Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns by J. California Cooper Read Free Book Online

my time is constantly being spread around. You deliver them, but I clean and prepare them. I keep the shop clean. Then I have to come in here and clean these rooms. I have to shop for food and other things, supplies. Then I have to cook, serve, and then, clean up again.” She sighed. “I am truly tired, Maddy.”
    (She had called him “Mr. Nettles” until he insisted she call him “Maddy.” “What will people think! My own wife calling me, ‘Mr.’ Can’t you say ‘dear’ or ‘sweetheart’ like other wives do?”)
    Maddy wanted his wife in his bed. He would do, almost, anything to get her body back where he wanted it. He thought about the matter of her exhaustion for several days. “She ain’t got no business bein tired! She young!” He did not want to add to his workload because his angry, crippled leg was bothering him more and more. Pain interfered with his lovemaking, when he could get it. “Troubles, troubles, all the time, Lord. No rest for the weary!”
    Usually, Maddy made all deliveries to his customers because he did not think Lily Bea was good-looking enough for his customers to see her and know she was his wife. Finally, he decided to hire someone, a trusted young man, Robert, working his way through college who had done odd jobs for him in the past.
    Robert Earner was a hard worker, a scuffler, a survivor. And he was a loner; he thought he was too black in color. He didn’t have an inferiority complex, he thought he had a “face reality” situation. His was a good mind. He was in a small college, studying and working to lift himself out of the dire poverty of his own family. He was glad to get the steady job, even at the low wage Maddy paid. He delivered parcels to the larger cleaning establishments for the rich, which sent their fragile materials to the poor specialist, Maddy, of Clean Cleaners.
    Robert had known Lily Bea in passing, but had never paid much mind to anything other than his books and learning. Maddy threw in cleaning up the shop a bit, just to get his full dollars’ worth of work, and to make Lily less tired. After all, the point was to get his wife back into his bed and arms; though he told her she had funny strange legs, he wanted himself back between them.
    Maddy said many things to Lily Bea, always with a little laughter, that continued to assault her feelings. He wanted her to feel “less” than he was, or even “only” as he was. He thought to hisself, “If she don’t think she too much, at her age, she ain’t gonna run off with the first thing comes her way! She ain’t no better ’en I am! Even her mama say so.”
    Books were a waste to Maddy Nettles. “You ain’t got no time for them books you keep bringin from that lib’ary.” Oddly enough, books were what first established a rapport between Lily Bea and Robert Earner. Robert was impressed with someone else who loved books. Of course, they talked about what she was reading and what he was studying. Maddy discouraged these quick talks. “Boy, what you think you doin? Don’t be wastin my wife’s time, and making me pay you for it too!”
    They talked less because they were not interested in each other at the time Maddy spoke to Robert. But in one of the quick moments of exchanging thoughts, Robert mentioned his college to Lily. “You know, you are learning good things from Mr. Nettles, but they have classes at the college where you can learn all about fabrics and special knowledge to make your own self mistress of this profession, if this is what you really want to do.”
    Lily didn’t want “cleaning clothes” to be her profession, but, as she thought about it, “It would be a good excuse to have some time to myself. Time away from . . . everything. And, if this is the work I have to do, at least I can learn for myself.”
    She signed up for a class before she told Maddy. He wanted to get angry, but didn’t know what to get angry at. He also thought, “Maybe she is coming round to knowing I am her