"Carrie Richardson - A Dying Breed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Richardson Carrie)

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A DYING BREED
by Carrie Richerson
1992

I can live with ghosts. This part of the Texas Hill Country has ghosts thicker than fleas on an
ol' yaller dog. Conquistadores slaughtered for god and gold here; the Comanche returned the
favor. Tonkawa practiced their ritual cannibalism along these creeks; Anglos answered with their
own atrocities. To the south, the martyrs of the Alamo mission still haunt old San Antonio de
Bexar. After the unpleasantness between the northern and southern states, freed blacks moved here
from Dixie and farmed the river bottoms in the only cash crop they knew -- cotton -- until they
and the land wore out. The attentive, midnight ear hears war whoops and Rebel yells mingle with
the strains of old spirituals.
The ghosts carry their histories upon their bowed backs and ask nothing of the living. I can
live with them in peace. But the dead have never rested easy in this sun-drenched, heat-struck
land -- and nowadays, they don't seem to be resting at all....

***

Angelina and I had been going over the week's arrest stats, in preparation for my appearance the
next day before the board of county commissioners. Fewer people reside in our entire county than
in some of San Antonio's suburbs, but that doesn't mean we don't have a problem with crime.
Vandalism and driving-while-intoxicated arrests were way up over last year, and drugs were
starting to be a serious concern. Domestic disturbance calls were on the rise, too.
Everyone seemed to be on a short fuse. Just the previous month, a local businessman had engaged
in an old-fashioned shootout on the main street of the county seat with his wife's lover. Both
were lousy shots and only managed to inflict painful but non-life-threatening wounds, despite
firing off a total of fifteen rounds between them. It was a miracle that someone wasn't killed.
A miracle that my department had nothing to do with, since none of us were anywhere around at the
time. It is simply not possible to give adequate law enforcement coverage to an entire county
with only four people and one working patrol car. I would take the arrest stats and an
impassioned plea for more money to the commissioners' court the next day, but it wouldn't do any
good. I already knew what I would hear: times are tough for everyone, tax rate too high already,
no extra money in the budget. The same excuses I'd heard for the last three years.
Angelina and I were crammed into the microscopic cubicle that functions as my office; the only
way we could both fit on the same side of the desk to review the booking log was for Angelina to
kneel on top. That blocked my view of the door, so I didn't see our visitor enter. The first I
knew of something wrong was Kyle's voice going up in that stuttering squeak he does when he gets
excited or angry.
That sound has set my teeth on edge since Kyle was a baby nursing at my breast. I suppose it
always will. But this time he was alternating it with some sort of gagging moan. It sounded
serious, but imagination failed me. It couldn't be an escape; we had only one prisoner, a DWI
still sleeping it off. Besides, the only thing the county commissioners had agreed to spend good
money on was a set of primo locks for our two cells. My fifty-year-old joints could scream at me
tomorrow. I threw myself over the desk and out of the cubicle.
I didn't draw my gun. Experience has taught me to be wary of such a facile solution to problems.
It's a good thing, too: the temptation to put a bullet into the thing standing just inside the
front door was overwhelming. The part of me that said, "Shoot!" shoved up hard against the part
that said, "Run!" -- and both were immobilized by the part that said, "Pray."