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Show 29 That night Karl looked differently at Kathleen. For fifteen years he'd thought of Kathleen only as a sister, someone who'd been part of his life since his earliest memory. He'd never paid much attention to the way she looked, except to vaguely realize that she was pretty, with dark hair, light blue eyes, and fair skin just like his own. "Black Irish" looks, their mother called them. Even though their mother Maggie Rose was blond and blue-eyed, she claimed that in Ireland, her Hannon family had many relatives of close blood with Black Irish coloring. From time to time, Hugo Kerner mildly reminded Maggie Rose that his own hair was dark, that his own eyes were blue, that the German Kerners could claim as much responsibility as the Irish Hannons for the way the children looked. On that Fourth of July evening, as all the Kerners sat on their back porch hoping for any small breeze to relieve the heat and the humidity, Karl studied Kathleen with new interest, because Jame Culley in his rambling talk had called her beautiful. Kathleen perched on the edge of the porch. The night sky, colored orange from blast furnace flame, made leaf shadows on her face and her throat, which was bared beneath the unbuttoned collar of her shirtwaist. She'd taken off her shoes and black stockings to curl her toes around the porch boards. She had nice ankles, Karl noticed. |
