"Blackwater - 01 - The Flood" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDowell Michael)

"Who are you?" said Oscar in wonder.
"Elinor Dammert."
"I mean," said Oscar, "why are you here?"
"In the hotel?"
"Yes."
"I was caught by the flood. I couldn't get away."
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"Ever'body got out of the hotel," said Bray. "They got out or they took 'em out. Last Wednesday."
'They forgot me," said Elinor. "I was asleep. They forgot I was here. I didn't hear them call."
"Town hall bell rang for two hours," said Bray sullenly.
"Are you all right?" asked Oscar. "How long have you been here?"
"As he says, since Wednesday. Four days. I've been sleeping most of the time. Not much else to do when there's a flood. Have you got anything in that boat I can have?"
"To eat?" Oscar asked.
"Got nothing," said Bray shortly.
"There's nothing," said Oscar. "I'm sorry, we should have brought something."
"Why?" asked Elinor. "You didn't expect to find anybody still in the hotel, did you?"
"Surely did not!" said Bray in a tone of voice which suggested that the surprise had in fact been not completely agreeable.
"Hush!" cried Oscar, annoyed by Bray's rudeness, and wondering at it, too. "Are you all right?" he repeated. "What did you do when the water was high?"
"Nothing," replied Elinor. "I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for somebody to come and get me."
"When I first looked in the window, you weren't there. There wasn't anybody in the room."
"I was there," said Elinor. "You just couldn't see me through the window right. There must have been a reflection on the glass. I was just sitting there. I didn't hear you at first."
There was silence a moment. Bray looked at Elinor Dammert with deep mistrust. Oscar bowed his head and tried to puzzle out what to do.
"Is there room for me in that boat?" asked Elinor after a bit.
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"Of course!" cried Oscar. "We'll take you away. You must be starved."
"Pull the boat around," said Elinor to Bray, "right under the window, and I'll climb out."
Bray did so. Holding on to the awning with one hand, Oscar stood and gave Elinor his other. She lifted her skirt and stepped gracefully out of the hotel window into the boat. Quite at her ease, and giving no indication of the terror she must have felt at being for four days the only occupant of a town that was almost completely submerged, Elinor Dammert squeezed herself in the boat between Oscar Caskey and Bray Sugarwhite.
"Miss Elinor, my name is Oscar Caskey, and this is Bray. Bray works for us."
"How do you do, Bray?" said Elinor, turning to him with a smile.
"Fine, ma'am," said Bray in a tone and with a frown that contradicted his words.
"We'll get you to high ground," said Oscar.
"Is there room for my things?" said Elinor, as the black man pushed his paddle against the bricks of the Osceola Hotel.
"No," replied Oscar regretfully, "we are pretty tight in here now. I tell you what, though—soon as Bray gets us to dry land, he can come back here and pick 'em up."
"I cain't go inside that place!" Bray protested.
"Bray, you are gone do it!" said Oscar. "You realize what Miss Elinor has just been through for four days? When you and me and Mama and Sister were high and dry? And eating breakfast, dinner, and a little supper and complaining just because we brought two packs of cards away with us instead of four? You realize what Miss Elinor must have been thinking about, all alone in that hotel, with the water rising?"
"Bray," said Elinor Dammert, "I have just two little bags and I put 'em right beside the window on the floor. All you have to do is reach in."
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* * *
Bray paddled in silence, headed back the way he and Oscar had come. He stared at the back of the young woman who had had no business at all being found where she was found.
Oscar, in the front of the boat, wanted very much to find something to say to Miss Elinor Dammert, but could think of nothing at all—certainly no remark came to mind that would justify his turning right around in the boat and awkwardly speaking to her over his shoulder. Lucidly, as he thought it, the carcass of a large raccoon suddenly bobbed to the surface of the oily black water when they had just passed the town hall, and Oscar explained that pigs, attempting to swim through the floodwater, had slashed their own throats with their forefeet. It was an undetermined point whether they all had drowned or bled to death. Miss Elinor smiled and nodded and said nothing. Oscar said nothing further, and did not turn around again until Bray was paddling past Oscar's own house. "That's where I live," said Oscar, pointing out the second story of the submerged Cas-key mansion. Miss Elinor nodded and smiled, and said that it looked like a very big and very pretty house and she wished she could see it sometime when it wasn't underwater. Oscar heartily concurred in that wish; Bray did not. Only a few minutes later Bray ran the boat up between two large exposed roots of a vast live oak that marked the town line to the northwest. Oscar stood out of the boat, balancing on one of the roots, and then helped Elinor on to dry land. Elinor turned to Bray. "Thank you," she said. "I really do 'predate you going back. Those two bags are all I've got, Bray, and I've got to have them or I've got nothing. I put 'em both right inside the window, and all you have to do is reach inside." Then she and Oscar set out together for the Zion Grace Church, which was on high ground a mile
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away, where the first families of Perdido had taken refuge.
A quarter of an hour later, Bray had maneuvered the little boat back against the side of the Osceola Hotel. The water, in even so short a time, had dropped several inches. He sat for several moments just staring at that blank open window, wondering how he would ever get the courage up to stick his arm inside and retrieve the bags. "Hungry!" he cried aloud to himself. "What'd that white woman eat?!" The sound of his own voice strengthened him—even though it had defined a portion of that unpleasant mystery he felt surrounded Elinor Dammert—and he turned the boat so that he could lean his shoulder against the brick wall of the hotel. Holding on to the concrete casement with one hand, he reached his other arm quickly into the room. His hand closed around the handle of a suitcase. He jerked it out of the window and into the boat. He took a deep breath, and thrust his arm in once more.
His hand closed around... nothing.
He jerked it out again. He stared at the sun a moment through squinting eyes, cocked his ear and heard nothing but the scraping of the boat against the orange bricks of the hotel, thrust his hand in again and moved it all about beneath the window inside the room. No second case was there.
Now there was nothing for it but actually to look into the hotel room—to put his head into the blank opening and stare around, looking for Miss Elinor's second bag.
With an unpleasant consciousness that he was the only person in all Perdido at that moment, Bray sat down again in the boat and considered the matter. He might, if he peered into the window, see the case within reach. That, definitely, was the most hopeful possibility, for then he could bring it out almost as simply as he had brought out the other. He might,
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however, see the case out of his reach. This would necessitate climbing through the window. He would not do that—but that would be all right, because he could always report to Mr. Oscar that he could not get out of the boat because he had been unable to tether it.
Bray stood up in the boat and steadied himself by grasping the awning. He looked in the window, but could not see the second case at all. It simply wasn't there.