"Avram Davidson - The Woman who Thought she Could Read" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

"I think he come home today. I know he come home today." Her head bobbed.
"How do you know?"
"I know because I know. He come home and I make a bean soup for him. You want go errand for
me?"
"All right." She stood up and pulled a little change purse out of her apron pocket, and counted out
some money and handed it to me out of the window.
"Tell butcher Mrs. Grummick want him to cut some meat for a bean soup. He knows. Mr. Schloutz.
And you ged iche-cream comb with nickel, for you."
I started to go, but she gave me another nickel. "Ged two iche-cream combs. I ead one, too." She
laughed. "One, too. One, two, threeтАФOh, Englisht languish!" Then she went back to the table, put part
of the beans back in the crocks, and swept the rest of them into her apron. I got the meat for her and ate
my French vanilla and then went off to play.
A few hours later a taxicab stopped in front of the little gray house and a man got out of it. A big
fellow. Of course, to a kid, all grown-ups are real big, but he was very bigтАФtremendous, he was,
across, but not so tall. Mrs. Grummick came to the door.
"Eddie!" she said. And they hugged and kissed, so I decided this was her son, even before he called
her "Mom."
"Mom," he said, "do I smell bean soup?"
"Just for you I make it," she said.
He laughed. "You knew I was coming, huh? You been reading them old beans again, Mom?" And
they went into the house together.
I went home, thinking. My mother was doing something over the washtub with a ball of bluing.
"Mama," I said, "can a person read beans?"
"Did you take your milk of magnesia?" my mother asked. Just as if I hadn't spoken. "Did you?"
I decided to bluff it out. "Uh-huh," I said.
"Oh no you didn't. Get me a spoon."
"Well, why do you ask if you ain't going to believe me?"
"Open up," she ordered. "More. Swallow it. Take the rest. All of it. If you could see your face!
Suppose it froze and stayed like that? Go and wash the spoon off."
Next morning Eddie was down in the far end of the garden with a hoe. He had his shirt off. Talk
about shoulders! Talk about arms! Talk about a chest! My mother was out in front of our house, which
made her near Eddie's mother out in back of hers. Of course my mother had to know everybody's
business.
"That your son, Mrs. Grummick?"
"My son, yes."
"What does he do for a living?"
"Rachel."
"No, I mean your son ... what does he do ... "
"He rachel. All over country. I show you."
She showed us a picture of a man in trunks with a hood over his head. "The Masked Marvel!
Wrestling's Greatest Mystery!" The shoulders, arms, and chestтАФthey could only have been Eddie's.
There were other pictures of him in bulging poses, with names like, oh, The Slav Slayer, Chief
Thunderwing, Young Kehoe, and so on. Every month Eddie Grummick sent his mother another
photograph. It was the only kind of letter he sent because she didn't know how to read English. Or any
other language, for that matter.
Back in the vegetable patch Eddie started singing a very popular song at that time, called "I Faw
Down And Go Boom!"
It was a hot summer that year, a long hot summer, and September was just as hot as July. One
shimmering, blazing day Mrs. Grummick called my father over. He had his shirt off and was sitting under
our tree in his BVD top. We were drinking lemonade.