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

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

(part one hundred sixty-two)

Two of three returning faces lit up. Richard jumped overboard, before the wagon drew to a halt. What anyone said was not distinct, but it was not, “Wait, come back!”

And no pantry pies, after his brother had talked up the favor he’d do by eating them, and he had daydreamed the road home thinking he could tear through a whole one…

But falling to his seat beside Dominion Creek, Richard remembered Holland. He was dry as a husk and clearheaded. He hadn’t eaten badly at Jasper’s. Above a stomach missing only lunch, and under a blue sky, the mind might play sheriff to itself, interrogate alibis.

Orson promising a neighbor two helpers for the haying…

The helpers having worked a little and quit, two good pitchforks stuck to their hands. Orson citing the letter of the law, that labor under the neighbor’s supervision was the neighbor’s to keep honest, not Orson’s to guarantee.

The neighbor had followed Orson to his barn, swung to the saddle when Orson left it, and ridden off on Orson’s horse.

In favor of the story was its elaboration. If all Orson wanted was Richard to steal for him, he had only to pay half and point the quarry. Against the story, was the difficulty of keeping the horse…

The barn would burn in the night, with such inflammation, second move in a game of “you can’t prove it”. The neighbor was not named, and Orson was not a Cookesvillian, or his face would have rung familiar. You knew the man, or you knew the clan, or you knew the haunts the man belonged to.

Standing, Richard measured the ridge and factored a pair of advantages in visiting his parents.

One, that Daddy picked up gossip at Shad’s still, and would know who Holland was said to look for. Two, that the people of Dominionville trusted Old Everard for legal opinion, for giving them contempt and short attention, as expected of an educated man. This failed lawyering held more stock than the helpfulness of teetotal preachers, or the seasonal blandishments of vote-floggers—

It was the old man’s purview and his weakness. Orson’s dilemma would snag him, real talk soften him, and he would have his son stay.

Richard came to a clutch of shanties, slapdash around a sturdy cabin, shelter for a pregnant daughter, a broken-down brother, a worn out parent. A rooster scratched, and a dog drained by ticks peppering its haunches rose in tragic honor to bark at the stranger.

A girl peered out an unglassed window.

“Passing by, miss.”

“We all got the sickness, mister.”

From the hollow he studied cotton-boll clouds, Kingdom-of-Heaven glory in tumbling hills of red and gold, the heartbreaking autumn of this landscape. No, in fact… Elaboration in a liar’s tale was not even for the hearer. An extra room tacked to the shop, where surplus inventory was discarded.

The curtain on the back porch was poked through with a knee. Carolina Melvin’s, out with a bucket in her hands. The bucket smiled at the seam, winter-busted (never his mother’s negligence, but easily his father’s). She frowned and flung the contents, not looking to notice. Richard caught some on his trousers.

“Mercy. That’s not you, Richard,” she said.

Apology accepted, he did not.

174

Bedlam

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

(2024, Stephanie Foster)