Dark Don't Catch Me Read Free

(outside of Hollis Jordan, who nobody
can
understand anyway) and why he’s big-looking without being fat; and why he’s so well-liked by everyone from the Reverend Joh Greene, in whose church he serves as elder, to old black Hussie Post, who doesn’t like anyone, and whose family sharecrops on Hooper land. In a sentence, it’s why he’s Thad Hooper — because of her … In Paradise they say it’s a psychological fact that a man with a wife like her has got luck’s kiss to fire him on to doing anything he takes a notion to do, better than anyone else can.
    â€œYeah, and Thad knows it too,” one of the bench-sitters said after Hooper had left and they were all discussing him and her. “He knows it, cause even now after two kids he’s still always got his hands on her somewhere — on some part of her only he’s got the right to touch!”
    â€œSo what?” Storey Bailey, Thad Hooper’s best friend, put in. “What’s that prove?”
    â€œProves,” the sitter said, “he’s sort of letting everybody know she’s his property. It’s like another man having an Indian-head nickel he’s got to touch for luck.”
    Storey said, “Hell, you kidding? Hell!”
    A second sitter spoke up, “I noticed that about Thad too. Oh, he don’t do it obvious, mind, but I seen him do it. Out at the Friday dances, I seen him holding her so that his right arm kind of dangles down her back around her fanny — or even down here on Main Street when she’s standing talking to someone with him. I seen him with his arm around her waist and one of his fingers sorta snaking up around her boobies. I seen him do it too.”
    Storey Bailey’s face got red. “Aw, hell!” He acted disgusted.
    â€œWell, what’s the difference anyhow.” Doc Sell shrugged. “Man’s got a right to feel up his own wife!”
    â€œBut I’m telling you if Thad does do it, he don’t even
know
he’s doing it!” Bailey said.
    The sitter sighed; spat. “She sure is beautiful, Vivian Hooper.”
    â€œAll I’d have to do to tell a corpse,” Sell said, “would be to stand Vivie over it. If it didn’t move then, that’d be a dead man, all right.”
    Colonel Pirkle mopped his brow with his shirt sleeve. “Yep! She’s like irrigation to these drought-swollen parts.”
    â€œHalf-past twelve. I got to get me back to my mill.” Storey Bailey turned away abruptly.
    â€œDon’t go away mad,” the coroner shouted at his back; then chuckling to the others said, “I think ole Storey’s got a thing for Vivie Hooper.”
    â€œMaybe so, Doc,” the sitter said, “but Kate Bailey sure ain’t gonna let him do a dong-damn thing about it!”
    It is hot in Paradise this Tuesday noon; hot and still humid from yesterday’s brief shower — a warm, sticky drizzle that did little more than stir the dust on the redclay-caked roads; It is far too hot to quarrel, Bill Ficklin decides as he parks in the circle before the courthouse.
    â€œAll right,” he tells his wife, cutting the engine, “I’ll ask the boys if they’ve seen Major. But — ” he starts to add; then decides against it. He pushes down the door handle to get out.
    She says, “But
what?”
    â€œBut I think you’re making too much of the matter.”
    â€œFick, I tell you it’s in little ways like this we’ve got to be firm with him. Now you know I think the world and all of Major, but — ”
    Bill Ficklin answers, “All right. Okay,” slams the door shut, and crosses to the square.
    Ficklin is superintendent of schools in Paradise; a chunky, happy-faced fellow who favors tweeds, smokes a pipe, and looks a young forty-five. Before he came back to his home town, he taught civics at the University up in Athens, and the first time he ever