Rocinante Chapter 28
| Rocinante | |
|---|---|
| Chapter 28 of 30 | |
 | |
| Read this chapter | |
| Time frame | October - November 1971 |
| Previous | Next |
Locations
- Twillingate, Florida
Characters
Summary
Mark and Jackie settle into a routine, with Jackie helping Bessie and running the switchboard while Mark, Paul, and Brother Erasmus set poles and string phone wire. When Bessie goes to the hospital in Tallahassee, Mark starts setting up the new (new for Twillingate - it was a Southern Bell castoff) dial telephone switch. Between Mark's concentration on the manuals for the switch and long periods with no calls, Jackie gets bored and decides to repaint the telephone company sign. Soon she is painting signs for others in the local area.
Mark has his father send him his acrylic paints and the telescope mirror glass blanks that he had bought at Stellafane, and Jackie starts the slow painstaking process of "hogging" (grinding one blank into a mirror against the other blank) while Mark starts painting a picture of Roger and Kathy Griswold. He does several more, including one of Jackie fishing from the deck of the "Billie Jean" (their shantyboat home). Sundays they attend church, both at Brother Erasmus' church and the Baptist church where Reverend Sprague was the pastor.
One evening, Samuel stops by to talk, telling them a little bit about himself and giving them a fish before he leaves. As Jackie is preparing it for a late dinner, Brother Erasmus shows up and shares their meal, telling them how the Lord was talking to them through Samuel.
When Bessie gets back from the hospital, Mark and Paul continue working on the phone system. With Bessie on the mend and able to work the switchboard for an hour or two a day, Jackie has more time for her sign painting. Paul insists that they come for Thanksgiving dinner, and that Jackie will need to do the cooking so that Bessie won't try to do it all. Jackie had never really cooked Thanksgiving dinner, but she and Paul did most of the work with some help from Mark and Bessie, and it worked well.
That evening, Mark and Jackie talk about going back to Spearfish Lake and whether they might be able to have a house. They want space for her signpainting business and an observatory, and mention the possibility of a runway, a sailplane and maybe some horses. Mark mentions an abandoned farm outside of town that might or might not be available but it would need a lot of work, but should work out for them. Mark mentions marriage, but Jackie is still concerned that she might inherit her mother's mental disease. Mark suggests that that might have been caused by stress, and that Jackie has been under enough stress in the past year to cause a problem if anything would. He convinces her, and she finally agrees that they will get married, and that it should be in Brother Erasmus' church.
