"Jack Finney - Of Missing Persons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finney Jack)

averted from the rest of us, staring out into the rain at passing pedestrians. He was expensively dressed
and wore a gray Homburg hat; he could have been the vice-president of a large bank, I thought, and I
wondered what his ticket had cost.

Maybe twenty minutes passed, the man behind the counter working on some papers; then a small,
battered old bus pulled up at the curb outside, and I heard the hand brake set. The bus was a shabby
thing, bought third- or fourth-hand and painted red and white over the old paint, the fenders lumpy from
countless pounded-out dents, the tire treads worn almost smooth. On the side, in red letters, it said
"Acme," and the driver wore a leather jacket and the kind of worn cloth cap that cab drivers wear. It
was precisely the sort of obscure little bus you see around there, ridden always by shabby, tired, silent
people, going no one knows where.

It took nearly two hours for the little bus to work south through the traffic, toward the tip of
Manhattan, and we all sat, each wrapped in his own silence and thoughts, staring out the rain-spattered
windows; the little girl was asleep. Through the streaking glass beside me I watched drenched people
huddled at city bus stops, and saw them rap angrily on the closed doors of buses jammed to capacity,
and saw the strained, harassed faces of the drivers. At 14th Street I saw a speeding cab splash a sheet of
street-dirty water on a man at the curb, and saw the man's mouth writhe as he cursed. Often our bus
stood motionless, the traffic light red, as throngs flowed out into the street from the curb, threading their
way around us and the other waiting cars. I saw hundreds of faces, and not once did I see anyone smile.

I dozed; then we were on a glistening black highway somewhere on Long Island. I slept again, and
awakened in darkness as we jolted off the highway onto a muddy double-rut road, and I caught a
glimpse of a farmhouse, the windows dark. Then the bus slowed, lurched once, and stopped. The hand
brake set, the motor died, and we were parked beside what looked like a barn.

It was a barnтАФthe driver walked up to it, pulled the big-sliding wood door open, its wheels creaking
on the rusted old trolley overhead, and stood holding it open as we filed in. Then he released it, stepping
inside with us, and the big door slid closed of its own weight. The barn was damp, old, the walls no
longer plumb, and it smelled of cattle; there was nothing inside on the packed-dirt floor but a bench of
unpainted pine, and the driver indicated it with the beam of a flashlight. "Sit here, please," he said quietly.
"Get your tickets ready." Then he moved down the line, punching each of our tickets, and on the floor I
caught a momentary glimpse, in the shifting beam of his light, of tiny mounds of countless more round bits
of cardboard, like little drifts of yellow confetti. Then he was at the door again, sliding it open just enough
to pass through, and for a moment we saw him silhouetted against the night sky. "Good luck," he said.
"Just wait where you are." He released the door; it slid closed, snipping off the wavering beam of his
flashlight; and a moment later we heard the motor start and the bus lumber away in low gear.

The dark barn was silent now, except for our breathing. Time ticked away, and I felt an urge,
presently, to speak to whoever was next to me. But I didn't quite know what to say, and I began to feel
embarrassed, a little foolish, and very aware that I was simply sitting in an old and deserted barn. The
seconds passed, and I moved my feet restlessly; presently I realized that I was getting cold and chilled.
Then suddenly I knewтАФand my face flushed in violent anger and a terrible shame. We'd been tricked!
bilked out of our money by our pathetic will to believe an absurd and fantastic fable and left, now, to sit
there as long as we pleased, until we came to our senses finally, like countless others before us, and
made our way home as best we could. It was suddenly impossible to understand or even remember how
I could have been so gullible, and I was on my feet, stumbling through the dark across the uneven floor,
with some notion of getting to a phone and the police. The big barn door was heavier than I'd thought,
but I slid it back, took a running step through it, then turned to shout back to the others to come along.