Dark Don't Catch Me by Vin Packer Page A

look. His lean, gangling frame, slightly awkward and disconnected in its gait, lends him still more youth; and Kate, older-looking but in fact two years his junior, says always at church supper socials: “Pass the salt to my son, please,” and people in Paradise laugh good-naturedly with her at the remark.
    â€œToday’s the anniversary,” Vivie says. “He’s taken little Thad and Emily up to the grave.”
    â€œOh, yes? I saw him earlier out in front of the courthouse. The anniversary today, hmmm? And still having the barbecue?”
    â€œThad says it’s right we should; says she would have wanted it that way, for him to be surrounded by his friends — our friends.”
    â€œHard to tell, isn’t it, how she’d feel about it?” “I guess he grew her up right along with him in his mind, Storey.”
    â€œI guess Thad did … I hardly remember her; just that they were twins and it nearly killed him when she died.”
    â€œYes. They were twins … I don’t remember her either.”
    â€œSeems like we were all but babies when she was living anyway.”
    â€œCome on in and rest. Have some pop. How’s Kate?”
    Storey follows her into the filling station, a mile down from the Hoopers’ house, with the land in between their land; but poor top-soil land, less fertile than Storey’s own, with only a cotton crop, and none other to speak of save for the scuppernongs.
    He says as they go: “She’s down rehearsing the band.” “Oh, of course. Tuesday.” “Umm-humm. Every Tuesday.” “You want orange or grape?”
    â€œGrape’ll be good.”
    â€œShe certainly likes working with the band, doesn’t she, Storey?”
    â€œI don’t know that she likes it. It’s hard, don’t let anyone kid you about that, Vivs, but you know it’s real worthwhile. I guess everybody in Paradise is crazy about the band.”
    â€œSure, I know it’s hard work.”
    â€œKate’s a good woman,” Storey says. He looks solemnly at Vivian Hooper, swigs his grape soda, and sets it down on the wooden table. He says in a surprisingly sober tone: “Yes, we married ourselves to good people, Vivs. We married ourselves to fine people.”
    Vivian Hooper hears little or none of the explanation which follows for having the afternoon off from the mill at Galverton. Her mind harps on that statement, on its insinuation — imagined? — and again as countless times before with Storey, times when his eyes turn away from her own, having come up her body too suddenly to see it fully; yet just that furtively that she imagines he is thinking back in time to that night;
she
remembers it all again too.
    â€¢ • •
    Eleven years ago:
    â€œVivs? Thad says he’s got to stay on and close up the exhibit for his dad. Says that I might as well run you on home.”
    At the county fair, the summer Vivian was just seventeen, Storey nineteen, and Thad twenty-seven, the oldest bachelor in Paradise — outside of Hollis Jordan, who was crazy and never would marry a girl in her right mind. It was at that county fair that Thad Hooper’s father had set up an educational exhibit based on producing sorghum molasses the old-fashioned way, with an old-time sorghum mill complete with a mule crushing the sorghum cane, and the syrup cooking over the wood fire. And during this the old man had caught the virus, and Thad had taken over most of the duties….
    â€œWhy, thank you, Storey,” Vivie had said, “but I don’t know that I feel like going
home.”
    â€œWe could walk around some and look at the exhibits.”
    â€œOh, I’ve seen them all … I don’t know … Since Thad got tied up here, we just haven’t been anyplace at all but here.”
    â€œWell, you want to drive around or something?”
    â€œWhy, thank you, Storey. I guess that might be