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

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

 

(part one hundred seventy-six)

 

 

 

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Mary had been close about that vegetable patch.

He could fork soil in his good time, with the excuse of being his brother’s prop-in-sorrows. The day Mrs. Clark said, “Richard, looks like you’re settling down,” he would know himself a Cookesvillian.

He rebelled. His stomach hurt. What was this place, to hold his life?

But he was not a prisoner in his father’s cabin. He could fail at his job. He could stoop…

All the way to remorse and Jesus. “Help me, Carolina. Kneel with me and say a prayer.”

Miss Towson would pay him to stack her firewood neater, sweep a scattering of leaves. She would feed him, write a note to Moorehead’s (not Rutherford’s), to put a fresh shirt and socks on her account.

If he could get religion, near any Cookesvillian would try to find him a place. Quite a few try to find him a wife.

There’d been a to-do at Gremot’s—silver picture frames stolen, glass plates and pasteboard backs, photographs, pressed flowers, found in drawers. Word came strong from the manor that no one was suspected. Their cook was known faultless, Robert and Geneva priceless, Sarah most dependable, Isa a mannerly, obedient boy.

The foreman, Mr. Everard, his poor wife, the trusted hands…

No, it was impossible, and no one thought so.

Ysonde traded with Lawrence, and Ysonde was a fine judge of character. Elimination favored Mary Paton. But equally Richard.

Mrs. Gremot forbade the subject. “It won’t matter in the long run.”

And Mary told her lover the silver had been replaced. “But nobody’d get in and not have the dogs bark.”

Consider this mystery, Lawrence. See if you can guess an answer.

“One of em comes harvest time might hide in a closet and keep til dark.”

Mary had a long laugh.

Richard woke again, cursing his head. Why remember? If not tarnished to decay, the silver couldn’t be a year’s living. Not likely a month’s. Twenty dollars, thirty, why had she taken it?

He remembered how Miss Luce had liked waylaying him with surprises, and God alone knew she might not point him the way to her mother’s jewelry…

He laughed aloud, and his father made no sound. Old scruples. The first thieving he’d done was other people’s food. He had grown to steal from men who stood for town and party.

Mary toting a clattering burden wrapped in a shawl…why not fence them to Pelle? Pelle was a useful man for cashing small items. Gremots, though, could compromise a Pelle into decency. To keep in good with the mother of Miss Élucide, he might stop by Ohio Street.

Gremots had hired Lidah to draw off her allegiance, to torture Mary.

Samuel’s five hundred was a dig at Mary beyond the grave.

Of Gremots, she had known her nuances, had weighed money against bad character, given with a sighing hesitation to not recommend her. Mary had decided she’d earned that silver.

 

 

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Bedlam

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)