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

 

 

 

 

 

All Bedlam Courses Past

 

 

Chapter Seven

Can’t Leave for Staying

 

(part one hundred seventy-eight)

 

 

 

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He sat rubbing his father’s hand with a wool sock.

Fire warmed the cabin, but warmth was in the weather today, too. Heavy fog forecast change, and a breeze sucked air up the pipe, burning logs hotter and faster than need be. Weather was a wasteful thing. Fickle times, you heated your house, spent your store of logs, for nothing.

But winter snows could pile too high to haul in more…hard hours of labor come to the same thing, nothing. People froze in their cabins out in the hills.

Richard had finished the chicken, smoked and crisp-skinned, so ungodly fine he could have eaten the bones…he had sampled the stew, every heart and liver a gummy lump, while the vegetables were cooked to paste.

“Daddy, wake up and have a bite.”

He patted the cheeks. He dipped bread in milk and nursed at it, a nervous finishing of all the food, which he’d been about since getting the stove hot and the coffee brewed.

He parted the lips with his fingers. He saw no practical way of forcing anything down. He lifted his father by the shoulders, a little jogging of the body. Some ripe piss seemed to have evacuated, but no consciousness stirred.

Leaving… He couldn’t accept this verdict.

He treated his father to a hymn, after all. Sang the verse again, pinching an ear, giving it meaning tugs like Reuben with a poor speller.

 

When peace like a river attendeth my way

When sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know

It is well, it is well, with my soul

 

He eased off the cot.

Not a mumble, not a grimace.

“If you ain’t killed him already…”

This was Sheriff Holland, his sneaking earning him a start. His hand held a pint bottle, and he allowed Richard to make any mistake he might.

“Paying your respects, sir?”

Holland smiled on. Richard felt viewed, a hollowed-out figure of a man, smudge-faced, motley-costumed. His mother’s careful surfaces by his hand made tempestuous…

It was not Holland’s business. But under silence the inclination to deny he’d stolen any horse grew.

“I got some respect to pay,” Holland said finally. “I always had a fondness for Mr. Everard.”

“Well, Daddy’s just having a sleep.”

Holland took a long step forward and bent to examine the body. “Your mother keeps a teetotal house. So I hear. But a little medicine’s good for the blood.”

 

 

190

 

 

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Bedlam

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2024, Stephanie Foster)