"Suzette Haden Elgin - What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"Yes, ma'am," said Delmer.
"People inside!" Granny Motley frowned, and laid two fingers over her
lips
while she thought that over. "Very likely they had time to see that
train
coming at them," she said slowly, with a faraway look in her eyes that
made Delmer uncomfortable. "Trying to get that truck off the tracks
where
they'd stalled it, scared too foolish to leave the truck and run. Very
likely they had time, just before the train hit them, to think about
what
it was going to be like riding on its nose down the tracks, nothing
between them and it but the clothes they had on."
"Very likely," Johnny Beau agreed, glad he couldn't see whatever she
was
seeing.
"Awful!" said the Granny. And then she dropped it, and turned her
attention to them. "So!" she said briskly. "You two boys, you take that
truck on down to the creek, and you put it out in the running water
there
 by the big sycamore."
"For how long, Granny?" Delmer asked.
"Thirty days, for starters," she said. "And then I'll go look at it to
see
how matters stand.... Could be that'll do it. Thirty days at least, to
purify it and clear out the violence." She folded her arms over her
chest
and stared hard at Johnny Beau and Delmer. "I could be a good deal more
precise," she said crossly, "if you two had bothered to find out the
circumstances."
They agreed, and they apologized. She was right: they should have
thought
of it. The way things were moving along now, people needed to be able
to
start making plans. And then Johnny Beau said, "Granny, Miz Bridges
over
there is gonna have a cat fit when she sees us put this in the creek."
"It's our creek," said the Granny gently.
"All the same."
"Well, let it pass, Johnny Beau. If she comes out and starts in on you,
just you yes-ma'am her and tell her it was me that ordered it done, and
let her come up and talk to me about it if she likes. And mind you,
don't
sass her, or look smart-aleck, or even think smart-aleck. She's a good
woman in her way, for a city woman, and it's not her fault she's
ignorant.
You mind your manners with her."
"She may not come down," Delmer observed. "I think she's gotten real
discouraged about it all."