"Howard Waldrop - The Wolf-man of Alcatraz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

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His book—The Moon and Me—came out October 6, 1957, two days after the Sputnik went up He
had gotten copies two weeks before but couldn't have any kind of celebration. He, and half the prison
population, were down with the Asian Flu, brought back by one of the schoolkids on the boat.
Already they were talking of closing down The Rock. But then, they'd been talking about that since
about two days after it opened in 1934.




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"It doesn't look good," said the doctor. "If we'd caught it earlier, we could have operated. It's slow
growing. It started in the gonads—I think now that must be why your condition went away. But now it's
spread everywhere. You may have one or two years, or less. It's a tough break, Bob. I'm sorry as I can
be."
"To think, Doc—the thing that's cured me's going to kill me. There's your irony."

"We're trying to get you transferred to the prison farm in Missouri," he said. "The medical board meets
next week in Walla Walla."

"That would be great, Doc. You know what? If I do get there, I'm going to try to get permission to go
out in the night and just look at the full moon. I haven't seen the Moon all these thirty years. I may see the
Moon on the train, but it probably won't be full. Yeah, that would be great, Doc. I can last that long."




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They made a movie about his life—The Wolf-Man of Alcatraz—which starred Kirk Douglas, who
looked nothing like him, and which was highly fictionalized. Howlin never saw it.



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They came up to the top of the hill, Howlin using one of those new prison farm–issue three-toed canes
made of aluminum.
The hill looked like all of the other ones that stretched away toward Jefferson City over to the east.

The Moon sailed on the rim of the world like a big, bright ocean liner, or a giant pumpkin. It seemed so
close you could touch it.

"Kids'll be trick-or-treating next week, won't they, Captain?" asked Howlin.

"Suppose so."