Read Dalva for Free Online

I never saw and who was long dead, had been a rich girl from Omaha who drank herself into an early grave. “What I’m saying is they aren’t like us, and if you don’t behave and stop chasing Duane I’ll send him away.” It was the first time I stood up to him. “Does that mean you’re not like us?” He hugged me and said, “You know and I know I’m not like anybody. You show the same signs.”
    I felt it was all unnecessary since Duane showed not the slightest sign of being anything more than minimally my “partner.” I tried becoming less pushy and doe-eyed which did serve to make him friendlier. He took me to some Indian burial mounds in a dense thicket in the farthest corner of the property. I didn’t tell him that my father had taken me there soon after I was given my first pony. Not far from the burial mounds Duane had erected a small tipi out of poles, canvas, and hides. He told me he slept there often and “communed” with dead warriors. I asked him where he got the word “commune” and he admitted he had taken to reading some of the books in Grandfather’s library. It was the first cool evening in September and the air was clearer than it had been all summer, with a slight but steady breeze from the north. I mention the breeze because Duane asked me if I ever noticed that the wind in the thickets made a different sound depending on which direction the wind came from. The reason was that the trees rubbed against each other differently. I admitted I had never noticed this and he said, “Of course, you’re not an Indian.” I was a bit downcast at the reminder so he gave my arm a squeeze, then gave me my first real hope by saying there might just be a ceremony to make me a bona-fide Sioux. He’d check if he evergot back to Parmelee. I hated to leave but my mother insisted I be home before dark when I was with Duane. I went to my tethered horse and Duane said, “If I asked you to stay all night, would you?” I nodded that I would and he came up to me, his face so close that I thought we were going to have our first kiss. The last of the sun was over my shoulder and on his face, but he suddenly turned away.
    That summer I became friends with a girl named Charlene who at seventeen was two years older than me. She lived in a small apartment in town above a café that her mother managed. Her father had died in World War II and this misfortune of war helped bring us together. I barely knew her at school where she had a bad reputation. It was rumored that when rich pheasant-hunters from the East appeared in late October and November Charlene made love with them for money. Charlene was very pretty but an outcast; she didn’t belong to a church or any school groups. The only time she had spoken to me at school was when I was in the eighth grade—she told me to “be tough” when the older boys were bothering me. We didn’t get to know each other until we began talking in the town library.
    On Saturday afternoons, Naomi would drive to town to shop for groceries and do errands. Ruth would tag along with me to the saddle-and-harness shop, and then we’d have a soda and all meet at the library. We never saw Duane in town because he would do farm errands on weekdays, claiming it was too crowded on Saturday. The town was the county seat but barely had a population of a thousand. I had been reading Of Human Bondage, Look Homeward, Angel, also Raintree County by Ross Lockridge. They were wonderful books and I was puzzled when I read in the paper that Mr. Lockridge had committed suicide. Charlene saw me with the books and we began talking. She was in her waitress uniform and said she came in on Saturdays after work to get something to read in order to forget her awful life. We met and talked on a half-dozen Saturdays, and I asked her to come to dinner on Sunday because I knew the café would be closed. She said