Free If These Walls Had Ears by James Morgan Page B

cook Cajun-style, though, and one of the boarders was a young
     woman from Louisiana, Jeanne Breaux, who missed her own mother’s cooking. Jeanne’s husband was a salesman whose territory
     was Arkansas, and he wanted her in a family-type boardinghouse. The Armours could see why. Jeanne was as coquettish as they
     come, and she immediately took over the social life of the house. In her Cajun accent, she led giggling conversations at the
     dinner table. Her people were both French
and
Italian, and she would write to Tier mother, asking her to send recipes—red beans and rice, and all her other favorites—which
     Jessie would then try. Jeanne would stand in the kitchen, translating while Jessie cooked, and everybody would be laughing
     the whole time.
    In 1935, Annabelle Ritter came. A Mississippian, she had moved to Little Rock in the late twenties to work in a branch office
     of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. She would become one of the Armours’ longest-running boarders, staying eight
     years—longer than some of the future owners of this house.
    It was as though the Armours and their boarders were an extended family. People came to Jessie looking for a home, and she
     took them in. If they stayed long enough, they all got to know one another’s moods, quirks, nuances. Most of the boarders
     could tell the Armours were having financial trouble, though the words were never actually spoken. Maybe it was just an occasional
     look in Jessie’s or Charlie’s eye that gave it away. But it was no surprise, really, nor was it a stigma
—everybody
was having financial trouble to some degree.
    One day in what must’ve been the fall of 1936, the Armours’ situation took a noticeable turn. Jessie announced to the boarders
     that she was taking a job outside the house—she was going to be a dietician at the state mental hospital a few blocks away.
     It was understandable. Charles and Jane were now in college, and two children in college at the same time would be hard for
     any family. Of course, the boarders wondered what this meant for them. No, Jessie said, she wasn’t closing the boardinghouse;
     she was just taking on additional work.
    She still cooked breakfast for everyone in the morning before going off to her other job. In the afternoons, she would come
     home with jars of food left over from the meals she had prepared for the patients. These leftovers would often be the evening
     meal for the residents of 501 Holly.
    Then, in early 1937, Jessie called Annabelle Ritter aside and told her she had some bad news. The Armours were going to have
     to move. The present arrangement just wasn’t working. They were keeping the house, however, and Jessie had arranged for a
     family called the Kemps to rent it and to allow the boarders to stay. Unfortunately, they would no longer be boarders; they
     would just be renters—but they would be welcome to keep their own food in the refrigerator and prepare it themselves.
    Annabelle was astounded, but Jessie waved aside any show of pity. They would be fine. They had taken an apartment farther
     into the Heights, she said, over on North Tyler Street. It was a nice apartment—a duplex, actually. Charles and Jane were
     going to drop out of college and get jobs until the family got back on its feet.
    What Jessie didn’t tell Annabelle that day was that Charlie had already declared bankruptcy. They had held on for a long time,
     but the odds were stacked too high against them. Charlie had gone to court the previous summer, in August of 1936. He had
     been sixty-six years old at the time. The paperwork on the bankruptcy was surprisingly brief. “In the matter of C. W. L. Armour,
     Bkcy. No. 4499,” it began. “At Little Rock, on the 31st day of August, A.D. 1936, before the Honorable John E. Martineau .
     . .” Though it was written in legalese, certain phrases stood out as brutally to the point: “. . . having been heard and duly
     considered, the said C. W. L.