All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-one)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Five

Collecting Debts

(part one hundred twenty-one)

A lull, the band furnished with a platform to mount, and busy at it, the old soldiers entertaining with gun drills.

Rowan’s subscription campaign had raised money enough (to back a loan), by hammering at wasteful arrogance, that of certain gentlemen who shall not be named. The County Commissioners had voted two to one to permit the scheme. The hospital sat cut down the middle, stretched canvas preserving the modesty of her naked spaces.

Come south to oversee the Mighty Endeavor was an Indianapolis engineer. The engineer had the rent of Rowan’s house. Every day, a new unheard-of, for Cookesvillians to examine with their own eyes…

Yeager was stretching his neck. The properties flanking the corner had iron fences; Mr. Lincoln was too heavy, and willing manpower had not angled the wagon. “Gotta go down Walnut, out Swisstown Road, bring him in straight like they should’ve.”

She tried a joke of her father’s. “They say Mr. Lincoln spent a few nights at the Cookesville jail.”

“Maybe the story’s true.”

“Because the jail used to be the Coach House.”

“Well, ma’am. If Lincoln ever passed through Cookesville.”

Oh, if…? Could Mr. Yeager pretend to laugh, whether or not the joke was fresh, could he not express public agnosticism to Cookesville doctrine…? Could Rowan at least boss his reporter like a newspaperman?

“The Beacon never had you talk to the old people?”

“Oh, I talked to Kane Sanderson.”

He gave the name, one she barely knew, only from the Vanguard’s “Rowan’s Folly” series, as though it carried be-all and end-all authority. And the verdict came down against this legend that made Cookesville so happy.

“You said you’re out of work?”

“I don’t know that I did. Maybe shy of getting paid for it.”

“They say…” She paused, gauging him. “Lowell Cooke was the one who told Lincoln ‘don’t leave Indiana, you’re a grown man, choose for yourself’, and Lincoln…in 1852…wrote him that letter they have on display at the library.”

“They say Lowell Cooke never set foot in Cookesville.”

“You’re an ornery man.”

Answering came the grin of an ornery man flirted with.

It decided her on a thought. “Suppose Fannie Rutherford were to invite you to our meeting. We have a speaker… Mr. Collinson has been on tour, uniting many, many bereaved with their loved ones.”

She let Yeager see what she was talking about, and when his dismay showed itself topped by wait a second…, went on:  “Now, I don’t want scandal-mongering. I don’t want that arch looking-down-on tone. If you submit a piece I can use in Well-Being…that’s American Health and Well-Being, our magazine…”

Blank surprise, better.

“I might have a thing I can tell you about Mr. Ebrach’s plans. Here comes Isa looking for me.”

130

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-two)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)