"Howard Waldrop - Flying Saucer Rock & Roll" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

FLYING SAUCER ROCK &
ROLL
Howard Waldrop


Science fiction stories aren't always set in the future. Sometimes sf
writers have to take us back to the past in order to catch up on things
such as UFO visitations, as in this detailed and evocative tale set in the
early 1960s.

Howard Waldrop won a Nebula Award for his novelette "The Ugly
Chickens." His first solo novel was Them Bones.



They could have been contenders.

Talk about Danny and the Juniors, talk about the Spaniels, the
Contours, Sonny Till and the Orioles. They made it to the big time:
records, tours, sock hops at $500 a night. Fame and glory.

But you never heard of the Kool-Tones, because they achieved their
apotheosis and their apocalypse on the same night, and then they broke
up. Some still talk about that night, but so much happened, the
Kool-Tones get lost in the shuffle. And who's going to believe a bunch of
kids, anyway? The cops didn't, and their parents didn't. It was only two
years after the President had been shot in Dallas, and people were still
scared. This, then, is the Kool-Tones' story:

Leroy was smoking a cigar through a hole he'd cut in a pair of thick,
red wax lips. Slim and Zoot were tooting away on Wowee whistles. It was a
week after Halloween, and their pockets were still full of trick-or-treat
candy they'd muscled off little kids in the projects. Ray, slim and nervous,
was hanging back. "We shouldn't be here, you know? I mean, this ain't the
Hellbenders' territory, you know? I don't know whose it is, but, like, Vinnie
and the guys don't come this far." He looked around.
 Zoot, who was white and had the beginnings of a mustache, took the
yellow wax-candy kazoo from his mouth. He bit off and chewed up the big
C pipe. "I mean, if you're scared, Ray, you can go back home, you know?"

"Nah!" said Leroy. "We need Ray for the middle parts." Leroy was
twelve years old and about four feet tall. He was finishing his fourth cigar
of the day. He looked like a small Stymie Beard from the old Our Gang
comedies.

He still wore the cut-down coat he'd taken with him when he'd escaped
from his foster home.

He was staying with his sister and her boyfriend. In each of his coat
pockets he had a bottle: one Coke and one bourbon.