Kathy Little Bird

by Benedict Freedman

  I’d been wise not to let Jack come to the house. Jellet left for the pub, but Morrie was sure to tell tales, and then, as Mum used to say, “the fat’s in the fire.”

  I waited until the boys were outside shooting baskets before changing into my best dress. It was a warm evening, but I prudently put my coat on over it. Before leaving the house I scrutinized my face in the bathoom mirror. If I’d been designing it I would have done it differently. The nose could be straighter, the lower lip not so full and pouty, the hair would look better with a wave. And the dark eyes, just like Mum’s, were disturbingly at odds with the rest of my face.

  Oh well. I slipped a small hand mirror into my pocket and took out the lipstick hidden behind an empty aspirin bottle and never used. I’d have to apply it well out of sight of my brothers. I ran down the porch steps and called to them that I was going for a walk. They paid no attention. But they would have if they’d seen me in my best dress.

  Safely around the bend by the mailbox, I got out the mirror and lipstick, and followed the curve of my mouth. The mirror was too small for an overall effect, but judged piecemeal it looked fine. I took off my coat and laid it over the rural mailbox for picking up on my way back.

  I HAD never stolen out to meet a boy in my life. I didn’t count Abram; there was nothing illicit about meeting Abram, nothing exciting. It was generally during the day, dusting off our plans for breaking free. But now I was meeting a stranger. And my heart skipped a few beats.

  I knew perfectly well that I was not behaving as Mum would have wanted. This was definitely not what a proper, well-brought-up young lady would do. Jellet kept me in a straitjacket, and I was busting out. After all, Mum, by my count, had been married three times: a Mohawk with the crazy name of Crazy Dancer, my father von Kerll, and Jellet.

  She’d married Jellet on account of me. And if she were here, she’d know I had to go my own way, be my own person.

  Jack Sullivan, who are you? Will you be important in my life? At the moment I couldn’t recall exactly what he looked like, except for the hair. I liked red hair, and it would be nice to have someone in my life who didn’t wear overalls.

  When I reached the drugstore, Jack Sullivan was waiting for me at the same table. He got up when he saw me, just as in the movies.

  “Hi,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “I thought maybe you’d change your mind.”

  I sat down and looked over the menu, although I had made up my mind to order a chocolate malt.

  Jack Sullivan told me I was looking very pretty. Again, just like the movies.

  “You know,” he added, “you brought me luck. I sold two of my ponies this afternoon.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep, I bought me a car and exchanged the wagon for a horse trailer.”

  “You work fast, don’t you?”

  “It was you. You brought me luck.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “I do. We Irish believe in luck, especially good luck. One horse I might have expected to sell, but two of them—that’s luck, pure and simple.”

  When we finished our malts he took me out front and there was the car, a maroon Ford. I walked around it, with him pointing out its best features. “I checked the motor, it runs quiet. And the 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 capital at 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 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 church?” And he roared at his own humor.

  “I sing in clubs,” I responded haughtily, recalling a short bio of Patsy Cline I’d found in a magazine in one of the trash bins behind the market.

  The remark intrigued Jack. “What clubs?”

  Here I was on more sure ground. “The Eight Bells.”

  “Well, what do you know.” Jack’s whistle again demonstrated how impressed he was. “Sing something.”

  I had quite a large repertoire. As part of my housekeeping I’d taken our radio into town and had it fixed. I ran through a number of songs in my head, looking for something he’d go for, then launched into a pop number, snapping my fingers to find the rhythm.

  When I finished there was another whistle from Jack, quite different from the others. This one was long and appreciative. “You’re good.”

  “I know.”

  He laughed. “You know, do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a queer one, Kathy. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

  We sped into the night with a sliver of moon hanging over our heads. The horses were tethered as they had been last night. I proffered my sugar cubes with a flat palm so their soft nuzzling mouths wouldn’t accidentally nip. Abram had taught me that.

  Jack was watching, taking this in. “I see you know your way around horses, too.”

  I didn’t really, but I let this stand. I wanted him to think I was accomplished, with many facets to my nature. After I’d fed and patted the ponies and decided the dappled-gray silver was my favorite, we sat at the back of the horse trailer and dangled our feet.

