Dark Don't Catch Me by Vin Packer Read Free Book Online

she could get off to herself where no one could hear her, she had an idea she could become Nina Leeds incarnate. She walked deep into the woods until she came to the clearing near the Judas Trees — two years from the time that that clearing became notorious — and began reading Nina’s lines. She was a long time reading them aloud; feeling them deeply the more time she was there, and when Hollis Jordan came upon her, she was in the center of the clearing, her voice raised to the old noble oaks; the light blue wool dress clinging to her in the breeze, with her long red hair tangling around her shoulders, and her blue eyes shining with excitement as she began act six:
    I wonder if there’s a draft in the baby’s room … Maybe I’d better close the window? Oh, I guess it’s all right … he needs lots of fresh air … little Gordon … he does remind me of Gordon … sometimes in his eye —
    Then she became aware of Hollis Jordan standing there looking at her. “Oh, gee — no!”
    â€œIt’s all right. You were doing fine.”
    â€œOh! I could die!”
    â€œStrange Interlude?”
    â€œYes. Gee, how’d you know?”
    â€œI know it.”
    â€œI guess you think I’m crazy.” “I don’t think that at all.”
    â€œIt’s a part for school … I thought I could do it better out here where nobody’d hear me … I never thought … it’s so embarrassing!”
    â€œDon’t be embarrassed. I read a lot aloud out here.”
    â€œI
know.
But I’m doing it for school.”
    â€œI’m not. So I should be the one to be embarrassed.”
    â€œI didn’t mean anything like that.”
    â€œLook — ”
    â€œI guess you think I’m crazy.”
    â€œNo. No. Look, maybe I could make it up to you for being a Peeping Tom.”
    â€œOh, you couldn’t help coming along. It just embarrassed me.
    â€œIs there a part I can read?”
    â€œI — don’t know. I guess there is.”
    â€œAll right, then. Let’s get down to work. Okay?” “Well, gee. Gee — sure!”
    He was twenty-six then, a great, tall fellow, with a long lean look like a climbing weed, a rugged farmer’s face, stained red from the sun and wind, beautiful white teeth that showed when his wide curving lips spread in a mild grin, and a broad and bony masculine nose. What Ada remembered most about him that day was his hands and his voice. He held the book for them with his hands. Ada had never known a man to have such huge hands, their fingers long and square; the flesh of them clean and tanned and solid. And his voice, when he read the role of Marsden, was clear, deep and powerful, giving meaning to those words Ada never knew existed. He stood beside her in his blue wool shirt, his worn black corduroy trousers tucked into his high boots, the thick mop of wild black hair cropping out from under his red cap, and they read for hours.
    When they had finished they were tired, and it was late, after sunset. Together they walked slowly back toward town, with the slate-gray sky above them pressing on the dun fields in which coffee-colored stalks of last year’s cotton stood around shabbily.
    Neither said very much to the other. But Ada was glad, strangely glad he was with her. The blue supper smoke from the chimneys off in the distance seemed somehow divorced from those moments, and she found herself listening to the sound of the acorns crunch underfoot.
    They came to his house first, a small brown frame one hidden by the huge boxtrees surrounding it.
    â€œWell,” he said, pausing before the wrought-iron gate, “it has been a strange interlude.”
    She said, “Thank you very much.”
    â€œGood-by,” he told her, looking squarely at her. She murmured something, gazing away from him; then turning, went on. A curious light hid in her lowered eyes.
    When she got