A Switch in Time by Anne Barton

Author:Anne Barton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: murder, dogs, idaho, poison, veterinarian, canadian author
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.

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So Marguerite told the story of the Glaser family, helped out in the more tawdry parts by Otis, who had been county attorney for many years, and had picked up accounts of the seamier side of Boulder life in the course of his work.

The Glaser family was one of the poor families in Boulder. Mr. Glaser could not work in the woods for health reasons, so he had to feed his family on the low wages of a part-time office worker. Mrs. Glaser made a little extra by washing dishes in the local coffee shop. There were two children, Bert and his younger sister, Beryl. Living a few places down the row of low-rent shacks was a new family named Vickers. Mr. Vickers had arrived that spring to work in the woods, and was seldom home during the week. Their one daughter, Beulah, turned sixteen soon after they arrived. She was a skinny kid, just beginning to show her blossoming femininity. Bert Glaser was more than a year older, a handsome youth, but not popular at school because of his poverty and his acts of minor thieving.

Beulah fell head over heels for her new neighbor, and Bert, with no other likely conquests in sight, went along. Whether he liked her or not, no one really knew. But she was putty in his hands. She giggled with delight when he put his hand up her dress, and when he invited her off to an isolated area in the surrounding brush, she went willingly. No one had ever explained to her the facts of life, and she discovered that sex was the most enjoyable thing she had ever done. She thought nothing of it when she missed a period, but was happy to forego the pain and inconvenience. It was her mother who noticed the slight bulge in her belly and correctly diagnosed the pregnancy.

Her father, a hulking, brutal man soon got it out of her who the father was. Vickers stormed over to the Glaser shack, asked for Bert, and when that unsuspecting youth presented himself, yanked him out of the house, slammed him against the wall and delivered a few vicious and accurate punches and kicks. When Bert crumpled to the floor of the porch, Vickers, towering over him with fists clenched, ordered him to marry Beulah or receive more of the same treatment. The frightened youth agreed.

They were married a few days later, as one person put it, as soon as he could stand up after his beating, but more likely as soon as the blood test results, required in those days, came back. Bert couldn’t afford a marriage license and had to borrow the money from his future father-in-law to pay for it. They could have skipped the ceremony. Before Beulah’s pregnancy became obvious to anyone outside the two families, she miscarried, probably because of malnutrition.

In those days, a girl who got married wasn’t allowed to attend school. She was considered a bad influence on the

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