Night Songs Read Online Free PDF Page A

vote, though. Mighty close."
        "My mother says she's gonna vote for you. She says she doesn't want to see Mr. Cameron running things and putting in all the gambling and stuff. She says it isn't fitting… whatever that means." Almost a half block in silence before he spoke again. "If they build those hotels and things like Mr. Cameron wants, they'll cut down all the trees, right?"
        "That's right."
        "Then the squirrels won't have any place to live!"
        "Right again."
        The boy shook his head. "That isn't fair, Mr. Ross." Nope, it sure isn't."
        "I wish I could vote for you," he said softly.
        Colin placed a hand gently on his shoulder and looked up just as they reached Atlantic Terrace, the town's last cross-street. Three houses down-a small, white, clapboard saltbox-a woman stood on the high narrow porch. She waved, and Colin waved back.
        "Hey," Matt said, "you coming to dinner? Mom says she'd like it if you came to dinner."
        Colin looked again, and reluctantly backed off. "Can't, pal. I have to get ready for Gran's funeral. I promised Lilla I'd be there. Maybe I'll see you when it's over."
        Matt dashed away immediately, hair whipping at his shoulders, the hamper slamming into his leg to give him a curiously lopsided gait. Colin watched with a faint smile until he reached the front yard, then waved at Peg and hurried to his right across Bridge Road. There was no pavement here as the trees closed in and the road aimed straight for the ferry, so he walked on the verge for nearly a hundred yards before cutting into a stand of pine. The underbrush had been cleared away, giving him a clear walk, and a clear view, to his gray stone cottage and the small studio behind.
        He had no neighbors except for the Sunset Motel two hundred yards farther west, and if it hadn't been for the cars sweeping past on occasion he could easily have been living in the middle of a forest. That was precisely the way he wanted it.
        
***
        
        The telephone was ringing as he came through the front door, but just as he reached it the caller gave up. He scowled at the mute receiver, replaced it, and stripped off his windbreaker. A groan as he stretched him arms high over his head, another as he dropped onto the sofa and crossed his legs at the ankles.
        "Hello, place," he said, a greeting repeated since the first time he'd walked through the front door and had grinned.
        The room he was in was just twenty feet long, the width of the cottage. The walls were pine-paneled and covered with bookcases and framed prints, the pegged floor bare except for a few braided throws, the furniture overstuffed and unmatching-as long as it was comfortable he didn't much care about period or style. Nor did he care that the rooms behind this one were only a modernized kitchen, a gray-tiled bath, and a bedroom just large enough for a chest of drawers and his bed. For some it would be claustrophobic; for him it was no bigger or smaller than it absolutely had to be.
        His eyes closed, his fingers laced together and he stretched again, palms pushing outward. He grunted, opened his eyes and found himself staring at the thin scars on his wrists.
         I don't get it, Peg had said to him just the summer before; how can you think about it and not get… I don't know, chills.
         It was a long time ago, he'd answered. It happened to a different man.
        "Sure," he whispered to the empty room. "Sure it did. And next year it'll snow on the Fourth of July."
        He grimaced at the show of bitterness no one saw but himself.
        At twenty-one he had married his hometown Maine sweetheart because that was the way life was supposed to be: a college degree, a job teaching art, and a wife to begin a family. But three years later he'd had it with teaching, had decided perhaps it wasn't too farfetched to think about making it on his own as an artist. And