, perhaps his father was…” Pause of length. “Tardy of intervention.”
“What are you saying, Fannie? I couldn’t care, myself, if they go hang Guiteau, and I don’t care if he was crazy or not. Who does?”
“Well, what am I saying, Edith?”
It was a shopworn patience Fannie showed, and dessert put the question aside. Thacker, beyond pleased to find a chocolate glaze accompany the lemon sponge, would have binned all Wellerisms—but a thing about Edith Rutherford had struck him.
Suppose he let drop the name of Ryan-Neville, as beginning a thought, “That secretary of Ebrach’s. Met him on the train just now. One or two folks call him a fortune hunter.”
He shot her a glance, nodded to convey, “Good eats, miss”. She let her fork idle, on its way up from the plate. Pain and bother in her eyes before she smiled, socially.
Maybe there just wasn’t enough money here.
But, be hanged for a sheep soon as a lamb. Weller, then…in what respect was he Rowan’s bird of a feather?
“Mr. Weller. You’re a circuit rider? Baptist?”
“Mr. Thacker. I am an instructor at Chamberlain-Wesleyan, in the discipline of polity.”
“Visiting lecturer?”
Weller raised an eyebrow. This was assent, and scorn. But it was information. If Weller hunted fortunes, he hunted without joy. He might be a jack-of-one-trade, a man with so many lectures in his head, that when he thought of making a remark, he thought of every argument belonging to it.
A bore. Boring to investigate…but Thacker would have to nose in a little.
Fannie laid down her fork, and carried home her point. “Joseph, you have to think about it, don’t you? Guiteau never took any notion to…” Her face expressed a decision to put this in plain terms. “Go off to Washington, buy a gun, practice using it.”
“Which speaks of rational purpose, yes…”
“Oh, we’re not debating whether he’s deranged. He came out of Oneida, and despite being so no one liked him, he was just a nuisance, a humbug. He tried a newspaper, I think. He tried one or two things…he was a lawyer?”
Weller gave a shrug. “I don’t know that I’ve read that.”
“Rotten lawyer.”
“But, George…”
Thacker inserted himself, to murmur: “Attorney and theologian.”
“It was the Stalwart sect in the party, it was that…that had Guiteau believing murder was a ‘political necessity’. He used those words himself, didn’t he?”
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Rutherford threw the switch to a siding. “Tell you, Weller, I’m an Indiana Republican. The party’s not getting there, way things are. Conkling with his man in the wings. Can’t change what ails em, if Garfield pulls through…we’ll still have Arthur. Arthur gets to be president, we might as well live in the territories. Garfield’s straight enough, means well enough, but he still does business with New York. Time to wake up to where the country’s going.”
Sperling and the hands had by now a good thought.
“If you’ve a mind to get down, Mr. Thacker.”
Thacker, unabashed, took the proffered arm, and went to Gremot’s side.
Gremot walked a ways off, patting bales in passing. He was biding his time, calculating value, deducting waste.
“How you think you’ll go about it, when you get there?”
“Take a room, sir, ask what they recommend for a meal, get hold of a local paper, get a shoeshine, get a haircut…”
“You start people talking. Tell them you’re looking for a relative?”
“No, sir. I don’t tell any lie—”
Gremot snapped off, reversing to take a horse’s head and guide her. The solution looked like unhitching her mate, running Gremot’s wagon over the ditch, the men alongside, feet in the mire, using their strength to level the left-hand set of wheels with the road.
Thacker had only meant to say, a lie is a bridge burned, and a flimflammers’ mode of entrée…
Or, if Gremot could take an idle word personally, not even that.
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Bedlam
All Bedlam Courses Past (part fifty-four)
(2023, Stephanie Foster)