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

"Well, hell, somethin' else to fix! Anyway, to the creek."

He turned to me. "You want him to go along on up there, see you don't
get snakebit?"

"No, I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Mind if I ask what you're going up there for?" he asked. He was
looking away from me. I could see having to come right out and ask
was bothering him. Such things usually came up in the course of
conversation.

"I'm a-uh, bird scientist. I study birds. We had a sighting-someone told
us the old Gudger place-the area around here-I'm looking for a rare
bird. It's hard to explain."

I noticed I was sweating. It was hot.

"You mean like a goodgod? I saw a goodgod about twenty-five years
ago, over next to Bruce," he said.

"Well, no." (A goodgod was one of the names for an ivory-billed
woodpecker, one of the rarest in the world. Any other time I would
have dropped my jaw. Because they were thought to have died out in
Mississippi by the teens, and by the fact that Krait knew they were
rare.)



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I went to lock my car up, then thought of the protocol of the situation.
"My car be in your way?" I asked.

"Naw. It'll be just fine," said Jim Bob Krait. "We'll look for you back
by sundown, that be all right?"

For a minute, I didn't know whether that was a command or an
expression of concern.

"Just in case I get snakebit," I said. "I'll try to be careful up there."

"Good luck on findin' them rare birds," he said. He walked up to the
porch with his family.

"Les go," said Luke.