The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams

Author:Joan Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497694637
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter Six

Little T. saw two things that night. Going down the road from Ruth Edna’s, he saw Jake standing some distance away, looking at the house as if trying to make up his mind about something. Little T. had been hurrying along as fast as possible, feeling the money in his hand, hard and firm, his hand already sweaty from gripping it. He did not see or hear anything until suddenly he was right on Jake. It almost scared the fire out of Little T.

“Uh!” he cried out, coming on the white face in the dark, feeling a body near.

When he saw it was Jake, he edged away and went on again at his fast quiet pace, knowing no one else would be on this road until Mr. Cotter came home from the card game. He did not think the loony man even saw him; he had only continued to look at the house and seemed to be telling himself something. Little T. had been afraid because it was the loony man. It was his first direct contact with him. Yet he knew his safety lay in that fact: the man could not tell anything.

He saw the second thing when he reached the main road. He stopped before entering it and looked up and down, making sure the road was empty. Then he darted quickly across it to the safety of a dark store porch. Only the few street lights and the lights from Miss Loma’s store, at the opposite end of town, illuminated the night. He was about to leave the dark safety and enter the shadows and gain another store porch, so making his way on out of town, when the door of Miss Loma’s opened. A man came out walking slowly as if he were not going anywhere, gaining speed as he came. When he passed the store where Little T. stood, Little T. ceased to breathe, then resumed after he saw Mr. Frank Patrick pass by. Mr. Frank stopped before the Morgan house, looked around casually, hunched his shoulders and then went up the walk and into the house without knocking. Little T.’s eyebrows rose and fell. He was not surprised, because not too much surprised him, and he was interested only to the extent of confirming his suspicion; he stopped outside Miss Loma’s window a moment and saw that Mr. Morgan was inside playing cards. Little T. had not been much interested in Jake, either. It was only later that he wondered about that.

All he was interested in was the spinning lure. He had seen it first two months ago, end of July, through the grayish glass of Miss Loma’s showcase. Bright copper, it was splayed like an unloosed pinwheel, so that at the first moment of his seeing it he had seen it also in his imagination twirling and shining through the opaque muddy waters of Arkabutla Creek. Rising slowly, it skirted the water’s surface with a hop, skip, jump, so brightly flashing, so

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