"Michael Marshall - The Straw Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marshall Michael)

instructions left with Harold Davids. So far as I'd known, my parents had no religious views save a kind
of amiable atheism and the unspoken belief that if God did exist he probably drove a nice car, most likely
of American manufacture.
Organization for the event had been efficiently undertaken by Davids's office, leaving me with little to
do except wait to turn up. I spent most of the two days in the lounge of the Best Western. I knew I
should go up to the house, but I couldn't face it. I read most of a bad novel and leafed through a large
number of hotel-style magazines, without learning anything except that you can pay an awful lot of money
for a watch. Early each morning I left the hotel, intending to walk along the main street, but got no further
than the parking lot. I knew what was on offer along the shopping drag of Dyersburg, Montana, and I
was in the market for neither ski gear nor 'art'. I ate in the hotel restaurant in the evenings, had
room-service sandwiches delivered to the bar at lunch. All meals were accompanied by fries whose
texture suggested that a number of industrial processes had intervened between the soil and my plate. It
was impossible not to have fries. I discussed the matter on two occasions with the waitresses, but
relented in the face of mounting panic in their eyes.
After the preacher had explained to everyone why death was not the complete downer it might at first
appear, we filed out of the church. I was sorry to leave. It had felt safe in there. Outside it was very cold,
and the air was crisp and silent. Behind the graveyard rose the foothills of the Gallatin range, the peaks in
the distance muted, as if painted on glass. Two side-by-side plots had been prepared. There were about
fifteen people on hand to witness the burial. Davids was there, and someone who appeared to be his
assistant. Mary stood close to me, white hair strictly pulled back in a bun, her lined face battered smooth
with the cold. A couple of the others I thought I vaguely recognized.
More words were said by the priest, comforting lies in which to swaddle these events. Possibly they
made a difference to some of the mourners. I could barely hear them, concentrating as I was on stopping
my head from exploding. Then a couple of men тАФ whose job it was, who did this kind of thing every
week тАФ efficiently lowered the coffins into the ground. Ropes were gently fed through their hands, and
the coffins came to measured rest six feet below the flat plain on which the living still stood. A few more
sentences of balm were offered, but muttered quickly now тАФ as if the church recognized that the time to
make its pitch was running out. You can't put people in wooden boxes under the ground without the
audience realizing that something very amiss is afoot.
A final quiet pronouncement, and that was that. It was done. Nothing would ever happen to Donald
and Beth Hopkins again. Nothing that bore thinking about, at least.
Some of the mourners lingered for a moment, aimless now. Then I was alone. I stood there as two
people. One whose throat was locked into fiery stone, and who could not imagine ever moving again;
another who was aware of his iconic stature beside the graves, and also that, a little distance away,
people were driving past in cars and listening to the Dixie Chicks and worrying vaguely about money.
Both sides of me found the other ridiculous. I knew that I couldn't stand there for ever. They wouldn't
expect me to. It would make no sense, would change nothing, and it really was very cold. When I finally
looked up I saw Mary was also still present, standing only a few feet away. Her eyes were dry, harsh
with a knowledge that such a fate would be hers before very long and that it was neither a laughing nor a
crying matter. I pursed my lips, and she reached out and laid her hand on my arm. Neither of us said
anything for a while.
When she'd called me, three days before, I had been sitting on the deck of a nice, small hotel on De
la Vina in Santa Barbara. I was temporarily unemployed, or unemployed again, and using my scant
savings on an undeserved vacation. I was sitting with a good bottle of local merlot in front of me, and
efficiently making it go away. It wasn't the first of the evening, and so when my cellular rang I was inclined
to let the message service pick it up. But when I glanced at the phone I saw who the caller was.
I hit the TALK button. 'Hey,' I said.
'Ward,' she replied. And then nothing.
Finally I heard a sound down the line. The noise was soft, glutinous. 'Mary?' I asked quickly. 'Are
you okay?'