Dark Don't Catch Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

clinic for an hour just to catch her when she came from teaching.”
    â€œYeah? About what?”
    â€œMajor, promise!” Her eyes plead, her wide lips quiver some, and the clean soft honey-look of her skin with the red of her dress and the red of the hills in the sun. “Please!”
    â€œI do. I do.”
    â€œWell — ” she pulls a weed from the field, looking down and away from Major’s eyes — ”well, last night Barbara said she was going for a walk with Neal Bond. It was late when she left and Daddy said how come so late, and she said Neal just got off from the filling station, so Daddy said have a good time and didn’t think anything more about it. Then he got a call out to Myerson’s. Mrs. Myerson had triplets, Major.”
    â€œNo kidding! That little thing!”
    â€œYeah. And anyway he was there till late because Mrs. Myerson had a long labor, and Daddy came home near midnight down the track-crossing road near Awful Dark Woods, and he was driving along and then he saw her. He saw her walking there.”
    â€œWho — Barbara?”
    â€œYes … Barbara … He stopped the-car and picked her up, and he was mad because it was so late, and with her having to go through the cracker section to get home from the woods, he was mad and wanted to know what Neal Bond had on his mind making her walk by herself. She said Neal and she had a terrible fight, and she wanted the air, and wasn’t even aware which way she was going, and she guessed she’d gone too far. Daddy said gol-durn right she had.”
    â€œShe’s been sort of funny-acting ever since her boy friend got killed in Korea, huh? What was his name, anyhow.”
    â€œWho — Howie? I don’t know she has. How you mean?”
    Major doesn’t know. Just seems odd Barbara James never got herself married, was all. Maybe too sick studying grief. Prettiest Negro girl around marrying age: almost bright; almost light; almost white, yah-ha!
    Major says, “How old’s Barbara?”
    â€œTwenty-six. Ten years on me.”
    â€œJust seems odd she never got herself married, is all.”
    â€œSays she’s not in love. I don’t know.”
    â€œMust be she never got over him. Howie.”
    â€œI can’t remember him hardly at all. I was only around twelve when he was courting her and all. I just know one day she got the letter he was dead and had hysterics. He went North to college too, I remember that. Studying to be a teacher.”
    â€œMust be she never got over Howie.”
    Betty shrugs, bites her lips, worries a slow second, then continues, “Well I
do
know I never saw Daddy so mad as he was last night; and then today, pained, he was. Full of pain at it.”
    â€œGuess I don’t blame him. Still she’s a grown lady it seems.”
    â€œStill, Major — wait. I got to finish. When they got home there was Neal sitting out front waiting and wanting to know why he hadn’t seen Barbara in weeks.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYeah! And Barbara she just walked right on in and went to bed. Crying.”
    Major sucks in his breath, whistles it out. “What’d it all mean.”
    â€œYou know what Daddy thinks, Major?” “Hmm?”
    â€œWell, you know whose place is up near Dark Woods.”
    â€œHuh! Naw, that doesn’t mean that Barbara was — ”
    â€œAnd listen more, Major. I heard Daddy tell Mom after I was in bed, that minutes before he happened on Barbara there in the woods, he’d seen Hollis Jordan out strolling; because he remembered he’d thought at the time that Hollis Jordan sure was a peculiar duck out exercising his bones past midnight.”
    â€œAw, naw!”
    â€œYes, and back there just now I heard Daddy say: ‘You hear me well, Barb, I got my suspicions and you got your excuses. I don’t know who you were with or what you were with; but hear this, Barb, I’d sooner