"Thompson, Jim - South of Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Jim)

He slipped his gun, grabbing it around the trigger guard; getting ready to slam me with the barrel. "I'm telling you one more time, punk. You get in that buggy, or. . . ."
"He'll do it." Four Trey Whitey stepped between us. "He'll go with you, Lassen, and I'll go along with him."
Lassen hesitated, his tongue flicking his lips. "I don't want you, Whitey. Just Burwell."
"We'll both go," Four Trey insisted. "And we'll have a good frisk before we leave. How about it, friend? . . ." He winked at the garage owner. "Mind doing the honors?"
"You bet," said the garage owner. "You just bet I will!"
He gave us as good a frisk as I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty. Searching us from head to foot and proving in front of everyone that we weren't armed. That pretty well spoiled any little plans Lassen had. He wouldn't dare shoot us or rough us up now. Since we'd never be held in Matacora, I wondered that he'd bother to take us in at all. But he had more plans than I'd figured on.
"All right," he grunted. "You want it that way, you'll get it that way. Pile into the front seat."
We got into the front with Four Trey driving. Lassen got in behind us, his gun still drawn, and we took off for Matacora.
It was eighty-five miles away. Eighty-five miles without a filling station or a store or a house or any place where a man might get a drink of water or a bite to eat. Nothing but some of the sorriest land in the world--a desert that even a mule jackrabbit couldn't have crossed without a lunch pail and a canteen. So when we were about midway in those eighty-five miles, more than forty miles from Matacora or the town we had come from, Bud Lassen unloaded us. He forced us out of the car and drove off by himself.
It was a pretty bad spot to be in, but Four Trey winked at me and said it was no sweat. "Someone will come along, Tommy. Just relax and the time will go faster."
He jumped the ditch and stomped around in what little growth there was on the other side, making sure that it was free of any vinegarroons or centipedes or tarantulas. Then, he lay back with his hands under his head and his hat pushed over his eyes.
I went over to where he was and lay down next to him. We stayed that way for a while, the incessant Texas wind scrubbing us with hot blasts. And at last he pushed his hat back and squinted at me.
"Written any poetry lately, Tommy?"
"Nothing," I said. "I kind of got out of the habit along with eating."
"Let's have some of the old ones then. That one about the road seems appropriate under the circumstances."
I said I wasn't sure I remembered it, not all of it, and he said to give him what I remembered, then. So I did:
_I can still see that lonely grass-grown trail,_
_Which clung so closely to the shambling fence,_
_Sand-swept, wind-torn at every gale,_
_A helpless prey to all the elements._
_Its tortuous ruts were like two treacherous bars,_
_So spaced to show an eye-deceiving gape,_
_So, while one ever struggled for the stars,_
_They hugged too close for actual escape._
_Escape--tell me the meaning of the word._
_Produce the man who's touched a star for me._
_Escape is something for a bird._
_A star is good to hang upon a tree . . ._
"I guess that's about all I remember," I said.
Four Trey said he liked the poem very much, but it always gave him a touch of blues. "How about something a little lighter? A couple of limericks maybe."
"Well, let's see," I said. "Uh . . . oh, yeah. . . ."
_Quoth Oedipus Rex to his son,_
_I have no objection to fun._
_But yours is a marital menace._
_So play games no more_
_In you-know-who's boudoir._
_But practice up on your tennis._
"That's actually not a true limerick," I said. "But here's one that is:"
_Said Prometheus chained high in the sky_
_Where he'd alternately shiver and fry._
_While great birds of carrion_
_His liver made merry on,_
_"I'll bet they'd like Mom's apple pie."_
Four Trey made a chuckling sound. "Go on, Tommy," he said. "How about that booze poem? The _Ode to a Load_ or whatever you called it."
"Gee," I said. "Now, you _are_ going back. I did that one when I was just a kid."
"Mm, I know," he said drily. "But the old things are best, Tommy. So give me what you can of it. Let me hear that grand old poem once more before I die."
I laughed. "Well, all right, if you want to punish yourself," I said and I stared in again:
_Drink--and forgo your noxious tonics,_
_Nor pray for cosmic reciprocity:_
_Earth's ills for heaven's high colonics._