"Howard Waldrop - The Sawing Boys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

eyes. Only first the train is late, and the jalopy we bought stalled on us in the dark,
and there must have been this wrong turn somewhere, and the next thing you are
knowing the balonies blow and we are playing in the ditch and gunk and goo are all
over the place.
So here we are walking down this (pardon the expression) road, and we are
looking for a phone and a mechanically inclined individual, and we are not having
such a hot time of it.
"You will notice the absence of wires," said Chris the Shoemaker, "which leads
me to believe we will not find no blower at this watery paradise of Pratt Falls."
"Christ Almighty, I'm gettin' hungry!" says Miss Millie Dee Chantpie of a sudden.
She is in this real flapper outfit, with a bandeau top and fringes, and is wearing pearls
that must have come out of oysters the size of freight trucks.
"If we do not soon find the object of our quest," says Chris the Shoemaker, "I
shall have Large Jake blow you the head off a moose, or whatever they have in place
of cows out here."
It being a meet, we are pretty well rodded up, all except for Chris, who had to put
on his Fall Togs last year on Bargain Day at the courthouse and do a minute standing
on his head, so of course he can no longer have an oscar anywhere within a block of
his person, so Miss Millie Dee Chantpie carries his cannon in one of her enchanting
little reticules.
Large Jake is under an even more stringent set of behavioral codes, but he just
plain does not care, and I do not personally know any cops or even the Sammys
who are so gauche as to try to frisk him without first calling out the militia. Large
Jake usually carries a powder wagon—it is the kind of thing they use on mad
elephants or to stop runaway locomotives only it is sawed off on both ends to be
only about a foot long.
Little Willie usually carries a sissy rod, only it is a dumb gat so there is not much
commotion when he uses it—just the sound of air coming out of it, and then the
sound of air coming out of whomsoever he uses it on. Little Willie has had a date to
Ride Old Sparky before, only he was let out on a technical. The technical was that
the judge had not noticed the big shoe box full of geetas on the corner of his desk
before he brought the gavel down.
I am packing my usual complement of calibers which (I am prouder than anything
to say) I have never used. They are only there for the bulges for people to ogle at
while Chris the Shoemaker is speaking.
Pratt Falls is another couple of broken boards and a sign saying Feed and Seed.
There was this dry ditch with a hole with a couple of rocks in it.
"It was sure no Niagara," says Little Willie, "that's for certain."
At the end of the place was a sign, all weathered out except for the part that said 2
MILES.
We are making this two miles in something less than three-quarters of an hour
because it is mostly uphill and our dogs are barking, and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie,
who has left her high heels in the flivver, is falling off the sides of her flats very often.
We are looking down into what passes for a real live town in these parts.
"This is the kind of place," says Little Willie, "where when you are in the paper
business, and you mess up your double sawbuck plates, and print a
twenty-one-dollar bill, you bring it here and ask for change. And the guy at the store
will look in the drawer and ask you if two nines and a three will do."
"Ah, but look, gentlemen and lady," says Chris the Shoemaker, "there are at least
two wires coming down over the mountain into this metropolis, and my guess is that