"Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 4 - The Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

He was sitting on a low bulbous rock just outside the first rank of trees that marked the surrounding hills'
thick woodland. Behind him was the forest, ahead and sloping down nearly two hundred yards to the
flatland was an open area or low shrubs and hidden rocks; beyond that was the untilled and sparsely treed
acreage belonging to Donald Murdoch. In the middle distance, a mile or so away and barely seen now
because of all the green, was the black streak of Cross Valley Road; and farther on, an abrupt density of
trees—on the left and right the hills again, and in the center those same trees marking the small estates of
the Station's wealthy, estates that stopped at a hill (better called a rise, though no one would admit it) that
signaled the back of the village's huge park.
Green no matter where he looked, and he knew that by August he would be praying hypocritically for
autumn and some new color.
For the time being, however, it would suffice, it wasn't white.
Absently, then, he scratched at the back of his neck, the side of his jaw. He was wearing a deep blue
windbreaker he had kept from the Air Force, a blue-plaid flannel shirt open at the neck, and dark blue
denims tucked into high boots that had seldom seen a shining. His hands were gloved, his white-blond hair
flattened over his ears by a sun-bleached baseball cap whose emblem had been torn off more than a
decade ago. His face was somewhat rounded, eyes deepset and black, his nose sharp-angled and
threatening to hook. Not a handsome man, nor plain; intriguing because of the thin-lipped mouth that
twitched and quivered, a consistently sardonic semaphore that added a dimen-sion to his speaking, was
somewhat unnerving when he listened.
He sighed loudly then, and stretched his arms slowly over his head, back, clasped hands, up and around
and into his lap. A grin, broad and self-mocking, at the unchallenged indolence that pre-vented him from
leaving his perch on the rock. This was unquestionably no day to be working, he thought as the grin
softened and his shoulders drooped into comfort. There were women strolling in the park with their heavy
coats and sweaters off at last, and a silver Rolls at Station Motors he wanted to dream over from all
possible angles. Not to mention the coeds spilling over the quad at Hawksted College, the naps he could
take beneath the willow in his backyard, the short drive to the Cock's Crow on Mainland Road where he
could listen to Gale Winston play her piano and conjure dreams of a past that never was. Any of that (or
any of a dozen other things) would be infinitely better than sitting on a cold rock at the end of a cold April,
hoping that a damned stupid plow would show itself miraculously so he could go home for to the Cock's
Crow, or to the college, or to the park) and count his fee for the finding.
Any of it would be better . . . and none of it would pay the bills.
He fished clumsily in his breast pocket for a ciga-rette and, after fighting a breeze that had crept up on
him from behind, lit it and coughed.
He could also stop smoking and add thirty years to his life.
 Listen, his mother had told him once, if you abso-lutely have to smoke, at least smoke a pipe. You
don't inhale. You know that, of course. You don't inhale a pipe. Your father smokes a pipe. Why
don't you ask him how it's done! He won't bite you, you know. Why don't you ask him, and get rid of
those filthy things.
He had asked, and he had tried, but he could never get the hang of reading at his desk without all that
tobacco tumbling onto a book and burning a hole through to the end.
Then quit altogether, you'll live longer, she'd said. His mother would not have been his mother if she
did not have an answer for every problem life gave him.
A fly buzzed toward his eyes and he swatted it away, ducking, shuddering, thinking it was a wasp.
He wondered what his mother would say about that.
Not, he told himself quickly (as though she were listening and shaking her head), that he had any real
gripes worth mentioning. After all, he said silently to the assembled weeds and thickening brush spread
before him, I have managed to create a decent life for myself, one that doesn't tie me down to an office
with someone else as boss. And I certainly have enough money squirreled in the bank so I can live
reasonably well for a fairly long time in case it all falls apart. No mortgage, no loans . . . what more could I
want? He crossed his fingers immediately, a childhood-reaction for warding off a jinx; but he knew full well