All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred sixty)

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

Chapter Six

Short Days

 

(part one hundred sixty)

 

 

 

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And Richard was his brother, you had to give a hand when a brother asked…

Lawrence now sat straighter, took his hat off, put it back on. No mistake, the road ahead was missing. He hauled reins on Eddie. He saw nothing attached to the few houses, to tell if their clustering constituted a village. A dock on barrels floated ten feet out, skewed towards the muddy pull, tautened back by a rope.

Well beyond, he saw the road take up. Stirs and mutters, Richard’s, Samuel going to look, telling him so, troubled the background. But Lawrence had his thoughts on changes of plan…on why simple plans in the first place could not…

“Don’t you do it!” he called out. “They got boards with nails washed up there. Get back in the wagon and put your shoes on.”

He watched Gippy bound, Samuel stagger short, Gippy splash ahead, Samuel drag to obedience looking for washed-up treasures. “Right now!”

“Let him get tetanus. Nothing like a life lesson.” Richard lit a cigarette. A poor cure to the leaf, some ditchweed he’d rolled himself. “Boss coming down.”

A man in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, soft hat in the act of screwing on, was leaving a door under a latticed porch. He passed a gate with a bell, and rang it passing. Downhill by leveled stones he came on a crooked leg.

Lawrence touched his hat. “Sorry to get you off your rocker, sir. Where’d that flood come from?”

“Rain.”

“Been dry back round Cookesville.”

“Well, there’s a mystery. God thought perhaps he’d send his rains without consulting Cookesville.”

“Then…is there no getting through?”

“In good time.”

Richard dropped, and strolled, the concavity of his belly complementing the bulge of the stranger’s, now inches apart.

“Whereabouts…” Lawrence began.

“Jasper, you’ve parted ways with Haws.”

“I’d have to remember back,” Jasper said, backing. “You got a face that’s some kind of trouble.”

Richard threw an arm around his shoulders. “You put it in a nutshell. You remember Everard, from the stables? I believe you had a brother on the Dick Parry, who liked to slip Miss Haws useful intelligence. About my father. My brother’s father, too, by the way. Lawrence.”

He mimicked a cane in hand, a stage impresario’s grand circle-and-point. It was all theater with Richard, and Jasper had Lawrence’s sympathy. Richard embarrassed him.

 

 

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Jasper said, “Whereabouts to get across? Go home where you came, or wait here a few days. Or head up north.”

All of which seemed conclusive, while too sudden a reverse for Lawrence to admit he’d chosen. Go home. Too much work to do.

A woman shouted down, “You can’t go by the road for the waters!”

Jasper angled his head. “Is that right? You can’t keep warm for the cold, and you can’t see at night for the dark, neither.”

“Who’s that friend of yours, Jasper? Mister, that boy’ll catch his death, them dirty waters!”

She was thinking Samuel was his son. “Boy!” Lawrence bellowed.

“Come up to the house. Maybe the wind’ll make the flood go down.”

This, Jasper wasn’t having, and the two of them argued through the lower door. Richard followed, and held the way to Jasper’s house open.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

172

 

 

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Bedlam

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)