"Richard Paul Russo - Nobodys Fool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

face than he took off his work glove, put his finger back into the hole
and tasted again, probably to ascertain whether the foul flavor had its
origin in the tree or the glove. To judge from his expression, it must
have been the tree. After a few minutes the white-coated men collected
their tools and reloaded the happy tree vans. Miss Beryl, curious,
went out onto the porch and stared at them maliciously until one of the
men came over and said, "Howdy."

"Doody," Miss Beryl said. The young man looked blank.

"What's the verdict?" she asked. The young man shrugged, bent back at
the waist and looked up into the grid of black branches.

"They're just old, is all," he explained, returning his attention to
Miss Beryl, with whom he was approximately eye level, despite the fact
that he was standing on the bottom step other front porch while she
stood at the top.

"Hell, this one here" --he pointed at Miss Beryl's elm"--if it was a
person, would be about eighty." The young man made this observation
without apparent misgiving, though the tiny woman to whom he imparted
the information, whose back was shaped like an elbow, was clearly the
tree's contemporary in terms of his own analogy.

"We could maybe juice her up a little with some vitamins," he went on,
but" He let the sentence dangle meaningfully, apparently confident that
Miss Beryl possessed sufficient intellect to follow his drift.

"You have a nice day," he said, before returning to his happy tree van
and driving away.

If the "juidng up" had any effect, so far as Miss Beryl could tell, it
was deleterious. That same winter a huge limb off Mrs. Boddicker's
elm, under the weight of accumulated snow and sleet, had snapped like a

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brittle bone and come crashing down, not onto Mrs. Boddicker's roof
but onto the roof of her neighbor, Mrs. Merriweather, swatting the
Mcrriweather brick chimney clean off. When the chimney descended, it
reduced to rubble the stone birdbath of Mrs. Gruber, the same Mrs.

Gruber who had been disappointed by the snail.

Since that first incident, each winter had yielded some calamity, and
lately, when the residents of Upper Main peered up into the canopy of
overarching limbs, they did so with fear instead of their customary
religious affection, as if God Himself had turned on them. Scanning
the maze of black limbs, the residents of Upper Main identified