"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

When she went back into the house, he was watching her with cold, hard eyes.
"It's tonight," he said. "He's coming tonight, Mama."
The rain ceased at twilight, but the wind stiffened, hurl-ing drops of water from the pines and
scattering them like shot across the sagging roof. Running water gurgled in the ditch, and a rabbit ran
toward higher ground. In the west, the clouds lifted a dark bandage from a bloody slash of sky, and
somewhere a dog howled in the dusk. Rain-pelted, the sick hen lay dying in the yard.
Lucey stood in the doorway, nervously peering out into the pines and the scrub, while she listened to
the croak of the tree frogs at sunset, and the conch-shell sounds of wind in the pines.
"Ain't no night for strangers to be out wanderin'," she said. "There won't be no moon till nearly
midnight."
"He'll come," promised the small voice behind her. "He's coming from the Outside."
"Shush, child. He's nothing of the sort."
"He'll come, all right."
"What if I won't let him in the door?"
Doodie laughed. "You can't stop him, Mama. I'm only half like you, and it hurts when he
talks-inside."
Yes, child?"
"


"If he talks-inside to a human, the human dies. He told me."
"Sounds like witch-woman talk," Lucey said scornfully and stared back at him from the doorway. "I
don't want no more of it. There's nobody can kill somebody by just a-talkin'."
"He can. And it ain't just talking. It's talking inside."
"Ain't nobody can talk inside your mother but your mother."
"That's what I been saying." Doodle Iaughed. "If he did, you'd die. That's why he needed me."
Lucey's eyes kept flickering toward the rain-soaked scrub, and she hugged her huge arms, and
shivered. "Sil-liest I ever!" she snorted. "He was just a man, and you never even seed him."
She went inside and got the shotgun, and sat down at the table to clean it, after lighting a smoky oil
lamp on the wall.
"Why are you cleaning that gun, Mama? "
"Wildcat around the chicken yard last night!" she mut-tered. "Tonight I'm gonna watch."
Doodie stared at her with narrowed eyes, and the look on his face started her shivering again.
Sometimes he did seem not-quite-human, a shape witched or haunted wherein a silent cat prowled by
itself and watched, through human eyes.
How could she believe the wild words of a child sub-ject to fits, a child whose story was like those
told by witching women and herb healers? A thing that came from the stars, a thing that could come in the
guise of a man and talk, make love, eat, and laugh, a thing that wanted a half-human son to which it could
speak from afar.
How could she believe in a thing that was like a spy sent into the city before the army came, a thing
that could make her conceive when it wasn't even human? It was wilder than any of the stories they told
in the deep swamps, and Lucey was a good Christian now.
Still, when Doodie fell asleep, she took the gun and went out to wait for the wildcat that had been
disturbing the chickens. It wasn't unchristian to believe in wildcats, not even tonight.
 Doodie's father had been just a man, a trifiin' man. True, she couldn't remember him very clearly,
because she had been drinking corn squeezin's with Jacob Fleeter before the stranger came. She had
been all giggly, and he had been all shimmery, and she couldn't remember a word he'd said.
"Lord forgive me," she breathed as she left the house.
The wet grass dragged about her legs as she crossed the yard and traversed a clearing toward an
island of palmetto scrub from which she could cover both the house and the chickenyard.