All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred fifty-three)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Six

Short Days

(part one hundred fifty-three)

Mary kept a few private papers in her Bible. Of these, Lawrence nursed a dread—of scribblings, the cursive hand of an individual. He had copied his ABCs on his school slate, long ago, big and square. He had shucked schooling after Micah’s death.

He laid the Bible on the bed, the stripped-down mattress. The blue outdoors was sultry, Indian summer, talked about getting warm as seventy-five. Lawrence didn’t know this on authority, but from Sanderson. Condolences had been Sanderson’s looking in at the door and remarking on the weather. “An odd year’s what it’s been. Be another ice storm this winter. You take care after them apple trees.”

Odd, 1882. Out-of-kilter. In her blanket chest Mary kept her sewing and crochet. He found a shawl dyed black for funerals. A quilt with a pattern of wishing wells…only the topper. Meant to be finished; given by a church lady to finish. Pinned to this was yellowed newsprint, the pattern for more such squares.

Pearletta had better have that quilt, and make the most of it. Lawrence found a second Bible, crisp pages parting in chunks as he riffled them. Bought or got as a gift, saved for a child or just not favored. He found another of Mary’s little purses, bound in a shawl of pink openwork. A thing to give Lidah, maybe, when she married. The shawl had been stuffed in a pillowcase…

To keep Richard’s eyes from spotting it.

At the bottom of the chest was a memo-book with recipes, in a hand not Mary’s. Naïve script and important phrasing: Property of Onella Paton.

“Now you don’t know if your mother was a Hoosier born? You don’t know nothing about your grandparents? I’m getting,” he warned Samuel, a fixture on his heels, “so I don’t believe all that. Didn’t you have a Granny Onella?”

“No.”

He wanted badly to be on the road, making for Portsmouth, Ohio. Lawrence had deciphered a clue from Mary’s Bible, hard pencil marks of an address written down. Of names, he had none better than Onella Paton and Mrs. English.

Didn’t you ever hear your mother call Mrs. English by a Christian name, Samuel? No, you didn’t.

But the supper was still to be, once Clarks and Hardys had hauled in mourners, assigned them what to cook and bring. Eighteen of the Jethro congregation—everyone but five or six—summoned by the Hardys. An unknown Widow Jackson, welcome with her fiddle, in party with Carolina Melvin, Shad, Libby, and Calvin Chambliss. Libby with her guitar, Junior with his mouth-harp. Anthony, driver of the dead Johnsons, with jugs to blow, for the eerie serenade of them, and to pop for rhythm. The little Johnson girl, living now with the Bayards, to sing harmony with the sisters Pearletta and Rubee.

164

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred fifty-four)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)