"John Kessel - Every Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

JOHN KESSEL

EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING

John Kessel's most recent novel is Corrupting Dr. Nice, and his most recent
story collection is The Pure Product. other current projects o[ his include an
audio play produced by the Seeing Ear Theater (http://www. scifi,
com/set/originals), and in serving as literary executor for the late Lawrence S.
Rudner he edited the latter's last novel, Memory's Tailor.

A good man, Flannery O'Connor taught us, is hard to find. But where does one
begin to look? Within...or beyond?

RAILROAD WATCHED BOBBY Lee grab the grandmother's body under the armpits and
drag her up the other side of the ditch. "Whyn't you help him, Hiram," he said.

Hiram took off his coat, skidded down into the ditch after Bobby Lee, and got
hold of the old lady's legs. Together he and Bobby Lee lugged her across the
field toward the woods. Her broken blue hat was still pinned to her head, which
lolled against Bobby Lee's shoulder. The woman's face grinned lopsidedly all the
way into the shadow of the trees.

Railroad carried the cat over to the Studebaker. It occurred to him that he
didn't know the cat's name, and now that the entire family was dead he never
would. It was a calico, gray striped with a broad white face and an orange nose.
"What's your name, puss-pussy." he whispered, scratching it behind the ears. The
cat purred. One by one Raftroad went round and rolled up the windows of the car.
A fracture zigzagged across the windshield, and the front passenger's vent
window was shattered. He stuffed Hiram's coat into the vent window hole. Then he
put the cat inside the car and shut the door. The cat put its front paws up on
the dashboard and, watching him, gave a pantomime meow.

Railroad pushed up his glasses and stared off toward the woodline where Bobby
Lee and Hiram had taken the bodies. The place was hot and still, silence broken
only by birdsong from somewhere up the embankment behind him. He squinted up
into the cloudless sky. Only a couple of hours of sun left. He rubbed the spot
on his shoulder where the grandmother had touched him. Somehow he had wrenched
it when he jerked away from her.

The last thing the grandmother had said picked at him: "You're one of my own
children." The old lady had looked familiar, but she didn't look anything like
his mother. But maybe his father had sown some wild oats in the old days --
Railroad knew he had -- could the old lady have been his mother, for real? It
would explain why the woman who had raised him, the sweetest of women, could
have been saddled with a son as bad as he was.

The idea caught in his head. He wished he'd had the sense to ask the grandmother
a few questions. The old woman might have been sent to tell him the truth.
When Hiram and Bobby Lee came back, they found Railroad leaning under the hood
of the car.