"Moore, Lad - The Final Scorning Of Reba Nell Bixby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Lad)

Nights two and three were the same. Odie talked about changing his plans and doing two more nights, but it was coming on the weekend, and the VFW needed the parking lot.
"We're coming back here in a couple of months before mama buys a washer and old Mose picks out a new John Deere," said Odie, his hands rubbing briskly together in glee.
And so it went. Odie said the Lord was casting down his blessings on him for giving up his circus sinning, where he was nothing more than a charlatan, stealing from the trusting.
Miss Reba didn't know him then, but what he was describing seemed to fit the here and now. "What's the difference -- you're conning these people now, only pretending to be a representative of God instead of Titus Short," she said.
Odie bristled. "What do you know about Odie's guts, child, you just rolled off'n an East Texas turnip truck. You can't know how the Lord spoke to me and said to take his message out to the people to the tune of fifteen thousand road miles a year. Besides, you got rescued out of your little piece of hell, didn't you? Where's my chunk of 'please and thank-you' that you owe me anyway?"
Odie was getting weary of her. She had begun to assert her confidence, and when they played Rosebud, he had to cuff her twice more for getting cocky on the stage and making a run for the microphone. She was beginning to think she was running things. After Rosebud, she even argued with Odie about her share of the take. She wanted half now, a doubling of her cut.
"Honey, you will get half -- on the same day that the good Lord rises himself up in the East. Remind me to shell out that very day. I'll save it for you in a mayonnaise jar until then."
* * * * *
It was well after ten p.m., and the big truck wound its way stubbornly up the long grade that was Magazine Mountain, in the middle part of the Ozarks. The peach and grape crops had been taken to market, and once again, nature's bounty was strong. Odie had heard that implement sales were booming, and he noted with excitement that the construction of new barns and outbuildings was evident everywhere as they moved through Arkansas.
"Prosperity. I can smell it. Put a fresh coat of gold paint on the slop jar, sis. These mountain people have been chasing Mammon a little too hard. They want to cleanse themselves, and I'm their bar of Lifebouy soap."
Maybe that spin was the feather on the camel's back. Reba had just about enough of Odie by now. She started in on him and they began to argue violently, with only an occasional deer along the roadside as their audience. She was ranting about her share again. Odie turned on her with all of his wrath, and the cab shook with four-letter punctuations.
"This is the goddam end of it. Soon as we play out in Altus today, you can hop a Greyhound back to your shitty little seven hills. I will pay you a couple hundred bonus and buy the bus ticket, but this crap ceases today. I can't focus on soul-saving and worry about some tambourine-chanking wannabe that's gotten too big for her size six cotton drawers."
It went on and on, and several times Odie would brake the truck suddenly, trying to jerk Reba into the dashboard. Twice she reached for his hair, pulling out a respectable-sized chunk of it. That caused the truck to swerve across the other lane, brushing a "Caution-Falling Rock" sign and nearly going into the ditch.
That possibility scared them enough to settle down, and Odie reverted to calm tongue- lashings about her gaining weight and accusing her of skimming the pot.
Reba sat in silence for the geared-down ride on the backside of the mountain that led into Altus. At the middle of the long grade, Odie pulled the truck over in a wide spot and stopped to relieve himself on the side of the road.
He was already making plans. After he dumped Miss Reba, he would hit a few truck stops and find somebody else. Hell, some of these mountain women would be happy to crawl in his cab for as much as ten percent and three squares a day. All he would have to do was flash some hundreds and reach down in there and display that Odie smile. His Uncle Penny had been right. Women are like streetcars, when you step off one, there's another one coming along directly.
He stepped closer to the edge of the rock ledge that was bordered with a guardrail made of posts and steel cable. His stream poured out over the cable into nowhere. He was fumbling for the zipper when he felt a thud from behind, as if hit by dead-weight force. His legs hit the steel cable and his body kept moving, out over the edge of the canyon. His body hurtled into the coolness of space -- his shrill scream echoing across the rock walls of the narrow chute. In the darkness, he could not focus on what was happening to him -- he was cartwheeling end over end, for what seemed an eternity. His head brushed a rock, and the warmth of blood poured over his face. Then tree limbs, then blackness.
* * * * *
The truck rolled into Hampton, Kansas on a cool September morning. The man at the last tollbooth had said that the wheat crop had been the best in twenty years, and that cattle prices were up for the ranchers. There were signs of that good fortune with the mostly new pickups in front of May Beth's Cafй.
Inside, the farmers and ranchers had gathered all at one table, and one waitress was busy pouring coffee like a hummingbird going from flower to flower. At the counter sat a lone man -- maybe twenty-five, in starched and pressed Levi's. His crisp white western shirt had the top mother-of-pearl button left open, and a wad of black curly hair flowed out of his chest like a mockingbird nest. His high-crowned western hat had a hawk's feather neatly cropped and stuffed into a rattlesnake hatband.
"I need a real good man to help me for today and tomorrow. I pay a hundred dollars a day and all the grape soda pop you can drink."
The man turned to the voice in his left ear. She was pretty, and slim, dressed in pastel pink overalls and a navy-blue shirt with an alligator emblem. She had bright yellow hair that faintly smelled of Jungle Gardenia.
"Yeah? I might be just your boy. I noticed your rig when you pulled in here," he said, smiling broadly above his wad of Copenhagen.
"You sure you ain't lost? What in the good Lord's name is somethin' called "Miss Tanya's Heavenly Salvation Train" expecting to do in a sin-festerin' town like this?"
The End



Lad Moore's The Final Scorning of Reba Nell Bixby was first published in Progress Magazine, June 2000.