"Blackwater - 06 - Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDowell Michael)

"Grandmama?" said Tommy Lee.
"What?"
"What if I went with you?"
Queenie considered this.
"I'd feel protected," she said at last. "Carl didn't come when Malcolm was in the house. It was only when Malcolm got married and moved next door."
"Then I'll go back with you. We can leave tonight. I'll drive you back."
Queenie shook her head. "And then tomorrow you'll come back here. Carl will just be waiting for you to go. It won't do any good."
"But what if I stayed?"
"Stayed?" echoed Grace.
Tommy Lee nodded.
Queenie smiled, then reached over and squeezed Tommy Lee's hand. "You're sweet, but you love this boring old farm. I know how you love it."
Tommy Lee shrugged. "I tell you what," he said. "If Mama and Grace will let me, I'll come stay with you till you feel safe again."
"What about your hunting?" said Grace.
"There's woods right up against Elinor's house. I hunted there with Malcolm one time."
"What about fishing?" said his mother. 63
"There's the Perdido. It's about as close as you can get."
"You'd leave us?" said Lucille, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Grandmama needs me," said Tommy Lee.
"That I do," said Queenie. "Would y'all give Tommy Lee up for a while?"
Grace sighed. "Tommy Lee can do what he wants."
Lucille nodded acquiescence. "Are you gone send him back if he causes you any trouble?"
"This boy?" cried Queenie. "Who's he gone give trouble to?"
"He's not yours," Grace said pointedly. "We're not giving him up the way you gave up Danjo."
"I know that," said Queenie. "I just want the loan of him for a while. When I've used him all up, I'll send him back."
"Make sure you do," said Grace sternly. "And what about school in the fall?"
"Lord, Grace," said Queenie, "the boy just got out of school. Don't already be talking about going back!"
Thus Queenie Strickland returned to Perdido with Tommy Lee Burgess. The CaskeysЧand the rest of Perdido as wellЧwondered just what she had done, or said, or given, to pry the boy away from the farm. And they wondered why she wanted him, particularly when she had taken so little note of him before.
Yet, as if to make up for her previous neglect, Queenie couldn't make enough of Tommy Lee that summer. She bought him three new guns to hunt with; she drove him down to Destin and let him pick out the best set of fishing gear and tackle in the store. She bought him boots for the woods, and a boat for the Perdido. She cleared the boxes out of the bedroom next to hers and moved in the biggest, softest bed she could find. She hired a cook just to fix him breakfast in the morning. Most fifteen-year-olds would have been spoiled and overwhelmed by such attention, but Tommy Lee accepted it with aston-
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ishing equanimity. He spent his days hunting and fishing, and his evenings with Queenie, watching television or going out to the Starlite Drive-in for double features. Queenie sat in the car, swatting mosquitoes and forever adjusting the volume control on the speaker; Tommy Lee lay on the hood, his head on a pillow against the windshield, watching the summer lightning quite as much as he watched the picture on the screen.
Queenie often asked Tommy Lee if he weren't growing tired of her, if he wouldn't rather be off with some of his friends instead of being chained to a wearisome old woman. Tommy Lee always shrugged and said that he didn't have any friends, and that he never really got tired of Queenie, except when she asked too many questions.
It was at night, after the ten o'clock news or after an evening at the Starlite, that Tommy Lee proved his real worth to his grandmother. For he left the door to his room open, and at any time of the night Queenie could rise, walk into the hallway, and see him there sleeping. Queenie did that often. And Tommy Lee's presence in the house, as his grandmother had predicted, kept Carl away.
The summer passed quickly for both Queenie and Tommy Lee, and soon the time neared for Tommy Lee to go back to school. Grace and Lucille began talking about his returning to Gavin Pond Farm, and Queenie began to speak of the superiority of the Perdido school system over that of the one in Babylon.
"It's up to Tommy Lee," said Grace at last, when it became apparent that a sort of stalemate had been reached.
