"Harlan Ellison - Paladin of the Lost Hour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

butthey saw me and just turned a couple of AK-47's on me . . . God, I remember everythingslowed down

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 Harlan Ellison - Paladin of the Lost Hour

. . . I looked at those things, seven-point-six-two-millimeter assault riflesthey were . . . I got crazy for a
second, tried to figure out in my own mind if they wereRussian-made, or Chinese, or Czech, or North
Korean. And it was so bright from the flaresI could see them starting to squeeze off the rounds, and then
from out of nowhere thislance corporal jumped out at them and yelled somedamnthing like, 'Hey, you
VC fucks, lookahere!' except it wasn't that . . . I never could recall what he said actually . . . andthey
turned to brace him . . . and they opened him up like a baggie full of blood . . .and he was all over me,
and the bushes, and oh god there was pieces of him floating on thewater I was standing in . . . "

Billy was heaving breath with impossible weight. His hands moved in the air before hisface without
pattern or goal. He kept looking into far corners of the dawn-lit room as ifspecial facts might present
themselves to fill out the reasons behind what he was saying.

"Aw, geezus, he was floating on the water. . . aw, Christ, he got inmy boots!" Then a wail of pain so loud
it blotted out the sound of trafficbeyond the apartment; and he began to moan, but not cry; and the
moaning kept on; andGaspar came from the sofa and held him and said such words as it's all right,
butthey might not have been those words, or any words.

And pressed against the old man's shoulder, Billy Kinetta ran on only half sane:"He wasn't my friend, I
never knew him, I'd never talked to him, but I'd seen him, hewas just this guy, and there wasn't any
reason to do that, he didn't know whether I was agood guy or a shit or anything, so why did he do that?
He didn't need to do that. Theywouldn't of seen him. He was dead before I killed them. He was gone
already. I never gotto say thank you or thank you or . . . anything!

"Now he's in that grave, so I came here to live, so I can go there, but I try andtry to say thank you, and
he's dead, and he can't hear me, he can't hear anything, he'sjust down there, down in the ground, and I
can't say thank you . . . oh, geezus, geezus,why don't he hear me, I just want to say thanks . . . "

Billy Kinetta wanted to assume the responsibility for saying thanks, but that waspossible only on a night
that would never come again; and this was the day.

Gaspar took him to the bedroom and put him down to sleep in exactly the same way onewould soothe an
old, sick dog.

Then he went to his sofa, and because it was the only thing he could imagine saying, hemurmured, "He'll
be all right, Minna. Really he will."

####

When Billy left for the 7-Eleven the next evening, Gaspar was gone. It was an alternateday, and that
meant he was out at the cemetery. Billy fretted that he shouldn't be therealone, but the old man had a way
of taking care of himself. Billy was not smiling as hethought of his friend, and the word friend echoed as
he realized that, yes, thiswas his friend, truly and really his friend. He wondered how old Gaspar was,

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 Harlan Ellison - Paladin of the Lost Hour