All Bedlam Courses Past (one hundred seventy-three)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

(part one hundred seventy-three)

“Well, if you got gold, can’t you buy turnips?”

Micah had let this opinion stand. Richard, held accountable for Cato’s neighbor, let Micah and friend leave, sat on the floor to reassemble the book. Still…

It was not a one-or-the-other story; it was a chasing-after story. A nine year old could see that. He thought of his teacher from then, of the small white schoolhouse his father (to no popularity) had helped frame, the twenty-two Chambliss students, knees pressed to neighbors’, on their church benches. The writing desk with inkwells under Reuben’s sight, where the student under examination filled a copybook page with scripture.

Mr. Grosbacher had disciplined without the switch, as he’d dispatched home any boy or girl “not wanting to learn”. He checked his book, and made his rounds.

“Lawrence I have sent off twice, on the Tuesday and the Wednesday, and Richard I did not send, but Richard does not attend his studies, Mr. Everard. But I will not have them off together, where I know they will not come home, but will get up to sports.”

Richard saw his father in this recollection chew at fried potatoes. Tamp his lips with the cuff of his shirt, as he would, to annoy good manners. “Lawrence. You don’t attend to your studies?”

“No sir. Richard don’t.”

“Well, Mr. Grosbacher, my youngest son is not a studious boy. I doubt you’ll make a success of your attempts at him.”

“The older one could not be a better influence?”

“Richard, can you be a better influence?”

Richard tucked in. Reuben, spent, fell also to his supper. Their father’s abdication of duty was the measure in full. He did not whip his sons for failing to be schooled. It was the county he would rather punish; the boys went to school for the county, and a world of rebellious thought went into this embrace of self-harm…

That the county, ignorant of their welfare, allowed.

Richard hadn’t known this as a boy, slowly lettering spelling words onto his slate, overlooked by Hosie Milliard, aged twenty—that learning and the use of learning are two paths, going their separate ways. The county had no high school. Somewhere abouts might have been one…

He had never heard of a promising Chambliss pupil.

Like the Palmyra’s candles, the caked stovepipe sat begging fate. The curtain over the back door…the door that wasn’t fixed, and couldn’t have fit, and belonged to some other house…

He glanced at it. Would take fire at once. Ought to have by now.

Carolina said the good are protected by their angels. Her God assigned angels to people he assigned goodness to. Mama was tucked in bed at Carolina’s. If fire came while Daddy’s helper was out on some errand…chopping more wood, easily…

185

Bedlam

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

(2024, Stephanie Foster)