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Show PART II 5. The spring when I nearly flunked as a voyeur, unknown to me Kate Cannon was losing her mother, to cancer, and her father was losing his farm, to the bank. While we were moving back to the farm into a new house, Ed Cannon moved to town and opened a small cafe, and so I did not see Kate until school started and I found her in my freshman English class. I looked into her grey eyes, she smiled, and I forgot all about Elizabeth Brown. I wanted to take her to a dance but my father wouldn't let me use the car and I was stuck out in the sticks. I'd been driving teams for five years or so; that August I had driven four horses abreast to pull the grain binder, me perched high up on the seat with my hands full of reins and with a whip to crack, in charge; I had been driving the John Deere tractor, popping Johnny; I drove our International pickup almost daily and the old Pontiac sedan now and then, and still my father said I was too young, that thirteen was just too young to drive alone at night and take a girl out. Sure, driving was OK as long as it was helpful to the farm, but not to advance the love of my life. So not till a month after my fourteenth birthday, in January, did I get the car and a date with Katie. I was going to wear my eighth-grade graduation suit and dazzle her but it turned out to be a Hardtime Dance, a big deal for the town kids but a pain in the ass for me. I wore my best work clothes, newly washed by Mother, and still nearly won first prize. Kate had sewn red and green and yellow patches on a skirt and you could see her from anywhere in the gym. She had a pretty face but had grown a pretty big nose, |