"Carter Swart - Uncle John" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swart Carter)

I slid down the bank, took off my shoes and socks, and contemplated my chances of getting him out of there before the car was irretrievably lost. It seemed just a matter of minutes.

A muffled shriek of encouragement greeted me. A frenzy of hope was reflected in my uncle's wide-eyed expression, and he urged me on with energetic nods and bumps and cries.

But now my uncle's own words stopped me: When I find me a sick animal, I put it out of its misery. His words. Hadn't Trudy called him a sick animal as well? And didn't this make sense in a bizarre sort of way? I sat there pondering it while my uncle screamed and screamed in the most inhuman way. I can hear it now, just as though it were yesterday. It was awful.

Making up my mind I put on my socks and shoes and watched the car slowly slip into the stygian void. A sudden wind whipped the water to froth, as though in approval of this deed and of my passive part in it. I shivered. Toward the end I could barely see anything through the rear window, except the top of my uncle's head, his long black hair waving back-and-forth like kelp fronds caught in a dark ocean current. Finally the car tipped down, its rear end rose from the water, and it silently disappeared, bubbles and debris marking its passage to the bottom.

It's still down there.

In retrospect I probably should have saved him; I have to live with that. But I was afraid that he'd kill my aunt and mom -- all of us -- if I let him loose. It's what really convinced me to remain a bystander -- a choking fear of my uncle.

Afterward there was an investigation. John's specific threat to leave, the testimony of a witness to that effect, the absence of his car and personal belongings -- no doubt buried in the forest by my aunt -- tended to support her fabricated story of his desertion. It was not an uncommon thing. And although they tried to crack my aunt's story, she was as cool as a snow cone in July. The sheriff finally gave up and listed my uncle as a missing person.

He's still on the books that way.

Mom later found a job in Raleigh and we moved there in '42. With the war in full swing jobs were plentiful. She met a machinist at the plant and married him. He was a good man, a good provider, and when the war ended we all moved back to Los Angeles.

Claire went to college, but never married; she's never trusted men. Living alone in Phoenix she writes books on gardening. Her letters are short, cryptic, and emotionless.

Mom died in '85 of cancer, taking to her grave what she knew of my uncle's disappearance. We found it convenient never to discuss it. I doubt that she knew of my part in it, and I never told her that I knew of her part. They had their reasons.

Aunt Trudy still lives on the property. She's never remarried, claiming one John Crandle was enough. But I think it's because she wants no one prowling around the forest or lake. She doesn't want an intimate finding the Dodge down there in that black ooze. There's no statute of limitations on murder. We write now and then; it's been a polite but distant relationship.

Me? I married a fine woman, have two strapping sons, and am now a grandfather five times over. Life's been good.

Uh-oh, here's the wife and grand kids. Time to put this genie back in the bottle and forget Uncle John -- if only I could.

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Carter began writing in 1979, prompted by three years of idleness, resulting from a 1976 bout with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disease which left him a lifetime paraplegic. To date, he's sold over one hundred and forty magazine fictional stories and articles, including over forty professional sales. His fiction has appeared in prozines: P.I. Magazine, Hardboiled, The Thoroughbred of California, Backstretch, Blood Review, Into the Darkness, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. In addition he's had two books published by Hollis Books: Deceived by Death (mystery) and Bitter Creek (western). His third novel, Nightingale, is currently in layout at HB. He has just finished Insufficient Evidence (mystery novel) and is hard at work on Dunnigan's Game (another western novel). When not at his computer, Carter reads the classics, listens to Italian opera, watches English mysteries on the telly, and corresponds with his four daughters. He lives with his artist wife, Bonnie, in Lancaster, CA. Carter Swart's website:
http://as.net/~cswart/index2.html