"Howard Waldrop - The Ugly Chickens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

It was maybe ten yards from the trees. The road ended under one of the
windows. I saw somebody waving from the corner of my eye.

I slammed on the brakes.

A whole family was on the porch, looking like a Walker Evans
Depression photograph, or a fever dream from the mind of a Hee Haw
producer. The house was old. Strips of peeling paint a yard long tapped
against the eaves.

"Damned good thing you stopped," said a voice. I looked up. The
biggest man I had ever seen in my life leaned down into the driver's-
side window.

"If we'd have heard you sooner, I'd've sent one of the kids down to the
end of the driveway to warn you," he said.

Driveway?

His mouth was stained brown at the corners. I figured he chewed
tobacco until I saw the sweet-gum snuff brush sticking from the pencil
pocket in the bib of his overalls. His hands were the size of catchers'
mitts. They looked like they'd never held anything smaller than an axe
handle.

"How y'all?" he said, by the way of introduction.

"Just fine," I said. I got out of the car.

"My name's Lindberl," I said, extending my hand. He took it. For an
instant, I thought of bear traps, sharks' mouths, closing elevator doors.
The thought went back to wherever it is they stay.



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"This is the Gudger place?" I asked.

He looked at me blankly with his grey eyes. He wore a diesel truck cap,
and had on a checked lumberjack shirt beneath his overalls. His rubber
boots were the size of the ones Karloff wore in Frankenstein.

"Naw, I'm Jim Bob Krait. That's my wife Jenny, and there's Luke and
Skeeno and Shirl." He pointed to the porch.

The people on the porch nodded.

"Lessee? Gudger? No Gudgers round here I know of. I'm sorta new