All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred eleven)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

Chapter Four

Counterfeits

(part one hundred eleven)

 

 

 

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Yeager’s hand showed flapping, under moonlight, before his white shirt.

“You mean they had prospects?”

“Prospects? Who’s that?”

“Woolsaver. Investors. Someone like Ebrach.”

“Ebrach’s got investors? I thought it was private money.”

“Christ! I’m asking. Don’t print me as a secret source.”

“No, I don’t mean more than the bank chose to be lenient. They let the county pay bottom dollar, and let go their claims on the property. That’s citizenship. Can’t cut and run like New York.”

The first company Gremot and the farmers got together had floundered over the stall in construction. New York had been equable about taking one hundred cents on the dollar, didn’t mind underwriting again, but the county seizing Woolsaver’s had worked like a tonic…

Cookesville Central Bank having the farmers (not Gremot) over the barrel, their pledged land worthless to them unless the road got built. On the Home side, families whose addled kin remembered names and addresses had been forced to reclaim. Most inmates were gone to the state.

Nice house like that, Yeager was saying, only stood fourteen years, just set in the way, to a man like Gremot. Pull it down, haul it off. Now, Cookesville doesn’t have a college, that’s a shame. Wesleyan could use Elkanah Sanderson’s, not far up the road, and the way’s flat enough…

“Dandy site. Gremot won’t mind the traffic. Kane’s dead, of course. Old house not livable, so let the bucket brigade burn it for practice.”

“What road?”

“River Road.”

“You don’t mean move the hospital building?”

“It’s an idea. Something people could talk about doing.”

This was when Richard began to see light shine on Rowan’s plan. “Now, who’s Kane?”

“Sanderson’s uncle. Ninety-nine. Had our fingers crossed, never got there.”

“Dead.”

“First Cookesvillian to live a century.” Delivered as a quoted headline.

“But dead. Ninety-nine.”

“You don’t know how that could sell papers. Anyway, Rowan has a friend, Mr. Weller, wants to buy Kane’s piece.”

Hold it, resell it… “The house would break up,” Richard tried.

“They’ll cut it in half.”

He broke out laughing, and saw Yeager laugh inside himself, hiding it. You couldn’t doubt for the world you’d get people stirred up about this.

The hospital going didn’t by itself trouble anyone. Cookesvillians were up to reasoning no home for the insane meant no insane, either. But waste. Wasted things someone else could get the good of. Always a sore on a Cookesville backside waiting to be rubbed at, over what people did with their money.

 

 

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Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twelve)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)