"Alice Hoffman - Turtle Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Alice)

Turtle Moon
by
Alice Hoffman

Berkley Publishing Group

Copyright 1993

ISBN: 042513699X

PART ONE.

The last major crime in the town of Verity was in 1958, when one of the
Platts shot his brother in an argument over a Chevy Nomad they had
bought together on time. Usually it's so quiet you can hear the
strangler figs dropping their frilit on the hoods of parked cars,
leaving behind pulp and tiny black seeds. Since Verity is the most
humid spot in eastern Florida, local people know enough to drink their
coffee iced in the morning. The air all around the town limits is so
thick that sometimes a soul cannot rise and instead attaches itself to
a stranger, landing right between the shoulder blades with a thud that
carries no more weight than a hummingbird.

Charles Verity, who founded the town, after killing off as many native
people as he could, is said to have discovered this the hard way. He
couldn't get rid of the spirits of all the men he'd murdered; they
perched up and down his spine and on top of his cookstove, until he
caught them in a sugar bowl, then tied the lid closed with thick brown
string so they couldn't escape. Charles Verity swore he would live
forever. Every night he drank a bitter tea made from the bark of the
paradise tree to ensure his good health, but as it turned out he was
eaten by an alligator up by the pond where the municipal golf course
was later built. Each year, on Charles Verity's birthday, children
parade down Main Street to the parking lot of the medical center, where
a mud pit ringed with ropes is set up. For ten dollars, anyone can
wrestle a papier-mache' alligator and raise funds for the burn ward.

Up until the early sixties there were alligator farms all around the
outskirts of Verity. At least once a year there would be a big escape,
and Half Moon Road, which is now part of the Interstate, would be green
and slithery for days, until a posse went out with shotguns and fishing
nets. When breeding for profit became a federal offense, Verity turned
its past around to suit itself, naming the high school football team
the Gators, and featuring Alligator Salad in most restaurants, a
mixture of spinach, green pepper, avocado, and chopped egg tinted with
green food coloring.

People in Verity like to talk, but the one thing they neglect to
mention to outsiders is that something is wrong with the month of
May.