All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred forty)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Six

Short Days

(part one hundred forty)

They came off the property, hit Dominionville Road, Samuel sliding hard, catching hard at the coat. “Gippy’s trying to follow. Shoo, Gippy! Go back!”

You could not smack a body behind you, so Lawrence said, tight-jawed: “You do one thing for me. Sit still.”

A wagon was moving their way, pulled by a single ox. In the bed lay a pair of quilts wrapped on long shapes. A cast to the driver’s face told Lawrence to take his horse aside, remove his hat.

“Thankee, sir.”

“God bless. I farm that piece I just come off.”

“Mr. Everard, I know.”

“Family all right for the cost…”

In this was something charitable Lawrence hadn’t fully intended. A proper word needed saying at a time of death, and if he knew the name of the man he spoke to, he’d have offered Mary to write a letter.

“Johnsons,” the man said. “Lumber for the boxes, get em buried, pay the preacher. Boys with me for a time. Girl gone to Bayards.”

Lawrence pulled three silver dollars from his pocketbook and gave them.

The man returned, “God bless. That’ll do. Bless you, sir.” And again, “Thankee.”

The typhoid didn’t show itself influencing downtown Cookesville.

Lawrence took his horse slow, howdying one and another, polite in siding off to let the carriages pass. He stopped before the windows of the Vanguard. If there were news at all, Mary might like it carried home to her.

He tried doing pleasing things for his wife. Mary was pleased in a blue moon…if pleased, she would blush, be flustered, a little mad at him; if not pleased, she was content. He had married an abandoned woman. He had put a roof over her head. Mrs. English’s keeping Mary-Lidah and Samuel? Not heard of, don’t mind, more the merrier. He had been twenty-four years old.

“Why’s that man got to live with us?” Mary had said. Lawrence with patience explained that Sanderson had money to buy a farm and he did not, himself. Sanderson was bequeathing him (“…well, us, looks like…”) the land and house. Sanderson would build his own cabin. Sanderson didn’t want to be around no children.

“Oh, hmm,” she said.

Gremot had used Mary for serving at his table; by definition she was society help.

Airs, Lawrence was thinking…

“Speaking likeness, don’t you think?”

Samuel tumbled, at Miss Gremot’s voice, to the walk.

151

Bedlam

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

(2024, Stephanie Foster)