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Orb, v. 2, issue 1, 1950
Page 6
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7 TRIAL by FURY Flora Mae Erickson had lived in the big house on Davis Avenue all her life. That makes about fifty-six years since she was born there. Her father was Lawyer Addison Culpepper, who cale to Laurel from Virginia--because he'd heard there were fortunes to be made in turpentine; a free gift from the hand of God in the gummy, clear-white blood that flowed from the endless jack-pines of Mississippi. He'd never made his fortune; it seemed that the world's wants were adequately provided by Georgia and Florida. He hadn't enough capital to compete with the established venders, and besides, the Mississippi pines proved disappointing as a source of resin. He'd settled down to practice the law he'd learned at the University of Virginia, and done well enough at it. He'd built the big house, modeled after a Culpepper plantation house, he'd been one of the first in Laurel to own an automobile, and Flora Mae had never lacked for anything. Until she was sixteen she had a governess that Lawyer Culpepper brought up from New Orleans, and then she went away to school, at Mrs. Saidy's Academy in Richmond. There weren't really many people in Laurel who could say they knew Flora Mae, and only a few more who knew her father: Paul Gailbreath, because Culpepper handled legal business for the lumber mill; Judge Simmons, the circuit judge; Reverend Pascal, rector of St. Andrews. I knew them about as well as anyone in Laurel. When Lawyer Culpepper had an asthmatic seizure at the bank one day; I was there, and gave him an injection of adrenalin. It eased him immediately; he was grateful, and afterwards gave me as much friendship as he ever demonstrated to anyone. From him I learned that Flora Mae's mother had died in childbirth, that Flora Mae hated Laurel, and that he planned to send her to Europe when finishing school was completed. He was quite frank in saying that he could see no possibility of an appropriate marriage for her to be found in Laurel; that as a Culpepper she had certain obligations to marry well, and that Flora Mae thoroughly understood and agreed with these duties. Let me describer her as she was then: slim, erect, with hair jet black as her eyes. Not beautiful, but avoiding it only by a certain heaviness of the jaw, and eyebrows a trifle too full. She was intensely proud; quick to take offense, and utterly humorless. Somehow, she re-
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7 TRIAL by FURY Flora Mae Erickson had lived in the big house on Davis Avenue all her life. That makes about fifty-six years since she was born there. Her father was Lawyer Addison Culpepper, who cale to Laurel from Virginia--because he'd heard there were fortunes to be made in turpentine; a free gift from the hand of God in the gummy, clear-white blood that flowed from the endless jack-pines of Mississippi. He'd never made his fortune; it seemed that the world's wants were adequately provided by Georgia and Florida. He hadn't enough capital to compete with the established venders, and besides, the Mississippi pines proved disappointing as a source of resin. He'd settled down to practice the law he'd learned at the University of Virginia, and done well enough at it. He'd built the big house, modeled after a Culpepper plantation house, he'd been one of the first in Laurel to own an automobile, and Flora Mae had never lacked for anything. Until she was sixteen she had a governess that Lawyer Culpepper brought up from New Orleans, and then she went away to school, at Mrs. Saidy's Academy in Richmond. There weren't really many people in Laurel who could say they knew Flora Mae, and only a few more who knew her father: Paul Gailbreath, because Culpepper handled legal business for the lumber mill; Judge Simmons, the circuit judge; Reverend Pascal, rector of St. Andrews. I knew them about as well as anyone in Laurel. When Lawyer Culpepper had an asthmatic seizure at the bank one day; I was there, and gave him an injection of adrenalin. It eased him immediately; he was grateful, and afterwards gave me as much friendship as he ever demonstrated to anyone. From him I learned that Flora Mae's mother had died in childbirth, that Flora Mae hated Laurel, and that he planned to send her to Europe when finishing school was completed. He was quite frank in saying that he could see no possibility of an appropriate marriage for her to be found in Laurel; that as a Culpepper she had certain obligations to marry well, and that Flora Mae thoroughly understood and agreed with these duties. Let me describer her as she was then: slim, erect, with hair jet black as her eyes. Not beautiful, but avoiding it only by a certain heaviness of the jaw, and eyebrows a trifle too full. She was intensely proud; quick to take offense, and utterly humorless. Somehow, she re-
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