"Samuel R. Delany - Corona" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

other an iron spoon. He came over, sat on the edge of Buddy's bed, and
kicked off one canvas shoe. "They told me I should come in and feed
you, kid." He kicked off the other one. "You real hungry?"

When they unstrapped Buddy four days later, he couldn't talk. One
tooth was badly broken, several others chipped. The roof of his mouth
was raw; the prison doctor had to take five stitches in his tongue.




┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖


Lee gagged on the taste of iron.

Somewhere in the hospital, Buddy lay in the dark, terrified, his eyes
stinging, his head filled with the beating rhythms of Corona.

Her shoulders bunched; she worked her jaw and tongue against the pain
that Buddy remembered. She wanted to die.

Stop it! she whispered, and tried to wrench herself from the inarticulate
terror which Buddy, cast back by pain and the rhythm of a song to a
time when he was only twice her age, remembered. Oh, stop it! But no
one could hear her, the way she could hear Buddy, her mother, Mrs.
Lowery in the schoolroom.

She had to stop the fear.

Perhaps it was the music. Perhaps it was because she had exhausted
every other way. Perhaps it was because the only place left to look for a
way out was back inside Buddy's mind-

-When he wanted to sneak out of the cell at night to join a card game
down in the digs where they played for cigarettes, he would take a
piece of chewing gum and the bottle cap from a Dr. Pepper and stick it
over the bolt in the top of the door. When they closed the doors after
free-time, it still fitted into place, but the bolt couldn't slide in-

Lee looked at the locked door of her room. She could get the chewing
gum in the afternoon period when they let her walk around her own
floor. But the soft drink machine by the elevator only dispensed in
cups. Suddenly she sat up and looked at the bottom of her shoe. On the
toe and heel were the metal taps that her mother had made the
shoemaker put there so they wouldn't wear so fast. She had to stop the
fear. If they wouldn't let her do it by killing herself, she'd do it another
way. She went to the cot, and began to work the tap loose on the frame.