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

Chinese New Year.
There are these indistinguishable shapes on the platters.
A woman the size of Large Jake comes by with six full plates along each arm,
headed towards a table of what looks like two oxdrivers in flannel shirts. These two
oxdrivers are as alike as all get-out. The woman puts three plates in front of each guy
and they fall into them mouth first.
The woman comes back. She has wild hair, and it does not look like she has
breasts; it looks like she has a solid shelf across her chest under her work shirt.
"Yeah?" she says, wiping sweat from her brow.
"I'd like a steak and some eggs," I says, "over easy on the eggs, steak well-done,
some juice on the side."
"You'll get the breakfast, if'n you get anything," she says. "Same's everbody
else." She follows my eyes back to the two giants at the next table. Large Jake can
put away the groceries, but he is a piker next to these two. A couple of the plates in
front of them are already shining clean and they are reaching for a pile of biscuits on
the next table as they work on their third plates.
"Them's the Famous Singin' Eesup Twins, Bert and Mert," says Ma Gooser. "If'n
everybody could pile it in like them, I'd be a rich woman." She turns to the kitchen.
"Hey, Jughead," she yells, "where's them six dozen biscuits?"
 "Comin', Ma Gooser!" yells a voice from back in the hell there.
"More blackstrap 'lasses over here, Ma!" yells a corncob from another table.
"Hold your water!" yells Ma. "I only got six hands!" She runs back towards the
kitchen.
Chris the Shoemaker and Little Willie comes in and settles down.
"Well, we are set in some departments. The blacksmith is gathering up the tools
of his trade and Little William will accompany him in his wagon to the site of the
vehicular happenstance. I will swear to you, he picks up his anvil and puts it into his
wagon, just like that. The thing must have dropped the wagon bed two foot. What is
it they are feeding the locals around here?" He looks down at the plates in front of
Large Jake and Miss Millie. "What is dat?"
"I got no idea, sweetie," says Miss Millie, putting another forkful in, "but it sure is
good!"
"And what's the news from our friends across the ways?"
"Zex," I says.
He looks at me. "You are telling me zex in this oomray full of oobrays?"
"No, Chris," I says, "the word is zex."
"Oh," he says, "and for why?"
"Izzy and Moe," I says.
"Izzy and Moe?! How did Izzy and Moe get wise to this deal?"
"How do Izzy and Moe get wise to anything," I says, keeping my voice low and
not moving my goo-zle. "Hell, if someone could get them to come over, this umray
unningray biz would be a snap. If they can dress like women shipwrecks and get
picked up by runners' ships, they can get wind of a meet somewhere."
"So what are our options being?" asks Chris the Shoemaker.
"That is why we have all these round-trip tickets," I says.
He is quiet. Ma Gooser slaps down these plates in front of us, and coffee all
round, and takes two more piles of biscuits over to the Famous Singing Eesup
Twins.
"Well, that puts the damper on my portion of the Era of Coolidge Prosperity,"
says Chris the Shoemaker. "I am beginning to think this decade is going to be a