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

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

(part one hundred sixty-one)

i.

Have you ever helped me

Frost met the eye, and the soul greeted October’s show of sincerity willing…

To peter down into goneness. Richard in his father’s chair found he couldn’t achieve it. Where had he heard? Sanderson, Allen… Fish, never forget Fish…

Preacher Bayard, whom he wasn’t to talk ill of, done Lawrence more than one good turn…

Someone, anyway. Said freezing to death was easy, like falling asleep. The door stood open, but his father hadn’t stirred. Burn yourself out, old man.

The stove would need starting. The porch held logs in plenty; the kindling box was filled. His arrival had facilitated Carolina Melvin’s sense of rightness, and he was now part of her plan. He knew a visitor had left a basket. For yesterday’s he’d scribbled a note, not an easy task in his parents’ hovel. When Daddy had stopped having books, and whether this sign was encouraging, Richard did not know.

A charred stick would do, but on…? A dried leaf?

He was miserably sober every day. Why the note, overwritten at last on a Christmas card from Mama’s trunk, one signed Cleome Towson. A kind, gullible soul was wanted (not Towson), who would believe his Daddy’s pain needed whiskey to alleviate it. If they sent Horace, the prodigal would abandon salvation rather than hear a word from Horace’s mouth.

Richard felt an abiding despise for the Temperance Fellows, the pernicious hold they enjoyed on Cookesville and the county at large. Hopper…a thought…would sit down to a last round with an old customer, if he could be got word to.

Lawrence had let himself be swindled by Jasper.

“Dollar for them.”

“Dollar each.”

“Fifty cent. That’s three times a dollar, altogether.”

A jig danced, a confusion of unplanned checking, of needless pockets for the coin purse. But Jasper would sell Sanderson’s gloves at a profit twice over. Lawrence also had let Mrs. Ramsfelter, owner of the house, have all his bushels of corn. Those compensations amounted to a night’s stay and board, and Lawrence, itching to speak but silent, had driven Samuel and Richard back to the farm.

An unfair thing. Lawrence was more ignorant about cash money than Richard had known to take advantage of. But the Clarks were on the porch—and Miss Gremot, wielding an envelope and meaning business with it.

173

Bedlam

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

(2024, Stephanie Foster)