Read Online Kathy Little Bird by Nancy Freedman, Benedict Freedman - Free Book Online Page A

upholstery’s in good condition, no tears.”
    He opened the door, and I leaned in and ran my hand across the back of the front seat. “Hop in,” he said.
    “Where’s the horse trailer?”
    “That’s what I’m going to show you.”
    I got in.
    Never go with a stranger.
    Jack Sullivan was a stranger. I shivered slightly. I was dipping a toe into the world. Soon I would breast the full current, taste it completely. I was alive with a sense that freedom was at my fingertips.
    Nothing was impossible. I was Kathy von Kerll, who was strong and young and vibrant, and Jack Sullivan knew it. That is, he knew as much as a stranger can know something like that.
    I listened to the sound of his voice without listening to the words. I liked his voice: fluent, pleasant, full of wit and laughter, rushing on and on. How that man could talk! I was used to silent men. Jellet never spoke, except to criticize or invent some new chore. Even Abram was rather silent. In his case it came from the difficulty of putting thoughts into words. He was particular about this; he liked them to fit exactly. But Jack used words to beguile you into seeing his particular slice of world. This consisted of his car, his horse trailer, the deal he had just pulled off, and his two remaining horses. And all these good things, he concluded, were the result of him being Jack Sullivan and meeting me.
    He explained the route to financial success, generating a picture of a man of prospects. “It’s predicated on the capitalat your disposal, your stake. Take me, for instance, I started with nothing and parlayed it into something. Now that I have something, watch my dust!”
    I liked the way he drove. He kicked up a lot of dust here too. One arm on the steering wheel, the other around me. He was daring a cow to wander from a break in the fence and appear in front of us, or for a gully in the road to break an axle. I knew these things wouldn’t happen, because he led a charmed life. A daring, ambitious life. “All I have to do is whistle for things, and they come to me,” he said, and I believed him.
    Suddenly he swerved off the road and stopped on a dime. We were in a field, a field that was different from the surrounding fields in that it held a horse trailer. He jumped out of the car to show me. Old and rusty, the paint chipped and scratched. I had to repress my disappointment.
    Jack saw it as the quintessence of horse trailers and the shaggy ponies tethered beside it as narrow-in-the-forelock, high-stepping, sleek thoroughbreds with fortunes riding on them. He’d had the better of the bargain, and his enthusiasm was infectious.
    “Where will you be going?” I asked.
    “I’ll cross into Montana, hit the small towns. I did good business in Minnesota. I’ll definitely take in Wisconsin and Illinois, work my way over to upper New York State. I’ll hit Broadway again in the fall.”
    He lifted me to the rear of the trailer, where I sat with my legs dangling. When he swung up beside me, the ponies raised their heads to look. They whinnied a sad, plaintive tone.Their big bulging eyes regarded us softly. The horses wanted to get going.
    Jack was sitting close, almost on top of me. And he positioned me in his arms for a long kiss. It was different from the kind Abram and I had experimented with. This kiss was wetter because Jack used his tongue. I didn’t like it as well as Abram’s kissing. But I suppose this was the way it was done in the Big Apple and in Chi.
    Jack Sullivan had roving hands. Abram never tried the things he tried. I knew I had to allow Jack certain familiarities because I saw he expected it. When he moved on a girl it was with a practiced technique. There were no hesitations; he knew how to cup my breasts and stroke and get me in the mood.
    But I wasn’t going to go all the way with a stranger in a horse trailer, even though he told me my eyes were black as coal and the most beautiful he’d ever seen. I pulled myself from his embrace and