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

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

 

(part one hundred sixty-eight)

 

 

 

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Curious to see a satiny glow under the cot, Richard tugged out what proved a dressing gown. “That’ll do dandy. Mrs. Gremot give this over? Keep him held up!”

To Lawrence, who stuffed in a pillow, while Richard hauled their father side to side, sleeve to sleeve. A mild paroxysm shuddered the meagre flesh. “Hot coffee?”

“I might.”

“Well,” Lawrence said, “that ought to do.”

“What was that letter all about?”

“I don’t know any letter.”

“You may not, but the law finds it fair; and further, in fairness I have instructed my clerk to admit you, at my Ohio Street office, should you have thought of any aspect of these terms—far better terms than the straight facts of your conduct warrant—that is insufficiently clear to you.”

Their father had spoken.

“Run that kettle water through the sieve, Lawrence.”

Richard nursed into his father’s mouth a too-hot brew, weak and seedy. If his lips burned, he allowed it; his fingers, knotted at the knuckles, nails long and split, hadn’t closed to Richard’s satisfaction.

“Stop that. I don’t want it.”

Richard lifted the cup to Lawrence. “Put that on the sideboard.”

“Take that out of my hand so I can get up.” He said this, teeth gritted, after a passage of nothing.

“Well, looks like you’re getting things sorted…”

“Bread mush?” Richard asked his father.

“Prison fodder. Your mother will never go hungry. She can pick her food off trees. She can throw nets to snare birds, and roll biscuits from acorn flour. If she wanted me dead, she knows of a hundred poisons to slip me in my coffee.”

Again, they ignored the fever-talk. Richard set the cup on the floor, took a punishing pinch of sleeve this time, and ferried his brother to the porch.

“Sit down. Hear me out. Plenty time to get by the church and let em see you at Mary’s grave. But at all times God knows what’s in your heart.”

“I don’t believe you said that.”

“I quote.”

“Carolina?”

It was slander, to let Lawrence think she mouthed pieties. Carolina was a Calvinist and saw God’s plan in every fate; she knew each heart was as good a heart as it could be. “Tell me what I asked. What about that letter I saw?”

“Miss Gremot brung it down from her parents. Five hundred dollars. To put by for Samuel.”

“Don’t say! I wouldn’t value him a quarter that.”

 

 

180

 

 

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Bedlam

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)