"Robert Reed - To Church With Mr. Multhiford" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

ROBERT REED

TO CHURCH WITH MR. MULTHIFORD

It was everybody's idea.

Or maybe it was nobody's.

Maybe it's that ideas drift in the air like gas, and beer and boredom worked on
us to where we could catch hold of that particular notion. Sometimes I think
that's what happens: Ideas are invisible clouds that get trapped inside people's
heads. Different shaped heads trap different ones, which explains a helluva lot.
Here in Pelican County we've got a lot of simple round heads, if you know what I
mean. Here it pays to be perfectly average. And if you happen to get stuck with
a fancy-shaped head -- one that catches goofy ideas -- then you'd best keep a
hat on it.

If you know what I mean.

Habit is everything in this part of the world; nothing wants to change.

Our Saturday night habit was to go somewhere peaceful, like the cemetery, and
drink beer. Which is what we were doing when the idea found us. Pat started
things off, saying, "I'm bored."

Charlie belched and said, "Yeah, why don't we pull something?" A prank, he
meant. Detergent in the town pool, trees dressed up with toilet paper. That's
the sort of stuff we specialized in. But that night somehow felt different, and
we couldn't get excited about ordinary shit.

We had ourselves another round of beers, and I stared up at the stars, feeling
smaller than small; and finally, after clearing his throat of a big loud gob of
something, Lester said, "I know. Let's make ourselves a crop circle."

Charlie belched again -- he's famous for his gassy sounds -- then reminded us,
"It's been done."

Not by us, but he was right. Pelican County is famous for its crop circles, and
everyone knew who made them.

Old Man Multhiford, I was thinking. And just like that I knew what we could do.
The idea settled in my head, and I giggled, and I said, "Hey, let's make a
circle out on Multhiford's place!"

Pat straightened, eyes getting big and round. "On his farm? Are you fucking
serious?"

Multhiford put maybe half of the circles on his own land. That was common
knowledge. It was also known that he was insane and probably dangerous. If he
spoke to you, he spoke about corn. His corn; all corn. I'd seen him talking on