"Howard Waldrop - DisRxT" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

D=RxT
by Howard Waldrop


ONE, TWO, BUCKLE MY SHOE


There were two clubhouses behind the abandoned gas station, under the sign that said G.M.H.-M.R.C.,
which stood for the Greater Mayfield He-Man Racing Club.

One clubhouse was a 10 x 12 thing, the usual shed-roofed cube, made of 1 x 2s, 2 x 4s, pieces of
plywood, and old Ralston-Purina feed signs. The whole thing was colored red-orange. The paint had
been kyped from the county equipment yard the year before.

Outside the door were usually parked three pedal-carsтАФa Big Dump Truck from Sears, painted blue
with a black bed; a Sears Sleek Sports Car, blue and white with silver trim; and a Gendron Speed Boat,
with a yacht watch-bell and a forty-eight star flag, stained cedar on the wood, with silver aluminum trim.
On the outside of the bright orange clubhouse had been lettered the words just like in the Little Lulu
comics.

Thirty feet away, across the driveway, twelve feet up in a big oak tree was the other clubhouse, 8 x 10
with a big doorway facing west and a slider window on the east side. The treehouse was painted dark
brown. Parked under the tree usually was a Garton 1949 Mercury Wagon with wooden sides, light
green hood, and chrome bumpers. There was a three-piece collapsible ladder leading up from the ground
that could be swung up over the doorway when someone was inside. Lettered across the side of the
treehouse were the words .




┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖┬╖



The Big Dump Truck belonged to Croupie, a short kid with a burr haircut who wheezed like a steam
engine when he played hard or got excited, and usually had a fit of low coughs that echoed like he was in
a silo, only he wasn't.

The Gendron Speedboat was Beanpole's. He had turned nine years old on April Fool's Day, 1953, and
he was already five feet seven-and-a-half inches tall and weighed sixty-four pounds. He hadn't grown an
inch or added a pound since he was seven. He had the Speedboat because the front was open, and his
knees, up around his ears when he pedaled, didn't bang into the sides of the thing, like with all the other
pedal-cars he'd tried.

The Sears Sleek Sports Car, a long low thing, more than forty-two inches front to back, was
Sankandank's. That wasn't his real name, but the closest his tittle brother could come to Henry Franklin
when he started to talk.

For that matter, none of their names but Dave's were their real ones, but nobody but teachers and their
moms' and dads' friends called them by their real names.