"Bruce Holland Rogers - Thirteen Ways to Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Thirteen Ways to
Water
BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS




1. With Blood

When Jack Salter was seventeen, two other guys held his arms while
Bull Wilson punched his face. Three times. Hard.
"You stay away from Diane," Bull said. "Don't even talk to her." Later,
on the riverbank, Jack washed the blood from his face and thought, I'll
never forget this. I will never forgive.



2. Because She Asks Him To

When Diane Wilson comes to Jack this time, it isn't out of the mists of
fantasy. She comes in a BMW, and she's her real self, a woman almost
fifty.
He's sitting under the overhang of his tin roof when she drives up. The
blue Beemer looks strange on the gravel road that generally sees VW bugs
or beat-up Hondas or more often no traffic at all. Diane wears a suit and
jacket. She goes from crisp to wilted the minute she gets out of the car's
air-conditioning. He puts his book down but doesn't stand.
"Jack," she says.
He nods but can think of nothing to say that won't seem like a formula.
Not, This is a surprise. Not, How've you been?
The silence grows between them. He thinks it is strange at his age to
feel this sort of awkwardness. At last she tells him, "I need your help,
Jack."
"My help," he says.
"Actually," she says, "Bull needs your help."
He could laugh then. He could shake his head. He could say, The son of
a bitch you married needs my help? But instead he folds his hands and
says, "Tell me."
"He's down by the river," she says. "He's been there for days. I looked
and looked, and when I found him, he told me it was for the water. So he
could drown."
"I don't understand," Jack says.
"I don't either." She begins to cry.
He doesn't stand up, go to her, embrace her. He lets her stand there,
wet-faced, hugging herself, shaking, until she is finished. She opens her
purse and takes out a tissue.
"Why don't you call the police?"
"I guess you won't do it," she says.
"I didn't say that."
"If I call the police, they'll hospitalize him. We've been through that