"Jack Dann - Voices" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

was trying to tell me what to do in some secret language; and if I could only
figure out the words, I'd be able to help him get well. But then he died, and I
never got to say goodbye in a way he could understand because his brain never
did get right again.

Crocker didn't say anything more for a while, which was unusual for him.

When I had finished the wings, which weren't right and would have to be redone
again, I looked up and said, "Crock-a-shit, what are you looking at?"

"Nothing'."

"What's with all this dead people stuff?" I asked, trying to treat him like a
human being.

"I just wanted to know if you have ever done it, that's all."

"Done what?"

"I just told you! Talk to dead people."

"Have you?" I asked, knowing for sure I would get one of his bullshit answers.

"Yeah, I do it a few times a week. When I don't come down here."

"Oh, sure, and where do you do that?"

"Every day I check the paper to see if there's anything going on at the funeral
home on the corner of Allen and Main. If there is, I just sort of walk in and
talk to the corpse in the casket. If not, I come over here."

"And nobody says nothing to you? They just let you walk in and talk to dead
people?"

"They ain't bothered me yet." After a pause, he said, "You wanna go with me
today? They got somebody in there," and he showed me the obituary column from
the Sun-Bulletin. I glanced at what he was trying to show me and shook out the
sports section. Patterson was fighting Ingemar Johansson on Friday. I was
rooting for Patterson, who had KO'd Archie Moore in '56.

"You wanna go with me and see for yourself or not?" Crocker asked, indignantly
ripping the paper out of my hands. "Or are you afraid?"

"Screw you!"

"You probably never been to a funeral in your life."

"I've been to funerals before," I said. "Everybody has."
"But did you ever see a dead person?"