"Edgar Pangborn - A Better Mousehole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pangborn Edgar)

Dr. West waited till Lulu come back from the Ladies to go on with his story. He wasn't telling it for
her, though, spite of her coming to sit on the stool by him and give him a feel or two for friendship's sake.
Not for the Judge neither. It was for me and that hole in the floor. I could of told him they never come out
till I close the bar and dim the lights.
He said he smuggled the blue ball home, not a word to anyone. As a story it wasn't nothing, which is
one reason I can't be-lieve he was making it up. He kept calling the thing a sphere. I always thought a
sphere was some type musical instrument.


When he says home he means the ram-and-shackle man-sion at the edge of town with back land
running up Ragged Rock Hill and Johnny Blood rat-tling around in the mansion being caretaker with one
eye that used to be an actor and still lets go with some Shakespeare if any-thing startles him. He said he
sent Johnny away for two months vacation to this sister in Maine who has been trying to make Johnny
come to Jesus anyhow thirty-forty years, only when Johnny hears that special tone of voice he shuts the
good eye and lets go with something from this Shakespeare.
I wish I had the education to make with Shakespeare when Irma is at me about talking to Lulu or
drinking up the profits which I never could do with this ulcer unless I would drop dead, she never thinks
of that, or why don't I at least try to earn enough we would spend winters in Florida if I had any zing.
Sent Johnny away, he says, and kept the sphere at room tem-perature. Dr. West is always talking
thataway. A room don't run a temperature, or if he means hot like some room what's so scientific if
somebody mon-keys with the thermostack or leaves the God-damn door open?
Winter in Florida for Christ's sake.
The blue thing hatched one night after he'd gone to bed тАФexcept he says it was not an egg but a
figure of speech. He found the two halves in the morning not chipped like a hatch-ed egg, just separated,
like they'd been fitted together originally so good you couldn't find the joint. Nothing else disturbed, but a
hole in the window-screen that looked like it was melted through, the ends of copper wire fused so the
hole looked like a grom-met.
Judge Van Anda asked him did he keep the busted eggshell. Dr. West says, Now I did try to make it
plain it was not an egg, nor do I know why I waste my experiences on you, like when I showed that
comb my mermaid gave me it could of been a paper clip, all the impression it made. So it could, says the
Judge kind of brisk, seeing they make such combs in Bridgeport and you can buy them in any drugstore
for upwards of nineteen cents plus tax. All right, says Dr. West, so if she did happen on it in the billows
off Bridgeport, God damn it, she gave it to me, didn't she? Oh, don't get red-eyed about it, says Judge
Van Anda.


IтАЩm not, says Dr. West. Al's the one with bloodshot eyes, late hours likely. He was watching me real
sharp. No sir, you too, Sid, says the Judge, you look in the mirror you'll see you're red-eyed like a
weasel, I snow you not. Now if you could have brought home just one mermaid scale. And Dr. West
says they do not have scales, no more reason to have scales than a seal or a whale or any other
ocean-dwell-ing mammal. Ocean-dwelling mahooha, says Judge Van Anda.
And I suppose, says Dr. West, back there ninety-six years ago in the little red schoolhouse the only
biology you ever learned was out in the bushes during re-cess. Which was a friendly re-mark because the
Judge could go hrrm reminding himself how he wants you to think he used to be. All the same I quick
took them another round of beers.
Lulu says, You got out of that too easy, Doc. I remember she pushed her shoulders back show-ing
what she has got. She could put her shoes in my trunk any time. She says, Do you still have the eggshell
or do you don't?
I do not, says Dr. West. I do not still possess the two halves of that vehicle.
Well excuse me for living, says Lulu, but she wasn't mad. She likes everybody, you could call it a