Read Online Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb - Free Book Online

an MP stationed at Fort Bliss. She was a student at UTEP, and he was taking two classes, using the army’s long way toward a college degree. They met in English class. The United States was conducting small operations in Vietnam, sending advisers from the army to train South Vietnamese soldiers in what was looking more and more like the beginnings of a civil war. Arguments about the U.S. role in Southeast Asia were just beginning, and he had impressed her with a quiet, reasoned defense of the U.S. presence there, and, even more, an ability to listen to the arguments of the other side with a calm, steady respect.
    She caught him one day after class. “I like the way you make your point in class. It makes you seem smart.” He was taken aback. He had noticed her, thought her pretty, smart, and quiet. He was surprised that she would approach him, the army guy, who wasn’t quiet, and who was in a constant battle to show these kids that he was as smart as they were.
    He smiled. “Maybe I am smart.”
    Yes. She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, you could be. But I kind of doubt it, and you’re certainly wrong.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    She smiled. “Most things.”
    â€œI guess that’s better than everything .”
    â€œYou could probably work your way to that.”
    â€œHow can I convince you that I’m not stupid? Wrong, maybe, but not stupid.”
    She shook her head and tsked. “I doubt you could prove it. But you can try if you want.”
    â€œHow about dinner and a movie?”
    â€œWhat movie?”
    â€œThat new one with Peter Sellers. Dr. Strangelove .”
    â€œGood choice. Probably just dumb luck, though.”
    â€œYou can explain it to me afterward.”
    She smiled more broadly, then. “I’ll do my best.”
    â€œMe, too.”
    That began an interrupted arc of their lives together that included two tours in Vietnam for him, a twenty-­four-­year career as a teacher for her, and after the army, a career in police work that took them to the Northeast and finally settled them in Lydell, seventeen years ago.
    Bonita had retired, in part due to a general decline in her health as her diabetes became less and less manageable. Gordy kept looking for police work that was less dangerous and less stressful, going from Boston, to Providence, to Salem, New Hampshire, and finally to Lydell where he spent ten years moving from patrolman to sergeant and finally chief of police.
    He had given up on showing her that he was as smart as she was. He wasn’t. He’d figured that out early on. Teaching elementary school was a necessary and important job, but he had always thought that her intelligence was being wasted there, though he couldn’t think what she might do that would be more important. Living with her raised his appreciation of teachers, though. They didn’t get credit for being as smart and hardworking as they were.
    In school he had pretty much thought that teachers were fakes, reading a ­couple of chapters ahead in the textbooks, spending their summers hanging out and taking long vacation trips. He guessed a lot of ­people felt that way, and a lot of them never quite outgrew it. He had always been proud of Bonita, even though he knew she could have done better. In a lot of ways.
    He had watched her fight against the diabetes, struggling to control her weight, finding odd times in the morning and afternoon to exercise, watching her diet, trying to avoid taking the insulin injections. She fought hard, and the disease made its gains slowly, but it gained on her. Daily insulin injections started when she was in her fifties. Then came the fatigue, as if all of her fighting had finally sapped her strength so that she wouldn’t recover it. Then the neuropathy, slowly, steadily crippling her until it eventually took her legs at the knees.
    And what legs they had been. When he first noticed her in English class, he noticed