  Jack confided his plans, marvelous plans that on the instant had grown to include me. He would lay New York City at my feet. With my talent, he’d promote me onto the charts. I’d be doing recordings, singing on radio—all my daydreams spilled out of his grinning Irish mouth. “I’ve got to be moving on,” he told me. “And you’re coming with me. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  I laughed at him, pretending I didn’t want it more than anything in the world.

  “You’re the one thing that’s keeping me in this godforsaken place.” He shook his head as he said this, as though arguing with himself.

  Chapter Six

  JAS was waiting by the mailbox for me.

  “What are you doing here?” I snapped. Attack worked best with Jas.

  “I knew you were up to something. I saw you get into a car with that redheaded guy….”

  I thought fast and decided to make him a co-conspirator. I spun out a romance and swore him to secrecy. He was old enough now and was caught up in the adventure. I exaggerated a bit, especially as to being in love. I wasn’t sure I was in love. When I was with Jack, I was. When I wasn’t, I hardly thought of him.

  I knew in my bones that the way to find out how I felt was to visit Abram. I hadn’t seen Abram this past week; now I had to see him.

  The next afternoon I went directly to Mr. Renfall’s lumber company, where Abram was at work stacking crates and boxes. I knew, because he told me, that the money he made was divided into three piles: one for his parents, one for the church, and one he held out. That was for us, our running-away money.

  He pulled me into a back corner of the storage shed and kissed me.

  It was Abram kissing, not Jack. Abram kissed in a way that brought me to my toes. I felt his love and his commitment. And for some reason felt sad to be loved like this.

  “Oh, Abram,” and I stroked his face, his good, strong face.

  MY third date with Jack, things took a different turn. I was fighting not only Sullivan but myself. He had an exciting way of scooping me up in his arms, making me feel not only that I was a woman but that I was his woman. His hands were never still; they petted and stroked, sometimes gently, almost lazily, sometimes brazenly. Until now I had kept him in check, and if I felt we were being swept along, I would say, “Watch it, Jack—that’s a preacher and ring move.” After a while I curtailed it simply to “That’s a p.r.”

  He took it pretty well, usually modifying his behavior. The trouble was I wanted this earthy, aggressive lover as much as he wanted me. It would have been easy to relax into his embrace totally. But I knew if I did, he’d be gone in the morning, and with him my chance of ever getting out of here.

  “P.r.,” I said breathlessly, sitting up and fastening my bra. “Things can’t go on like this. We both know it. You’re too much for me, Jack, too much a man. I can’t fight you off any more.” I took a deep breath, risking everything. “So the only thing to do is let you go your way.”

  “There’s one more choice open to us. We could get married.” The words ripped
out of him like an explosion. He seemed as surprised by them as I was. “There, I said it, a preacher and a ring. What do you say?”

  This time it was I who threw my arms about him.

  I GOT home late and with a gesture to be quiet pulled Jas from his bed into my room.

  “You won’t have to cover for me any more, Jas. Guess what? I’m getting married.”

  His mouth opened and forgot to close. “Who to?”

  “Jack Sullivan, of course.”

  “What about Abram?”

  My enthusiasm for my marriage fell abruptly away. I stared at my brother. “He doesn’t have a horse trailer.”

  I was well aware that I was being stupid. But I dug my heels in harder and pursued my course even more recklessly. I could hear Elk Woman down the years: “Stop fighting with yourself, Little Bird.”

  JACK always said I put some sort of spell on him, and I think I did. He definitely was marriage shy. The preacher in St. Alban’s was a doddering old fellow who knew Jellet. So Jack arranged for us to be married in the next town. I wondered if he would show up, but he was waiting for me at the drugstore and we drove the thirty miles with hardly a word between us. I stole a couple of glances at him. He looked especially fine. His shirt was starched and he wore an ascot at his throat, neatly tucked into his collar. I was marrying a gentleman who knew the right way to do things. He even had a bouquet of store-bought flowers for me.

  I remember the preacher’s house. I don’t remember the ceremony. I was afraid the whole time that Jas had told my stepfather, and that Jellet would burst in and stop the proceedings.

  I do remember it didn’t take long. I was surprised how quickly something as important as wedding vows could be over and still make a difference to the rest of our lives. Jack fished in his pocket and came up with one of those Cracker Jack box prizes, a ring so soft you could push it into different shapes. “Just for now,” he whispered. His kiss in front of the preacher and his wife was rather tepid. I hoped he wasn’t sorry already. We walked out into the sun, and there was Abram pedaling up, with Jas panting and quite a way behind.