"Patricia Matthews - Goatman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Matthews Patricia)

PATRICIA MATTHEWS

GOATMAN

As Moira came to the midpoint of her afternoon walk, the small unpainted cabin
of Miss Bessie Rhode, the old woman spoke to her for the first time.

Leaning over the bare, wind-finished boards of her front yard fence, looking
for
all the world like a scrap of gray cloth hung to dry, the woman uttered the
words grudgingly, "Hello, Missy."

Moira supposed that she should feel some sort of triumph at this small
victory,
but truthfully, she didn't really care. Her brother, Victor, had warned her
that
the natives would not accept her, and that she shouldn't expect any kind of a
welcome if she insisted on intruding her presence into the God-forsaken place;
but what he couldn't seem to realize was that this didn't matter. In fact,
such
a situation was desirable to her, for she wanted nothing so much as to be left
alone.

However, it wasn't in her to be really rude, and so she nodded at the other
woman's words, and answered with sparse words of her own. "Hello."

As far as she was concerned, this was the end of it. She continued moving up
the
road, her feet raising the dry dust into the gusts of wind that swooped down
from the treetops, and rattled the dry brush along the roadside; but by the
way
the old woman looked at her, she knew that the episode was not finished.

Despite a vague feeling of disquiet, she stopped. What could this old woman
have
to say to her? For three weeks Moira had been walking past the cabin every
afternoon. Why now was the woman speaking to her?

Miss Rhode cleared her throat. The sound was as dry as her wrinkled face. "I
thought you ought to know," she said, fixing Moira with her bright, black
eyes.
"You being a woman all alone up there, you have a right to know."

Moira found herself coming closer, as the wind blew Miss Rhode's words off
into
the garden beside the house.

"What?" Moira said. "What should I know?"

". . . Goatman," said the old woman, and Moira came closer still. Had she