"Duncan,.Lois.-.Summer.Of.Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"I like her," she said immediately. "She's sort of exotic, isn't she, with those big dark eyes? And she has such an interesting way of talking, as though she's always looking for just the right word to express her meaning. I love the way she says 'yeller'Чlike a hillbilly, one minuteЧand sounds just as refined as anybody the next. She's just a doll!"
"Peter has a crush on her," I confided.
"You're kidding! Peter?" Carolyn widened her eyes incredulously. "Old woman-hating Peter with a crush! Say, do you suppose he'd want to take her to the dance? We could triple."
"I think his band is playing for the dance," I said. "But we could take Julia and he could join us afterward, I don't know how he'd feel about that or whether Julia likes dances or if she'd want to go out anywhere so soon after a family tragedy. But I can ask them andЧ"
I let the sentence drop because Julia was sticking her head out from behind the curtain of the dressing room.
"Come see what you think," she called.
Carolyn and I went over, and Julia pulled back the curtain a little way so we could see her in the suit. I think I made some sort of gasping sound. It wasn't polite, I knew, but I was so stunned I couldn't help it, for in that swimming suit Julia wasЧwellЧincredible.
Although all of us teenagers wore bikinis, it was seldom that you ever saw anybody built exactly right for one. By the time a girl got enough up top to fill one out properly she usually had too much down below. Julia was the exception. She didn't look like a girl, but like a young woman. Now I could understand why the bodice of the yellow dress had looked so tight, for she had the kind of figure I had always dreamed of having someday, maybe when I was about twenty. Her waist was small and her stomach absolutely flat and she curved softly in all the right places, and her legs were long and slim but full enough through the calves so no one would ever call them skinny.
"Wow!" Carolyn expressed it for both of us. "You look just great! That's your suit, all right!"
"Do you think the color's right?" Julia asked, frowning a little.
"Perfect," I said, although until then I hadn't even noticed the color. It was a light pink of almost the same shade as the material I had chosen for my new dress. With it for contrast, Julia's skin no longer appeared sallow but creamy and rich looking.
"It's lovely," I said. "It couldn't be better, Julia, really!"
I paid for the suit with Mother's credit card and we stopped at Walgreen's for cokes and then we caught the bus for home. We all three crammed into one seat, and Carolyn started telling us about her adventures wall-cleaning. Carolyn is made for story telling; she has one of those rubber faces that can go into a hundred different expressions, and by the time she was halfway through I was laughing so hard I was crying.
Julia was laughing too. I had not seen her laugh before. She was a little stiff about it, as though she wasn't used to laughing much, or as if she didn't quite know why the story was funny but wanted to be part of things anyway.
Carolyn must have seen this, because when we got off the bus at the corner of our block she slipped her arm through Julia's and fell into step beside her as though they had been friends for a long time. It was a kind thing to do, and I felt pleased that she liked my cousin and was making such an effort to be nice to her. At the same time I felt sort of funny, walking behind them, because the sidewalk wasn't wide enough for three unless somebody walked in the gutter.
It was one o'clock by this time, and the sun was high and pleasantly warm, although not hot the way it would be in a couple of weeks. In the yard before the Gallaghers', Professor Jarvis was kneeling in the grass, putting in a line of petunias along the edge of the driveway. The professor was retired now, but until two years ago he had taught with the sociology department at the University of New Mexico.
As we came abreast, he looked up and smiled and raised a grubby hand by way of greeting. We stopped, and I introduced Julia.
"She's my cousin, Julia Grant," I told him, "from Pine Crest, Missouri. She's living with us now."
"Pine Crest?" The professor nodded appreciatively. "That's in the heart of the Ozarks, isn't it? An interesting area, the bed of a lot of intriguing folklore."
"I'm not really from there," Julia said. "I mean, it was my parents who lived there. I was away at school most of the time."
"My uncle was a writer," I said. "He moved to the mountains to write a novel. He and my aunt were killed in a car wreck last week."
"How sad," the professor said. And to Julia, "I'm so sorry, my dear. I wish your move to Albuquerque were under happier circumstances."
"Thank you," Julia said. "IЧI wish so too." It was apparent that the conversation made her uncomfortable. She gave Carolyn's arm a little tug, as though to urge her forward. "It was nice meeting you."
"You feel free to drop over," Professor Jams said kindly. "I enjoy chatting with young people. I spent most of my life teaching them and I miss the contact. When you lose touch with youth, you grow old fast."
"You'll never be old," I told him fondly and meant it. The face beneath the thatch of white hair was as bright with life as the flowers he was planting. As Carolyn and Julia moved onward I hung back to watch him place the last of the plants carefully into the trench he had prepared for it and smooth the earth gently over its roots.
"What's Peter doing these days?" he asked me. "He graduated, didn't he? I hope he's planning on college."
"He is," I said. "He's planning to major in music. You know Peter; what other direction would he go?"
We chatted a few minutes about collegesЧand summertimeЧand the growing habits of petunias. Then the professor got to his feet and gathered up the cartons the plants had come in and carried them into the garage, and I strolled on past the Gallaghers' toward my own house.
I was just turning into the front yard when I heard itЧa low rumbling sound, followed by a yelp and a stifled shriek. Then a woman's voice rose in a cry of rage:
"You vigrous, rat-fanged varmant! I'll warp you good for that!"
It was a moment before I realized that the words had come from Julia.
"What on earth!" I exclaimed and broke into a run across the lawn to the porch steps. Julia was down on one knee, her hands clasped tightly around her left ankle. Carolyn was bent over her, and when she straightened and turned to me her face was white with shock.
"What got into him? I've never seen him do a thing like that!"
"What is it?" I demanded. "What happened?"
"It's that dawg of yourn!" Julia cried in a voice so choked with anger that it was all I could do to understand the words. "He flang hisself out and bit me!"
"Trickle bit you?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "He couldn't have! I don't believe it!"
"Take a gander at thet and see if you believe it or not!" Julia lifted her hands, and I caught my breath as I saw the blood gushing from the deep tooth marks in the flesh just above the anklebone.
"He was lying on the porch," Carolyn told me shakily, "over there in that patch of sunlight. We started up the steps and he began to wag his tail like he always does. Then suddenly he growledЧI've never heard Trickle growl in all the time I've known him! He got up and stood there all stiff with his ears back against his head, and the next moment he jumped right at Julia and bit her! Then he ran off around the side of the house, headed for the back."
"I don't believe it," I said again. But this was not true. Into my mind leapt the picture of Trickle as he had been the night before, his head lowered, his teeth bared. He had growled at Julia then, a low, menacing growl of pure hatred. Was it any more incredible that he had bitten her now?
"Take her into the house," I told Carolyn, "and tell Mother what happened. She'll know how to treat the bite and stop the bleeding. I'm going to find Trickle."
I left the girls there on the steps and went around to the backyard to look in the hollow behind the hydrangea bush. It was the place Trickle always ran when he knew he had done something wrong and was going to be scolded. But he wasn't there.
I searched the yard and went up and down the street calling him, but he didn't come.


Six

Julia sat in silence while Mother cleansed her wound and bandaged it. Then she went upstairs to our room and closed the door.
"She's upset, and no wonder," Mother said. "What an awful thing to have happen on her second day here! Thank goodness I took that dog for his rabies shot only a couple of months ago. What on earth could be wrong with him?"
"I don't know," I said miserably. "I guess he just hates Julia."
"But dogs don't do that," Carolyn said. "Just take a hatred to someone, I mean, without any reason. Could she have mistreated him somehow?"