All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-four)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part ninety-four)

If Kentucky’s fair Elizabethtown has any particular tie to the city of Nashville, I must leave it to the old-timers to inform me. For here, my friends, you have the reporter’s lot. Most any sundry dusted off from the Closet of Memory warrants the eager hearing—as in a blue moon that yellowing hue of antiquity proves true gold.

Now, Cookesvillians will appreciate that if there are no church services going and no lynchings in the works, the pace along a Southern city’s Main Street is a slow one. “I don’t know,” I had begun, to a fellow on the bench outside a barber’s, “if there is a woman in this city…”

He stopped me here. “You just keep a move on.”

“A woman,” I said, on my dignity, “who may be a widow, who may keep a tidy farm, who may sit often on her front porch greeting passersby, having a chinwag, if they feel so inclined. A woman who has seen seventy years, and recalls the bulk of them sharply. A woman who has known romance, and the waywardness of youth…a nephew, let us say, grown to man’s estate, seeking apprenticeship in the great metropolis…”

I was peered at. But the fellow yielded this: “Are you wanting Auntie Nan?”

If I were, I could not have known it. I was willing, however, to have faith in the prospect, and I answered him, “Yes.”

This was it, come at last.

Son against father…strong. Ties between Elizabethtown and Nashville, outright provoking. But only to Rowan. Only to Rowan would Thacker’s gibes seem leering between lines.

I eyed the hieroglyphs I’d put down in my notebook. “Buckey…Burkey.”

“Tom Burkey? Out Mill Run? Fell under his horse, that’s how he died.”

“No, ma’am. I’m asking you about an affaire d’honneur.”

“On who? Not my sister!”

Hilarity. But, a comic piece so pregnant with hint…the town would talk.

Her father watched her read, with a quiet laugh for the changes to her face. Silly. Oh, he dares. Don’t get in trouble, Weem…

“Now, Luce. Everard got himself arrested.”

“Where…?”

“Corner.”

She skimmed, allowed a surmising face. Let her voice be indifferent. “Well, poor Richard. Maybe it’ll sober him up.”

“He’ll get himself out of it.”

Sarah came down from the hall. “Miss, your mother wants you in the parlor.”

Papa rose when Élucide rose, ignored Sarah; with nothing more to say, he left saying nothing…which was usual enough.

99

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-five)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)