Tommy Lee decided to remain with his grandmother. He transferred to the high school in Perdido, and all during the fall of 1959 and the winter and spring of 1960, he spent five days a week in Perdido and Saturdays and Sundays at Gavin Pond Farm.
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Every night, however, he slept in the bedroom next to Queenie's. Carl Strickland remained at bay.
This development was remarked upon widely in Perdido. Yet another Caskey offspring had been given away. In the whole history of the family, the only child to have remained with its parents was Frances, and Frances was now dead. Lilah, though she lived in the same house as her father, belonged not to him so much as to Elinor. When Frances drowned in the Perdido, Lilah had become her grandmother's child; Billy Bronze became a sort of uncle to his daughter. He took no more part than that in her upbringing. Elinor gave permission, Elinor refused requests, Elinor decided what might or might not be done; Elinor bought Lilah's clothes, and paid for Lilah's pleasures. Billy watched hia daughter grow up with affection and interest, but not with the love or involvement of a parent.
Perdido rather hoped that Miriam Caskey Strickland would conceive a childЧshe was nearing forty, and there wasn't much more time for herЧbecause Perdido wanted to make bets on who would end up with it. Miriam, of all Caskeys within memory, was least likely to want to hold on to a son or a daughter if anyone were to step forward with an offer. The often-heard remark was that if it was a girl, she'd trade it for diamonds; if it was a boy, for oil-company stock.
Perhaps that was what Miriam would have done, had she had a child. But Miriam didn't conceive, though she and Malcolm went at it with the application that Miriam brought to everything. Malcolm had been surprised by his wife's change of heart, and even went so far as to question her about it. "You didn't always want a baby, you know," he pointed out. "You said you'd use its head for a pin-cushion."
"Married people have babies," Miriam replied, a little uncomfortably. "So I changed my mind, that's all. I decided that if I was gone go to the trouble of
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marrying youЧand Malcolm, there never was a man who was more trouble than youЧthen I might as well go on and do the other thing, too." Yet no child came, and it began to look as if no child would.
This irked Miriam. She didn't like being thwarted, and that it was her own body that was proving recalcitrant was a double insult. Malcolm tried to point out to his disappointed wife that a child was only likely to prove a burden to her. Pregnancy itself was likely to interfere with her work; the child would demand time and attention that Miriam would probably resent not giving to the mill and the oil business.
Miriam wasn't consoled. "I could still go to the office if I got pregnant," she said. "And if once in a while I couldn't, I could tell you and Billy what to do and I suppose you would get it done. Once the child came, I'd hire a girl to take care of it." All Zaddie and Ivey's brothers had been long married, and already there was a third generation of female Sapps, just pining to be hired on by the Caskeys. "And if that didn't work out, I could always send it out to Gavin Pond Farm or over to Elinor's. They'd all leap at the chance for another baby. After all, there hasn't been a baby around here since Lilah was born."
But Miriam still didn't conceive, and finally she was convinced by Malcolm and her own body that it would never happen. This didn't, however, lessen her desire to have a child. She looked next door, and saw how Queenie had stolen Tommy Lee away from Lucille and Grace. And when Miriam looked the other way, what she saw was Lilah Bronze, just ripe for the plucking.
Lilah was thirteen, in the eighth grade, and was like no one so much as Miriam herself: starchly handsome, proud of her position, enamored of jewels and worldly things, slightly contemptuous of those her own age. In short, Lilah was a child after her aunt's heart. There was already a certain intimacy
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between them on account of Miriam's jewelry collection, which Lilah passionately coveted.
Miriam saw no reason why she should not have Lilah for her own. Certainly, following Malcolm's arguments, that would be better than giving birth to a child herself. There was no pregnancy to worry about, no infancy to be endured, and there was not the uncertainty of personality to contend with. She might, after all, have given birth to a child who would turn out to be just like MalcolmЧor, worse, like Frances. Just because a woman had carried a child in her womb was no guarantee that she would feel any sympathy with it.