Free In a Dark Season by Vicki Lane

heart and began to declaim, “‘To
beeee…
or not to be…’”
    “Ah…yeah. And as a matter of fact, that’s the speech Nola was quoting from.”
    The quality of Phillip’s silence and then the tone of his delayed reply were carefully balanced between polite inquiry and derisive incredulity. “Okay…and this woman who we watched try to kill herself…this woman who’s had a stroke or whatever and can’t talk…what did she say in her perfect diction?”
    “I came home and looked it up to be sure I got it right. Just a minute, I have the book right here…”
    Elizabeth reached for the heavy volume of Shakespeare’s plays and read,
    “…To die, to sleep—
    No more, and by a sleep to say we end
    The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
    That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
    Devoutly to be wish’d.”

The Drovers’ Road II
    The Girl at the River
    They had wiped the last of the soup beans and fatback from the tin plates with the cold gritty corn pone, and the prisoners’ evening meal was but a memory. In the gloom of the cell, the two men settled themselves for the night. All was quiet but for the labored groaning from the other occupied cell—the lamentations of the town’s perennial inebriate, locked away to recover from the effects of an epic spree.
    The Professor breathed a disconsolate sigh. I could wish for a cigar to settle that repast, he said. Or a dram. But no matter; let us beguile the weary hours till bedtime with story. Pray, continue your account. You left your uncle’s farm to seek your fortune in the wide world. And at Gudger’s Stand you encountered the siren of the fiery gaze—this Belle Caulwell, I believe you called her. Please, expound further of this enchantress; I am ensorcelled.
    Lydy pushed his empty tin plate under his bunk and felt for the dipper gourd. It floated atop the water remaining in the bucket, and he took a careful draught before resuming his story. In the fading light his face was pale and very young.
    I see that I have got ahead of myself in the telling of it. And as we’re like to have plenty of time, I might as well give hit to you as it come to pass. Belle weren’t the first I seen at Gudger’s Stand. No, that come later.
    He pulled the thin blanket around his shoulders and took up the tale.
    Hit was first dark when the ferry man set me acrost the river. They was a gray mule and a half-asleep man atop him a-waitin at the landing and the ferryman he loaded them on and took off fer the other side. Fare ye well, young feller, he called back. Mind you don’t…but the words was drownded in the splash and tumble of the river.
    I looked up and seen the glow of the fires in the windows of the stand and could hear loud talk and laughin. Someone was scrapin at a fiddle, boots was a-thumpin, and I seen a man come out the door. He looked around, then walked kindly waverin-like to the end of the porch. There he took the longest piss I ever seen. He was still at it when two more come atter him and they stood there a-handin a jug from one to the other.
    Now, not havin a red cent to my name, I didn’t want to go up there and play the beggar. In the morning, thinks I, when hit’s more quiet-like, I’ll find the stand keeper and ask for work. So I went a ways off from the ferry landing and found me a little grassy spot long side of some big rocks. I set there and et my cornbread and listened to the music and all up at the stand house. Hit went on fer quite some time but at last they give over and the laughin and loud talkin begun to die away. I rolled myself up in my blanket and lay down.
    The fiddler was a-playing one last tune, slow and mournful, and hit seemed like they was voices in the river singin along with hit. I lay there, breathin in the smell of the water and the meadow, watchin the stars in the night sky, and tryin to make out the words.
             
    Hit was a girl singin what woke me. A sweet high lonesome song about a wagoner’s lad who