River of the Brokenhearted Read Online Free Page A

price so King would be able to go back home to merry old England if he wanted. Elias brought over a nice reclining chair, for the “old boy” and some slippers for the “old boy” to scuff about the house in.
    But Elias did not offer a fair price, for he had never before been an agent of fairness, and it was impossible for him to be one now. If he had, my grandfather surely would have sold—although returning to England was not an option.
    Joey Elias waited for Mr. King to sell the theatre to him. He waited for three weeks. He delivered news on departing ships and waited word on the price of sale.
    “The Lucy Corker is going back. Why don’t you try to be on her, h’m?”
    But it did not happen.
    The last time he went to King’s house to reason with him, King was gone. Where? Janie would not say. Well, when would he be back? Janie did not know. Well—shouldn’t a dying man stay put? Well, said Janie, a dying man who does not know his options should.
    Well, if he had gone without settling, he had gone off his stick, Elias said to his friends Phil Druken and Leon Winch later that evening. Both of these men loved his company because he supplied the town with rum—and on late nights, if you were in good with Elias you could get a drink. Phil Druken’s young girl Rebecca sat on his knee and listened, with rapt attention, to the names of people, which is what she seemed to know more than any other child.
    She looked at Mr. Elias in a peculiar way this night. For only a child still, she remembered him. It was Mr. Elias who had sold her mother medicine during the flu—sulphur mixed with milk, and rotted herring to ward off the germs—for her little brothers, the Druken triplets. The first triplets ever born in our town, they are known as the Druken triplets by the middle-aged grandchildren of those who once knew them. They were two years of age when the flu hit, and Putsy their oldest sister was seven, and Rebecca, who loved them most, was four. She put her faith in Mr. Elias and went outside to play.
    Elias sold their mother, Patricia, these cures, posturing concern. They drank the tea, and walked about with rotted herring hanging by twine from their necks, and were found in an upstairs bedroom dead in a heap.
    Elias, walking back and forth in front of Rebecca now, was saying that he did not want anything for himself—far be it from him to ever want something for himself—but there must be a limit to all of this. Janie had a son—“that little squirrel-faced fellow”—so how could she take care of a business as well as a son?
    “Yes, yes,” he said, disheartened, “it’s impossible for her to operate the theatre and be a mother.” Then he looked up under his eyebrows and shook his head sadly. He saw Rebecca staring at him, fixedly, and smiled. “Come here, Rebecca, and give Uncle Joey a hug,” he said.

THREE
    No one remembers the town being disrespectful to Mr. King—people liked him, and went to the theatre regularly. If anything, the respect the town had for him transferred to Janie, and she was held in esteem as well.
    Still, once Mr. King’s impending death became apparent—that is, by Christmas other things came into play for those few who might gain by his demise. That he was dying was a shame. However, the other life, the life that tells people someone else’s death is not a shame if it opens a door for themselves, was now opened. On Monday the tenth of January, Elias made inquiries into the state of the theatre, and met with the manager of the bank, certain that he would make the bank an offer on the Regent—for the Regent must fall into the bank’s hands once King succumbed. Janie would give it up, wouldn’t she, and go back to living a normal life? Besides, she was expecting again, so it was said.
    Mr. Harris must have realized that the widow Janie King would not be a reliable sort to take over after the death of her husband, with one small child and another to be born. Elias added that