lib bouchie, r.i.p.

Mrs. Brewster screamed again, a wild sound without words that made Laura's scalp crinkle.

The scariest part of any "Little House" book has got to be Laura waking up to hear the Bouchies arguing, and seeing Mrs. Bouchie standing in the moonlight in her nightgown, black hair trailing, her upraised hand holding a butcher knife pointed at her husband. Suppose Laura woke to see Mrs. Brewster standing over her with that knife?

Maybe this really happened; maybe it didn't. There was obviously more going on in the Bouchie household than Mr. Bouchie kicking Mrs. Bouchie while Johnny slept between them.

Although this story always scared me, I never gave much thought to Mrs. Bouchie and her knife until I was researching the death of Isaac Bouchie, Louis Bouchie's brother. Another Mrs. Bouchie (Elizabeth, wife of Joseph and step-mother of Louis) was implicated in the death along with Clarence Bouchie, who threw the felonious bone that did the deed itself. Okay, so tetanus actually did the dirty work, and if the doctor who examined Isaac had been an actual doctor and not a quack who didn't want to "hurt" Isaac by examining and cleaning the wound on his cheek, Isaac might not have died in the first place... But I digress.

If you haven't heard by now, let me assure you that Laura's "Clarence, Tommy, and Ruby" students in the Brewster School were actually Isaac, Clarence, and Fannie Ruth. Meaning that one of her students was convicted of killing another - his half brother, not too many months after she was their teacher.

In court, Louis Bouchie told of a time when the two Mrs. Bouchies got "into a clinch," but right before Mrs. Joseph Bouchie came to the door in a huff, the hired girl wiped and put the Louis Bouchie butcher knife into a trunk when she saw who it was. WHY would this be important in the case? Or even mentioned? Just who had Lib Bouchie been threatening with that butcher knife other than her husband? And how often did this happen?
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:01 AM