Riverton – a Dark Morality Tale

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Author’s note: There is no explicit sex or romance in this story. If you want wank material, find something else. Parts get quite grim, but it does have a partly happy ending. I have changed the names of the towns and characters, but unfortunately this is based on a true story.

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Since you asked me to tell you, then paid me after I said “No” twice, here it is. I was born in 1799, so I’m 95 now. My name is Robert Weaver. Don’t go writin’ it down as “Rob” or “Bobby”, get the story right!

The gossips say the Ring Line people will be here any day, to put up a bunch of poles and wires, and a telephone box. We’ll be able to talk to people far away, if we can pay. Few of us even know anybody far away, much less want to talk to ’em. Even fewer of us have more than a handful of coin outside harvest time.

Like most folks here, I’ve lived in Riverton all my life. Of the hundred and ninety of us, I think only six or seven have been farther than half a day’s walk from home.

Since the potato famine around ‘47 or ‘48, most people here farm vegetables, barley, or dairy cows. When the potatoes failed, nearly half the town starved. Nobody here had the money to leave for America, like so many others did. It took three decades to grow our community back to nearly two hundred again.

But the story you want to hear was before all that.

My family has supplied clothing, rope, and horse tack to everybody in town back to the days of the Vikings. Except the Hillmans, back in their disgrace over half a century ago. That’s the story you’re paying for, so listen close. During those twelve years, nobody would sell to the Hillmans, help them, or even talk to them much. When the traveling Friar came around every third Wednesday of the month, we didn’t even let them come to the church services, which were held at one of our homes.

My sons Jerimiah and Abel herded our sheep and sheared them in the spring. My daughter-in-law Mary spun the wool into yarn, and my wife Lenore made clothing and blankets from it, God rest her soul. For underclothes, and if anybody had money for something fancy, I bought the cloth and thread on my twice-yearly trips to Woodridge and Engleton, and Mary would help Lenore sew.

I made rope, horse bridles and harnesses, and a few other things.