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

slid to the ground.
    “Hey,” he said in protest, “what’s the idea?”
    “I have to get back.”
    He lifted himself down and stood beside me. “Don’t be a tease,” he whispered.
    “Let me make myself plain, Jack. I will never go any further without a preacher and a ring.”
    “Wow! What makes you think you’ll get that out of me?”
    “I don’t think any such thing. I’m just telling you what the table stakes are.”
    Table stakes
was Jack’s phrase. “Damn,” he said. “I talk too much. It’s my worst fault.”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” I flashed him a smile and gave him a wisp of a kiss on his cheek just in passing as I got back into the car.
    “So it’s home, James?”
    “It is.” And I slammed the door.
    “You’ll never see me again,” Jack said. “I don’t like to waste my time.”
    “That’s a shame,” I replied, feeling sure I would see him again.
    “A preacher and a ring. Whoever heard of such a thing?”
    I didn’t say a word and he started up again. “Getting hitched, settling down, raising a family. That’s where that kind of thing leads.”
    “That can’t be right, because I’ve no intention of settling down. I want to travel and see the things you talk about just as much as you do.”
    “I wouldn’t mind you traveling with me,” he conceded.
    “But I couldn’t do it without a preacher and a ring.”
    “Well, then, it looks to me that you’re going to be stuck in this little backwater forever.”
    “It does look that way,” I agreed cheerily.
    He drove in silence with both hands on the steering wheel, and stopped in front of the drugstore, which was now closed. He didn’t get out, or go around, or open the door for me. He just sat there.
    I peered into his face. It was hard to read his expression in the dark. “We needn’t go out again, Jack, since you feel you’re wasting your time. But I’d like to bring the ponies sugar lumps. They’d like that, wouldn’t they?”
    “Hmm. I guess…”
    “So maybe tomorrow you’d just drive me there?”
    “Okay,” he said grudgingly, “if nothing else comes up.”
    “Same time,” I said, letting myself out.
    I ran a good part of the way back, retrieved my coat from the mailbox, and put it on over my dress. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I kept asking myself. Suppose I got Jack Sullivan to the point of actually marrying me? Was that what I wanted? I always thought I’d marry Abram, and we’d go away together. Abram thought so too. The trouble was we weren’t any closer to doing it than we were last year or the year before, or when we were ten years old for that matter. Abram didn’t know how to make things happen, and Jack did. At the moment he was my only avenue out of here.
    Abram held no surprises for me. I knew him. I’d grown up with him. Although he wasn’t a good Mennonite, he was a good person. I could trust him and count on him. Oh, and I’d left out a very important item: He loved me.
    And I kind of loved him, although I got exasperated with him.
    When I got home, Jason asked if I was thinking of entering the Olympics in long-distance walking. I knew he was curious about where I’d been, and I’d have to be careful.
    The next night too I went for a walk, again with my best dress under my coat. The coat I left again on the stanchion of the mailbox, and walked into town, not pausing until the drugstore.
    A car tooted its horn. A redheaded driver leaned out and grinned. “Got any sugar?”
    I delved into my pockets and came up with a handful of sugar cubes pilfered from our table.
    “The horses will be happy,” he said. “Get in.”
    I did.
    Jack was in a good mood. He had forgotten he was mad at me. He resumed his one-arm driving. “So tell me about yourself, Kathy.”
    He hadn’t bothered to ask me about myself before. I took it as a good sign. “I’m a singer,” I said.
    He gave a low whistle. “Now that’s surprising, a singer out here in the sticks. Where do you sing, in