Read Online A Flash of Green by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page B

house from the rest of them so cheaply.
    “Well, of course we resented it, Jimmy. But, later on, it seemed all right. Nobody even thinks about it any more. Now it seems as if … it’s just the way it should be.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Elmo is sort of in charge of the family, so it seems right he should be in the home place with Dellie. Three of the brothers-in-law are older than he is, but he’s the one everybody goes to. Sickness, jobs, trouble with the kids, anything. And all of us are free to come and go just as if it was still our house. It’s sure crowded sometimes.”
    “So the family approves of Elmo.”
    “Gosh, not at first. Well, you know the reputation he had and all the trouble he was in all the time. We didn’t want Dellie marrying him. She was only eighteen. But we couldn’t stop her. Dellie is a strange one. She’s never had much to say, but she’s always had this idea that she was going to have a lush life, like a queen or something. She just knew it was going to be that way. We used to laugh at her. But the way it worked out, she’s certainly living a lot higher on the hog than anybody else in the family, I’m telling you. We never would have guessed she’d get that kind of a life by marrying Elmo. He’s real good to her. I mean if you don’t count keeping her pregnant most of the time. She’s due for number six any day now, but I’ll say this, she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s got all the help she can use with the house and the kids, and she’s never up before noon, and she certainly keeps her figure. I guess he’s sweet to her, but … you know Elmo. I don’t know if sheknows about other women. Or if … she’d let herself know, or let herself wonder. Dellie is a realist.”
    “So is Elmo, I guess.”
    “I don’t know what Elmo is. He has that way of talking to you. When he talks to you, you feel as if you matter more to him than anybody else on earth. He really listens to you. Not very many people listen. He seems to really care about you. I guess that’s what makes him so good with women. When a girl is with Elmo, she feels … I don’t know, more alive. You know it’s an act, but you can’t help yourself. You don’t ever really know if he likes you. Nobody knows. We talk about him a lot, in the family. The way he helps us all, that seems to be kind of an act too.”
    “When he sold off fifty of the sixty acres of the home place, Frannie, I guess he did pretty well.”
    “I guess so,” she said indifferently. “But he sort of sold it to himself, didn’t he? One of those corporation things he keeps doing?” He remembered that she had turned toward him then and said, in a huskier tone, “Now, why are we wasting all this good time talking about my brother-in-law, darling?” She had reached her sturdy hand to him and said, with exaggerated petulance, “But it seems too early to change the subject, I guess. Isn’t it too early? Gosh, you know, maybe it isn’t. Now I’m sure it isn’t. We’re changing the subject, darling, aren’t we?”
    He grinned at that memory of Frannie as he slowed for Elmo’s house. Eight or ten cars were parked in the field beside Elmo’s house, nosed up to the big redwood fence. He parked and got out of his car. He remembered the eagerness with which he had headed each time toward Miami two years ago. Yet no part of it had been as compelling as what he now felt toward Kat. It offended his sense of proportion that this should be so. It was a meager feat finding a woman who would come to his Cable Keycottage. He had tried to cure himself of what he privately called his severe case of Kat-fever by using himself up upon some amiable and competent women during the past year, but it had not diminished the fever by a fraction of a degree. He resented being the victim of what seemed an adolescent compulsion. As an adult male he knew that in the deeps of the bed the differences between women are less important than the similarities.