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

since neither of them has a glass peeper. They quit the grift when it turns out that
Little Willie is always off nugging when Chris needs him, or is piping some doll's
stems when he should be laying zex. So they went into various other forms of getting
the mazuma.
The ramadoola Chris has come up with is a simple one. We are to get the lizzie
going, or barring that are to Hooverize another one; then we cut the lines of
communication; immobilize the town clown, glom the loot, and give them the old
razoo.
"But Chris," says I, "it is so simple and easy there must be something wrong with
your brainstorm. And besides, it is what? Maybe a hundred simoleons in all? I have
seen you lose that betting on which raindrop will run down a windowpane first."
"We have been placed here to do this thing," says Chris the Shoemaker. We are
all standing on the porch of Ma Gooser's. "We cut the phone," says Chris, "no one
can call out. Any other jalopies, Large Jake makes inoperable. That leaves horses,
which even we can go faster than. We make the local yokel do a Brodie so there is
no Cicero lightning or Illinois thunder. We are gone, and the news takes till next
week to get over the ridge yonder."
Miss Millie Dee Chantpie has one of her shoes off and is rubbing her well-turned
foot. "My corns is killing me," she says, "and Chris, I think this is the dumbest thing
you have ever thought about!"
"I will note and file that," says Chris. "Meantimes, that is the plan. Little William
here will start a rumor that will make our presence acceptable before he goes off with
the man with the thews of iron. We will only bleaso this caper should the flivver not
be fixable or we cannot kipe another one. So it is written. So it shall be done."


Ten minutes later, just before Little Willie leaves in the wagon, I hear two people
talking close by, pointing to Miss Millie Dee Chantpie and swearing she is a famous
chanteuse, and that Chris the Shoemaker is a talent scout from Okeh Records.


"The town clown," says Chris to me in a while, "will be no problem. He is that
gent you see over there sucking on the yamsicle, with the tin star pinned to his long
Johns with the Civil War cannon tucked in his belt."
I nod.
"Charlie Perro," he says to me, "now let us make like we are mesmerized by this
screeching and hollering that is beginning."
The contest is under way. It was like this carnival freak show had of a sudden
gone into a production of No, No Nanette while you were trying to get a good peek
at the India Rubber Woman.
I am not sure whether to be laughing or crying, so I just puts on the look a steer
gets just after the hammer comes down, and pretends to watch. What I am really
thinking, even I don't know.


There had been sister harmony groups, and guitar and mandolin ensembles, three
guys on one big harmonica, a couple of twelve-year-olds playing ocarinas and
washboards, a woman on gutbucket broom bass, a handbell choir from a church,
three one-man bands, and a guy who could tear newspapers to the tune of "Hold
That Tiger!"