"Tom Reamy - Waiting For Billy Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reamy Tom)

Waiting For Billy Star
by Tom Reamy
Out here the wind is almost always blowing off the caprock. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter, whipping
sheets of sand like torn veils across the black asphalt of the highway. People out here don't have much time for the gentl
things; the sun is too hot and the land is too dry and stingy. But they all remember Susanne Delacourt, even after ten yea

The record is still on the jukebox. I don't know why I left it there, but I wouldn't take it off now. It's just a recording
hokey old song that was popular back then called "The Tennessee Waltz." Occasionally someone will play it; then a quie
settle over the place, weather-worn faces will soften, ranchers and oilfield workers will gaze into their beer lost in
remembering. Even the travelers who never heard of Susanne Delacourt will sense something and fall silent.

When the record is over, they'll look at each other and smile, sharing a sweet memory. Then a waitress will rattle so
dishes and the talk will start and the moment is gone.

I'm no different from the rest of themтАФthe ones who knew Susanne Delacourt. The wind was blowing that evening
cold norther coming off the caprock, working itself into a full-scale sandstorm. The sun wasn't quite down; an orange blu
the dust haze to the west, but the cars going through town already had their headlights on. The cars barreling down the
flatland highway slowed reluctantly when they came to Caprock, Texas. It wasn't large enough to be much more than a
hindrance to those hurrying on to Snyder or Lamesa.

The jukebox finished a record and, in the momentary quiet before the next one began, I could hear the sand flicking
against the window. Harley Boone put his ticket and quarter beside the cash register and slapped the toothpick dispens
rang up the dime for the cup of coffee he'd been nursing for half an hour talking to the other loafers and gave him his cha

Harley stuck the toothpick in his mouth. "You wanta change jobs with me tonight, Wade?"

Harley was a pumper who had to make the rounds of a dozen wells every night and he wasn't looking forward to it
that weather. I put my hands behind my head, leaned back on my stool trying to look as contented as possible, and grin
My performance was lost on him; he'd already turned to watch Susanne fill coffee cups.

She smiled at him. "Good night, Mr. Boone," she said and took the tray to a table full of young cowhands in tight jea
trying their best to look like Paul Newman in Hud.

Harley watched her with a pensive little smile on his leathery face. He seemed to undergo a transformation; his beer
disappeared, the permanently grease-filled creases on his hands faded, his coarseness sloughed away and he was young
again and trim and handsome with a lifetime of promise ahead of him instead of a lifetime of indifference behind him. But
was only an illusion, a self-induced and contagious state of mind generated by the presence of Susanne Delacourt.

She affected all of them. Those young cowboys she was waiting on, so arrogantly aware of their own sexuality, acte
Sunday school children around Susanne. It hadn't been quite like that when she started working for me six months earlie
Everyone knew about her and Billy Star.

Billy Star wasn't his real name, of course. He apparently had the notion the name made the object; if he changed his
to "Star" he would become one. But he was only a second-rate rodeo rider. No one could understand why she loved hi
one could see what was so special about him. He was no better looking, no smarter, and certainly no kinder than any of
young cowboys she served coffee, but she loved him.

They had come in that night six months earlier to eat. He'd been riding in a rodeo at Lamesa and hadn't done too we
They were driving through to Fort Worth and he was already a little bit drunk. He was feeling rotten because of the rod
and he talked a lot. So everyone knew he wasn't married to Susanne but that she was living with him. Then, when she w