"Charles Coleman Finlay - Passing Through" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finley Charles Coleman)

Passing Through by Charles Coleman Finlay
Nearly a year has passed since we last published a story by Mr. Finlay, so a word or two is in
order for all you readers who have joined us recently. From his home in Columbus, Ohio, Mr.
Finlay has been sending us unpredictable stories for most of this current decade. Sometimes his
tales are purely fantastic (most notably in his stories about the human boy raised as a troll). Other
times, he takes us into space, as he did with "The Seal Hunter" and "The Political Officer."

With his latest story, Mr. Finlay stays closer to home--specifically, the locale for this one is Little
Limestone Island, a small town in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. Other stories set here have
appeared in Strange Horizons magazine and in his story collection, Wild Things. This story offers an
interesting look at a woman haunted by the past.
****
Roberta Bumgardner didn't like the look of the young couple standing on the front porch. He was a black
man, or an African-American as she was supposed to call them these days, though his skin was more of
a nutmeg brown; slender and small-boned, he had delicate hands and round glasses just small enough by
a hair to avoid being comical. His golf shirt was casually unbuttoned at the throat. The woman with
him--she had to be his wife, Roberta supposed, given the matching wedding bands, hers paired with an
engagement ring containing a garish marquise diamond--was a cheerful, chubby woman, white, with curly
shoulder-length blonde hair. Her skin was reddened by a day or two in the sun, and it looked like the
sort of skin that stayed red or turned pink instead of tanning. Roberta didn't like the woman's
cheerfulness. Nor the man's either. There was an impertinence in cheerfulness she found off-putting.

She pushed open the screen door, taking one small, deliberate step down to their level on the porch. The
door slammed shut behind her. Pasting on her second-best smile, she said, "Welcome to the Sullivan
House Museum."

"Is there still time for a tour?" the man asked, half-opening his hand at the laminated white sign tacked up
by the door. "You close in half an hour, right?"

"Don't fret yourself," Roberta said. The door creaked as she reopened it for them. "That's plenty of time
to do the whole tour. Twice, if you like. Watch your step."

The man stood aside, gesturing his wife ahead. Their eyes met, and the sparkle in his eyes reflected in
hers like stars shining on Lake Erie on a clear night. Roberta started her speech before he finished
entering the hall.

"The Sullivan mansion was originally completed in 1853, of limestone quarried here on the island. During
the Civil War, it was part of the prisoner of war camp for Confederate officers and the rear section
burned down in 1864 from a kitchen fire. Colonel Donegal Sullivan, who served with 123rd Ohio
Volunteers, rebuilt it after the war."

While the cheerful couple poked around the foyer and the parlor--bending over to ooh at the antique
doilies covering dark end tables, touching the wood railing on the center stair as if it needed all the
delicacy of a baby's skin, and leaning back to gaze at the wood vault of the ceiling as if it were the Sistine
Chapel--Roberta rushed through her spiel: the history of Little Limestone Island as an Indian--or rather
Native American, she quickly corrected herself--hunting ground; the arrival of the Sullivan family in 1832
when they were looking for a place to escape the cholera epidemic in Cleveland; the story of the house,
from mansion to hotel to its rescue from the wrecking ball by the formation of the island historical society.
She showed them all the open rooms downstairs and had twelve minutes to spare. The upstairs wasn't
suitable for showing yet.