The Midnight Cool: A Novel by Lydia Peelle

Author:Lydia Peelle [Lydia Peelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062475466
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Money Matters

Money Matters

by Leland Hatcher

The Richfield Gazette

I send my holiday greetings to you from afar, dear Richfield, and all the best for a prosperous 1917. And I keep this week’s column short, for as we welcome in the New Year, I know as well as any man that there are only two questions on people’s minds:

War or no war? And how high can prices go?

Money

Bristol

Billy makes a little money working at Harkleroad’s Livery Stable, enough to pay for his room and all the trifles for Maura: the chocolate and peppermints, the bottles of cheap perfume, hair combs of imitation tortoiseshell, sprays of artificial violets and lilacs for her hat, cards printed with cherubs and hearts that he buys from the drugstore on the corner of Main and Fifth. These things do add up.

Harkleroad is convinced the bicycles are going to run him out of business. Billy helps him paint a sign, which he puts out in front of the stable door.

COME ON FELLAS—TAKE HER FOR A SUNDAY CARRIAGE RIDE—HER SKIRTS WON’T GET MUDDY—HER LEGS WON’T GET TIRED—YOU’LL BE COZY SIDE BY SIDE

He is a bighearted man, Harkleroad, a veteran of Chickamauga and twenty years a widow, who keeps his account book with a quill pen, pays Billy too well, and feeds the boys who hang around the stable and jump in the rain barrels on hot days. The horses are better looked after than any livery stable horses Billy has ever come across. One august gray gelding is a veteran of the war, just like Harkleroad himself, retired but allowed to stick around because he seems to enjoy the activity, his ears perked at all the comings and goings of the day. Three bullets are lodged in his chest. Harkleroad keeps him in a big box stall and lets the boys spoil him with apples. Every time he passes, he greets him in his rich, growling old corporal’s voice, still strong in spite of his years.

Onward, Christian Soldier!

Billy sometimes employs a boy or two to run an errand for him, sending them up to the drugstore with instructions on which hat pin or scented soap to buy. For my secret Valentine, Billy says with a wink. When they come back with the little packages Harkleroad watches and laughs, his white mustache quivering beneath his high stiff derby.

Let me give you some advice, Monday. Marry her now. It’s cheaper in the long run.

Marry her!

Don’t look so frightened, son. Someday you’ll be an old man like me and you’ll realize none of it was so serious, after all. And that you don’t have the chance to go back and do it all over again.

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