"Dan Simmons - Shave And A Haircut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

"You know what the red means, Tommy?"
"What red?"
"On the barber pole. The red stripes that curl down."
I shrugged. "It means it's a barbershop."
It was Kevin's turn to sigh. "Yeah, sure, Tommy, but why red? And why have it
curling down like that for a barber?"
I didn't say anything. When Kevin was in one of his moods, it was better to wait him
out.
"Because it's blood," he said dramatically, almost whispering. "Blood spiralling
down. Blood dripping and spilling. That's been the sign for barbers for almost six
hundred years."
He'd caught my interest. I set the Superman comic aside on the platform. "OK," I
said, "I believe you. Why is it their sign?"
"Because it was their guild sign." said Kevin. "Back in the Middle Ages, all the guys
who did important work be-longed to guilds, sort of like the union our dads belong
to down at the brewery, and..."
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "But why blood?" Guys as smart as Kevin had a hard time
sticking to the point.
"I was getting to that," said Kevin. "According to this stuff I read, way back in the
Middle Ages barbers used to be surgeons. About all they could do to help sick
people was to bleed them, and..."
"Bleed them?"
"Yeah. They didn't have any real medicines or any-thing, so if somebody got sick
with a disease or broke a leg or something, all the surgeon ... the barber ... could do
was bleed them. Sometimes they'd use the same razor they shaved people with.
Sometimes they'd bring bottles of leeches and let them suck some blood out of the
sick person."
"Gross."
"Yeah, but it sort of worked. Sometimes. I guess when you lose blood, your blood
pressure goes down and that can lower a fever and stuff. But most of the time, the
peo-ple they bled just died sooner. They probably needed a transfusion more than a
bunch of leeches stuck on them."
I sat and thought about this for a moment. Kevin knew some really weird stuff. I
used to think he was lying about a lot of it, but after I saw him correct the teachers in
fourth and fifth grade a few times ... and get away with it ... I realized he wasn't
making things up. Kevin was weird, but he wasn't a liar.
A breeze rustled the few remaining leaves. It was a sad and brittle sound to a kid
who loved summer. "All right," I said. "But what's all of this got to do with
vampires? You think 'cause barbers used to stick leeches on people a couple of
hundred years ago that Mr. Innis and Mr. Denofrio are vampires? Jeez, Kev, that's
nuts."
"The Middle Ages were more than five hundred years ago, Niles," said Kevin, calling
me by my last name in the voice that always made me want to punch him. "But the
guild sign was just what got me thinking about it all. I mean, what other business has
kept its guild sign?"
I shrugged and tied a broken shoelace. "Blood on their sign doesn't make them
vampires."
When Kevin was excited, his green eyes seemed to get even greener than usual. They
were really green now. He leaned forward. "Just think about it, Tommy," he said.
"When did vampires start to disappear?"