"Andy Duncan - The Executioners' Guild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

iron pills. Well, let him talk to that old fool Turlis, and waste his time for a
change. I must be deaf sure enough, Mrs. Blackburn thought, as she added a fresh
cheese slice to the growing pile on the cutting board, he's a big man and I
didn't even hear him walking. That a winter coat? When she'd swept the porch at
nine o'clock, the Royal Crown thermometer had already said eighty-six degrees.
"I'm just lying here waiting on my Goody's to kick in," said Stumpy Turlis. "You
get headaches much, mister?"
"I can't say that I do."
"Be glad, then. I get 'em something awful. Last for a week. You know why?"
"No, I don't."
"Septum. That's what they told me down in Meridian, I got a septum, a deviated
nasal septum. You know what that is?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Causes headaches, that's what it is. Just like someone clipped you tween the
eyes with the end of a board, only worse. You ever been clipped tween the eyes
by a board, mister?"
"Not that I can recall."
"Pray to God you never do. It's bad, real bad, but it ain't as bad as a deviated
nasal septum, no Jesus. You're a lucky man all around, that's all I got to say
about it."
Mrs. Blackburn wondered where the stranger was from; he talked too well, as if
he had learned English from a book. She kept expecting him to turn around or
walk off or at least shift from side to side, but no, he just stood there,
frozen, with head slightly bowed, like an old friend mourning the prone body of
Stumpy Turlis. She peeled from the knife a little stringy gibble of cheese and
ate it, being careful not to touch her fingers with her mouth. The cheese was
soft and mild on her tongue. As she stared at the drummer's back, she felt the
cool breath of the nearest rotary fan as it swept its idle gaze across her, as
it ruffled her hair and leafed through the Meridian papers in their stack beside
the register.
Stumpy Turlis asked, "You want to buy something, mister?"
"No, I only -"
"Cause I don't work here. I can't sell you nothing. You want something, you got
to -" Here his voice became low and conspiratorial. "You got to ask her."
Still, he didn't turn around. The fan lost interest and moved on, leaving the
sweat on her neck to proceed about its business, and, in the sudden reminder of
heat Mrs. Blackburn found her voice and said, loudly, "May I help you?" As she
said it, she set down her knife and wiped her hands on the inside of her apron.
The drummer turned, nodded, and tipped his hat. "Good morning, madam. No, I'm
just browsing, thank you very much." He might have been sixty or he might have
been eighty, it was hard to tell, with those heavy black eyeglasses and that
puffed-up jowly face. But from across the store, Mrs. Blackburn could tell that
his eyes, magnified through Coke-bottle lenses, were perhaps the saddest eyes
she ever had seen.
Though she hadn't intended to-since, after all, she could show a drummer the
door without moving a step-Mrs. Blackburn found herself bustling toward the
hardware counter. As always, she went the long way, around the U formed by the
grocery and the dry-goods counters, along the depression that her in-laws and
their parents had worn in the floor in the nineteenth century. Mrs. Blackburn
disdained any shorter path across the store.