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

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Six

Short Days

(part one hundred fifty-six)

“You think you could find one, if you looked?”

“Would the eggs be any good to eat?”

“No, how could they?” Lawrence gave a glance to the buzzards and charted the road ahead. Masses of goldenrod and thistle-head along the valley, some haying on a hilltop yonder, someone else’s gourds drying unpicked. Satisfaction, that others suffered, too, this bad weather…

“Look at two of em circle, down that way.”

“That’s carrion they’re after. No nesting in fall time.”

Samuel tilted, peering hard for buzzard romance, and Lawrence caught him by the collar. “You keep still, like I said.”

“I can get in back with Gippy.”

Every few seconds, an “ooh”, a clunk…

Finally, peaceful thought.

No crossroads yet in sight. It was not late at all, they hadn’t gone far, but they were losing civilization…ditch and thicket was all you got by the river, woods back on the hills, big stretch of swamp along here, mosquitos…

What city might they come to first? Grandview was Farmer Clark’s notion. Better now take the first road, find a spot, get a fire going, cook some food…

“What’s that noise you’re making?”

The noise was a whittling knife. “You know there ain’t any doctors out here, if you cut your finger off.”

He wanted to strike up conversation with a seasoned traveler, not sure what road off River he ought to take. The emptiness they drove was like a bucket…like a big godly bucket, filled with clumped pines and thorny bushes, rusty grasses and globbish falls of rock and clay, undercut from weeds that curled their edges like manes of hair…

Like the Hand, feeling for something wanted, had tossed all these out, and they had landed, plop, plop, plop…

The autumn sun was coming at Lawrence’s face, blinding his lefthand sight, baking skin not quite shaded by his hat. All this while Samuel with a tin whistle had labored at trios and quartets of notes, at songs almost nameable—and anxiety, the need to notice everything, kept a bare hold on Lawrence, from shouting.

At last, a cut through trees, climbing.

He unyoked Eddie. The trail carried to a clearance, no farther. He handed the halter over to Samuel, had him walk Eddie to a mud patch, heavily rutted, but water inches deep and clean at the center. Below a stack of stones were ashes, smoking a little when stirred. Manure pats, not hardened, but exposed to the fibers. Good rain had fallen here, maybe that morning.

Samuel put the feedbag on, and Eddie chewed placid, a horse who needed no tying up. Lawrence unpacked the ham hocks, yams, and roasting sticks.

167

Bedlam

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

(2024, Stephanie Foster)