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

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

 

(part one hundred sixty-four)

 

 

 

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Wrapped in a quilt, Richard went outside and came in grumbling, kicked the door shut…understanding, suddenly, why a lump of sandstone sat on the floor.

Can’t fix what you built yourself. He knelt at the stove, arranged a teepee stuffed with leaves, ready to set a match to it.

“Set yourself afire.”

“Christ, up and talking. You want me to, or still care enough to warn me?”

“Put that cover aside.”

He did nothing for moments, his father being right. Then Richard shrugged the quilt to the floor. Ragged batting at the hem had soaked with dew, the whole budging little, taunting for an ember. It took getting off his knees; wanting to kick and throw, but making himself fold, sarcastic, tidy, pat his quilt onto the armchair’s seat.

“That’s it, make your bed in the morning. There’s virtue in neat habits. Towson has it so.”

Richard finished the fire. The times he agreed with his father, felt they might laugh together at other people, were the times he felt most betrayed—of all a thirty-one-year-old man coming home to his parents might expect.

The door rattled. Shad’s arm put the basket in.

Today’s load held a Vanguard, and donated periodicals that showed who they were dealing with: The Shepherd of the Fields, The American Abstainer. But these, Richard was prepared to welcome. He would read the homilies and temperance news aloud.

Eggs, a jug of milk…

Doc sas, written on the jug with paint. He downed the contents himself, a little miffed with Shad’s wife. Last night, his father had said he had no plans to eat again.

“You’re supposed to get milk. Doc says.”

“Doc can go to hell.”

“You got dying on purpose in mind? Let’s see it happen.”

Richard took daylight stock of what they kept in this room, his quickest eye on the hunting knife hooked above the cot, and the muzzle-loader over the door. A silence stretched. Daddy had gone ahead and died.

The room was smoking up. “You ever knock the soot out that pipe? Hey! Old man!”

“When,” his father said, “did all this start?”

“All the fuck what.”

“Exactly, exactly. You were a boy I’d have thought…brainy, if you like. You read books, didn’t you? And what do I want to think of…? The horses. You were a hand with horses. You are Richard, is that right?”

He wasn’t delirious, just bringing the point home.

“Oh, you know I am. The whole world knows it.”

“You and I are not known to an iota of the world.”

 

 

176

 

 

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Bedlam

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)