"John Kessel - The Pure Product" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

sing the summer songs of insects—not individual sounds, but a
high-pitched drone of locusts, cicadas, small chirping things for which I
have no names. You drive along the superhighway and that sound blends
with the sound of wind rushing through your opened windows, hiding the
thrum of the automobile, conveying the impression of incredible velocity.
Wheels vibrate, tires beat against the pavement, the steering wheel
shudders, alive in your hands, droning insects alive in your cars. Reflecting
posts at the roadside leap from the darkness with metro-nomic regularity,
glowing amber in the headlights, only to vanish abruptly into the ready night
when you pass. You lose track of time, how long you have been on the
road, where you are going. The fields scream in your ears like a thousand
lost, mechanical souls, and you press your foot to the accelerator, hurrying
away.

When we left Kansas City that evening we were indeed hurrying. Our
direction was in one sense precise: Interstate 70, more or less due east,
through Missouri in a dream. They might remember me in Kansas City, at
the same time wondering who and why. Mr Graves checks the morning
paper over his grapefruit: “Man Burned by Gasoline Bomb.” The clerk
wonders why he ever accepted an unverified check, a check without even a
name or address printed on it, for six-hundred dollars. The check bounces.
They discover it was a bottle of chardonnay. The story is pieced together.
They would eventually figure out how—I wouldn’t lie to myself about that—I
never lie to myself—but the why would always escape them. Organized
crime, they would say. A plot that misfired.

Of course, they still might have caught me. The car became more of
a liability the longer I held onto it. But Ruth, humming to herself, did not
seem to care, and neither did I. You have to improvise those things; that’s
what gives them whatever interest they have.

Just shy of Columbia, Missouri, Ruth stopped humming and asked
me, “Do you know why Helen Keller can’t have any children?”

“No.”

“Because she’s dead.”

I rolled up the window so I could hear her better. “That’s pretty funny,”
I said.

“Yes. I overheard it in a restaurant.” After a minute she asked, “Who’s
Helen Keller?”

“A dead woman.” An insect splattered itself against the windshield.
The lights of the oncoming cars glinted against the smear it left.

“She must be famous,” said Ruth. “I like famous people. Have you
met any? Was that man you burned famous?”