"Aldridge, Ray - Filter FeedersV1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldridge Ray)

RAY ALDRIDGE - Filter Feeders

The Heron Hunted The water's edge. Across the inlet the sun's red disk settled to the rippled line of the dunes. Minnows flickered in the darkening water, tasty silver life, quickly receding. The heron gave all his attention to his hunting, crouching on stick legs, head low, snaky neck drawn back for the strike.

The sailboat ghosted in on the dying evening breeze, sails rattling softly. The heron glanced up for a moment -- sometimes humans threw him stale bait, sometimes they tried to hit him with beer bottles -- but the human steering the boat seemed a motionless lump, neither promising nor dangerous.

There in the water, a twisting gleam moved slowly enough that the heron knew he could catch it, and he moved forward with a quick jerking stride, his neck tensing.

But as his beak stabbed, a consuming sensation broke over him, a memory of frightening power. He found himself back in the rookery, the night filled with the squawk and rustle of the others, the scent of the pines, the faint purple glow of the Coast Guard station's lights filtering through the trees.

He felt some strong emotion -- a human might have called it happiness --remembering a thousand such nights along the bay. He felt it with an intensity far beyond the natural capacity of his primitive brain.

Memories flowed through him: mornings waiting with the other herons on the concrete footings of the bridge, watching for delicacies riding in on the tide. Walking a weathered dock, sun warm on his feathers. Flying against sunset skies, high in the pure air. And countless other remembrances, all clothed in some precious subtle perfection.

He remembered the nest, a heap of sticks in the girders of a range marker. He felt with an undiminished intensity the warmth of his mother's down, the satisfaction of tearing at his first fish, the fearful delight of leaving that safe haven.

At the very last he felt a suffocating pleasure, as he broke from the darkness of the egg into the world of light and experience.

The heron finished his strike, beak slicing into the water. The long neck relaxed, the body fell forward, empty of life.

The boat's rippling wake rolled the heron's corpse gently against the sand, and from the cabin came a sound like a sob, or a laugh.

For the longest time, Teresa continued to believe she was on the brink of glorious change. Soon. Next year, at the latest. Or if not then, the year after.

By her thirty-sixth year, she'd grown less hopeful. That summer she came to the Gulf and took a job waiting tables at The Bugeyed Sailor in Destin.

Just as the sun went down an old white-hulled ketch sailed into the harbor. Teresa watched from the outside deck of the Bugeyed Sailor, where she was serving a pair of drunk Louisiana businessmen.

The ketch might have been graceful once, but now it was an old shoe, sculled and worn. It fetched up on the far side of the harbor, so Teresa couldn't tell much about the person who went forward to drop the anchor, moving like an invalid, with slow exaggerated care. Over the clatter of crockery, she heard the chain rattle out. The person stood motionless on the foredeck.

The light was fading and the boat seemed suddenly unreal, its outlines a little misty.

"Hey, honey," said one of the Boys from Baton Rouge, breaking into her imaginings. "How 'bout a few more of these 'uns!" He waved at the empty beer bottles clustered on the table.

"Right away, sir," she chirped, and that was the last notice she took of the boat, that night.

The Bugeyed Sailor clung to a piece of prime harbor waterfront in Destin, the Luckiest Fishing Village in the World.

The Bugeyed Sailor, while it might not actually have been the worst restaurant between Pensacola and Carrabelle, was surely the most notorious. The food was dreadful, but the ambience was worse.

The owner was an obese middle-aged troll who worked hard at augmenting his restaurant's notoriety. Every night the Sailorman dressed up in his stained Popeye costume -- a costume the size of a tent but still a little tight. He would admire the obscene tattoos on his huge forearms, he would adjust the tiny hat that clung to his bald head, and then he would work the room. He would move among the tables, trailing a cloud of body odor, leering at the pretty women and the handsome children, slapping the men on the back, asking if all was well and moving on before he had to hear the answer. At unpredictable intervals he would burst into song. He knew only one tune, but many verses. "Oh, I'm Bugeye the Sailorman. I live in a garbage can . . . " he would sing, in a fairly good tenor. Or, "I love to go swimming'. With bow legged wimmin. I'm Bugeye the Sailorman." Occasionally some unamused child would ask him why he didn't use the right name. "Popeye stole my song" he would say with a ferocious, green-toothed grin, making his eyes bug out in an illustrative manner.

He played the lunatic genial host until closing. Then he would revert to his true form, the cunning brutal peasant. The help called him Bugger the Sailorman . . . the phrase also served as a satisfying epithet, to be muttered at every opportunity. The Sailorman's employees left the instant they could land a job elsewhere, which was why he had hired Teresa so readily, despite her obvious inexperience. And also she was still a somewhat attractive woman, not too old, and completely unattached -- just the sort of person the Sailorman liked to keep under his dirty thumb. She'd have quit, but summer -- and the tourist season -- was ending, so the other area businesses were scaling back. Jobs were hard to find.

That night the Sailorman had devoted himself to harassing Nancy, a waitress who was younger and prettier than Teresa. Teresa's relief was tempered with a pang of guilt . . . poor Nancy. Then she looked at the Sailorman and thought: better her than me.

After closing, when the chairs were stacked on the tables and she'd given the busboy his share of her tips, she went home to her little room at the Golden Dunes Motel and Cottages. She watched an old movie and drank a cream soda, listening to the creaky whir of the window air-conditioner.

After the movie was over, she performed her bedtime ritual. With other women, she knew, this involved the application of various beautifying substances -- but Teresa had largely abandoned hope in that area, as in so many others. Instead she got out her inheritance from her mother, a bottle of Nembutal. She contemplated it, while assessing her resolve. She sighed and thought about her mother.