Read Online Beginner's Luck by Len Levinson - Free Book Online Page B

he dug into the food, trying to maintain basic table manners, but failing miserably.
    She watched him eat, and he became the hungry little orphan boy who never got enough in his belly. You're here to help him, not take advantage of him, she told herself. His face will look like a saddlebag after a few years in the sun.
    His big brown eyes looked up at her. “We're not kin, and you don't even know me. Why are you doing all this?”
    â€œSomebody'd got to take care of lost kids.”
    So that's the way she sees me, he realized with consternation. I should go over there and grab her, then she'd know I'm not a kid. But somehow his legs wouldn't move. He thought the ceiling would fall if he tried to kiss her. Disconsolately, he resumed eating.
    I've hurt his feelings, she realized. He scowled, with brows knit together, and looking like a gloomyschoolboy. She placed her hand on his. “I'm sorry.”
    â€œDon't like people feeling sorry for me,” he muttered darkly.
    The wildcats of the world will tear him to pieces, she thought, but I can't hold his hand every step of the way, and he has to learn for himself.
    After breakfast, in her office, she wrote a note:
Dear Mr. Sullivan,
    Please provide the bearer of this message
    with anything he requires, and put it on my bill.
    She handed the note to Duane, then opened a drawer in her desk, selected a twenty-dollar double eagle, and held it out to him. “You'll need pocket money, so take this.”
    Duane stared at the coin, unwilling to accept it, so she pressed it into his palm. “Get out of here—I've got work to do. Just make sure I don't have to look at those horrible sandals anymore, understand?”
    Duane passed the kitchen on his way out, and found Annabelle washing dishes in the sink. “I want to talk with you,” she said, a stern tone in her voice. She dried her hands on a towel, then turned toward him and pointed her dark brown forefinger at his face. “Now you be careful when you're in town today, hear? There's lots of bad men here, so don't get into no more fights. And you'd better leave by the back door, ‘cause we don't want neighbors’ tongues to wag more than they do already.”
    Duane departed through the kitchen door, and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Across the way, a middle-aged woman was hanging wetbloomers on a clothesline, and Duane hoped she didn't see him. He veered around the house and headed for the street, hands in his pockets, whistling a Gregorian chant. This is going to be a great day, he thought. I can feel it in my bones.
    The woman across the way was Mrs. Florence MacGillicuddy, wife of a lawyer. Why that low hussy, she thought, placing her fists on her hips. And in broad daylight, too. She thought that she'd better tell Mrs. Washington, her next-door neighbor, of the new dimension of sin that had descended upon the neighborhood.
    Meanwhile, in the small barn behind Vanessa's home, Jed Wilson sat on his cot, looking out the window at the young man in black jeans heading toward the street. Did that whippersnapper spend the night with Miss Vanessa? he wondered. I'll bet old Petigru will hit the ceiling when he finds out. He tossed his coffee cup into the wash basin, put on his cowboy hat, and headed for the door.
    Duane walked toward the commercial district, and thought about Vanessa Fontaine. Women were alien beings to him, and it was difficult to divine what transpired in their inscrutable minds. A hot flash came over him at the mere thought of touching her naked body. I've got to view her as the Madonna of La Salette, he admonished himself. And I must move out of her house as quickly as possible. He thought of her narrow waist, surging breasts, and long, lissome legs. Iguess I'm crazy about her, like everybody else in this town, he concluded.
    He wasn't sure about his feelings, because all he knew of love was what he'd read in books at the scriptorium by Sir Walter Scott,