All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred five)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

Chapter Four

Counterfeits

(part one hundred five)

 

 

 

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Richard’s face was a clue among clues; and any chore girl of Mrs. Koker’s knew this face for the drilling. The constable, a man called Fitzpatrick, tapped his foot.

“Everard. Got a notion what day of the week it is?”

“No, sir. No one bosses me by the calendar. Should we say Tuesday? You look like bargaining down to Monday.”

The constable wanted him to speak. And Richard didn’t mind, a quick study of the patient Unversaght’s accents…he even capped his remarks with a laugh, that Fitzpatrick would understand.

Fitzpatrick threw a telegraphing eye, sore miffed, at Rachel.

“We don’t have to stand here all day, do we? I told you I don’t know him.”

The women were escorted by the back way, up narrowed steps cut through the hillside.

“Oh, goodness, I don’t see any railing. Mr. Fitzpatrick!”

“Ma’am, I can get in front or come up behind, as you like.”

Mrs. Koker liked neither, but chose the rearguard. The constable’s voice drifted to the prisoners. “Next robbery, maybe the victim be a little more on the alert…”

This amenity, quartering enough to hold an embarrassment of prisoners, sat below the city building. The jail was horse stalls, two with slapped-on cement, grilled doors. Fitzpatrick had left the outside open, and in this flood of light, Richard took a cot.

He asked of the inmate opposite, “What’d they tell you they brung me in for?”

“Didn’t shoot the breeze, me and Fitz.”

“What you in for?”

“Not bein allowed to go home by myself.”

“Ha! That’s about it. I might have got into a tussle.”

“Sure might.”

Richard brooded on this confidence of his cellmate. He lacked the memory to know he hadn’t done grievous bodily harm.

“You know my name?”

“Didn’t Miss Rachel say?”

“Boy, don’t get cute with me. You know my name?”

“Sure…reckon. Maybe I’ll tell you mine.”

Fitzpatrick came back, preventing this, sloshing a bucket of water. “Everard, you got a mess to clean up.”

“Sir…”

The constable was deaf, and Richard, humbling himself, got on hands and knees and wrung the rag. His cellmate kicked a heel on the floor and hummed a short bar. Richard, jamming the rag under the dead weight of the third prisoner, saturating the leg of his jeans, said, “I don’t recall you charging me with anything.”

Fitzpatrick did not allow the hanging sir to carry over.

“Sir. I don’t recall you charging me with anything.”

“Too bad if you don’t.”

 

 

112

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred six)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)