Straight Is the Way

A ramshackle New Hampshire manse, dozing beneath ivy and unpaid coupons, becomes the improbable confessional for two small-time grifters whose pockets jingle with more guilt than coin. Bob Carter—gaunt, gentleman-rogue with a gaze that apologizes for crimes not yet committed—and his partner-in-larceny “Loot” Follet, a human jack-in-the-box of nervous tics, duck into the cobwebbed annex of Aunt Mehitable’s saltbox like fugitive shadows. Mehitable, corseted in propriety and mortgage notices, shares the candle-glow with Dorcas, her orchid of a niece, all tremulous virtue and proto-flapper spunk. The house itself exhales antiquity: warped floorboards gossip, the Ouija board’s planchette twitches as if tickled by the house’s dormant conscience, and the attic keeps time with squirrel-heartbeats. Enter Jonathan Squoggs, loan-shark incarnate, a man who files smiles under “collateral,” brandishing a foreclosure hourglass. The crooks, sensing karmic overdraft, masquerade as handymen, refurbishing both clapboards and souls while the ladies consult the occult for buried treasure. Cue moonlit shovels, a cache of Revolutionary-era doubloons, and a third-act pilferer whose identity pirouettes the narrative from caper to redemption. When the final coin glints in Mehitable’s palm, the house exhales, mortgage papers burn like autumn leaves, and even the Ouija board spells out absolution.