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

Grummick's little house was always warm and it smelled real nice with all those herbs and dried flowers
and stuff hanging around in it.
A few years later my sister got married. And after that, in the summertime, she and her husband Jim
used to come back and visit with us. Jim and I used to play ball and we had a fine timeтАФthey didn't have
any children, so they made much of me. I'll always remember those happy summers.
Well, you know, each summer, a few of the churches used to get together and charter a boat and
run an excursion. All the young couples used to go, but my sister always made some excuse. See, she
was always afraid of the water. This particular summer the same thing happened, but her friends urged
her to come. My brother-in-law, he didn't care one way or the other. And then, with all the joking,
someone said, Let's ask Mrs. Grummick to read it in the beans for us. It had gotten known, you see.
Everybody laughed, and more for the fun of it than anything else, I suppose, they went over and spoke to
her. She said that Sister and Jim could come inside, but there wasn't room for anybody else. So we
watched through the window.
Mrs. Grummick spread her beans on the table and began to shove them around here and there with
her fingers. Some she put to one side and the rest she little by little lined up in rows. Then she took from
one row and added to another row and changed some around from one spot to another. And meanwhile,
mind you, she was muttering to herself, for all the world like one of these old people who reads by
putting his finger on each word and mumbling it. And what was the answer?
"Don't go by the water. "
And that was all. Well, like I say, my sister was just looking for any excuse at all, and Jim didn't
care. So the day of the excursion they went off on a picnic by car. I'd like to have gone, but I guess they
sort of wanted to be by themselves a bit and Jim gave me a quarter and I went to the movies and bought
ice-cream and soda.
I came out and the first thing I saw was a boy my own age, by the name of Bill Baumgardner,
running down the street crying. His shirt was out and his nose was running and he kept up an awful
grinding kind of howl. I called to him but he paid no attention. I still don't know where he was running
from or where to and I guess maybe he didn't know either. Because he'd been told, by some old fool
who should've known better, that the excursion boat had caught on fire, with his parents on it. The news
swept through town and almost everybody with folks on the boat was soon in as bad a state as poor
Billy.
First they said everybody was burned or drowned or trampled. Later on it turned out to be not that
badтАФbut it was bad enough.
Oh, my folks were shook up, sure enough, but it's easier to be calm when you know it's not your
own flesh and blood. I recall hearing the church clock striking six and my mother saying, "I'll never laugh
at Mrs. Grummick again as long as I live." Well, she never did.
Almost everyone who had people on the boat went up the river to where it had finally been run
ashore, or else they waited by the police station for news. There was a deaf lady on our street, I guess
her daughter got tired of its being so dull at home and she'd lied to her mother, told her she was going
riding in the country with a friend. So when the policeman came and told herтАФshouted at her they'd
pulled out the girl's body, she didn't know what he was talking about. And when she finally understood
she began to scream and scream and scream.
The policeman came over toward us and my mother said, "I'd better get over there," and she started
out. He was just a young policeman and his face was pale. He held up his hand and shook his head.
Mother stopped and he came over. I could hear how hard he was breathing. Then he mentioned Jim's
name.
"Oh, no," my mother said, very quickly. "They didn't go on the boat." He started to say something
and she interrupted him and said, "But I tell you, they didn't goтАФ" and she looked around, kind of
frantically, as if wishing someone would come and send the policeman away.
But no one did. We had to hear him out. It was Sister and Jim, all right. A big truck had gotten out
of control ("тАФbut they didn't go on the boat," my mother kept repeating, kind of stupidly. "They had this