"Robert McCammon - The Collected Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the
other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at
the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but
tonightтАФwith tornado warnings in the weather forecastтАФI was tempted to turn the lock a little early. "Tell you
what," I said. "If we're empty at nine, we skedaddle. 'Kay?"
"No argument here," she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting
newly-washed coffee cups, saucers and plates away on the stainless steel shelves.
Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner's lights flickered, then came
back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of
tornado season in south Alabama, and we've had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that
Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one
we saw in '82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.
"You got any Love-Ins planned this weekend, hippie?" I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and
to rib her, too.
She was in her late-thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could've passed for a kid. "Wouldn't you like to
know, redneck?" she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl LovesongтАФand I know that
couldn't have been her real nameтАФwas a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard
work. But I didn't care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to
work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who'd ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody
just fineтАФeven us rednecks. That's what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite
songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy, I've raised
my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don't like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob
Clayton.
Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late 'sixties, and that she went
to Love-Ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was nineteen eighty-four and Ronnie
Reagan was president, she'd look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she'd start thinking straight
when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.
Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I'm a fifty-five-year-old redneck
who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago.
Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, "Wow! Look at that
light-show!"
"Light-show, my ass," I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn't too worried about the
storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob's was, you had a feeling of being a long
way off from civilizationтАФthough Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a
feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the
Mobile Press-Register that the last customerтАФa trucker on his way to TexasтАФhad left on the counter a half-hour
before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like
Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Quik-Mart in Mobile and had been killed by the police
in a shootout; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a
maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up
and that Reagan swore we'd show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon.
The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from
the rain into my parking-lot.



II

The headlights were attached to an Alabama State Trooper car.
"Half alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns." Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the