"K.D. Wentworth - Outhouse Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

Outhouse Moon
K.D. Wentworth


"Ain't nothin' good ever happens under an Outhouse Moon, boy."
Willy watched in disgust as Grandpa's weak whiskery chin worked on the mouthful of shredded tobacco for a moment. He dodged out of the way as the old man leaned over and aimed for the spittoon.
"Mind you keep this here young'un home tonight, Alline." Closing his eyes, Grandpa tipped his chair back against the faded cherries and bananas on the kitchen wallpaper. "Dark things'll be afoot on a night like this."
"Ma!" Panic welled up inside Willy as he paused with his hand on the doorknob. "You know I'm going over to Rick Peterson's. You promised!" Outside, the fall wind skittered dry leaves across the windowpane like dead folks' fingernails.
Grandpa's brownish-gray eyes slid sideways to look knowingly at him. "There'll be things out there tonight what could eat a young'un up afore he knowed what happened to him. You might never come home to your ma and me, boy. How would you like that, caught out there in the dark forever?"
Willy felt ridiculously close to tears for a man of eleven years. "Ma, you promised!"
"Don't you raise your voice to me, young man." Up to the elbows in soap suds, his mother looked up from the cracked porcelain sink and groped for a dish towel. "Besides, it's getting late. I thought you were going over to the Petersons' before it got dark."
Willy's fingers tightened around the coolness of the worn brass doorknob. "We're—we're going coon hunting. Rick got a new hound for his birthday."
She wiped her hands on the threadbare towel. "Don't be ridiculous. You wouldn't so much as touch a dog if your life depended on it."
"We're just going to run some of his hounds for an hour or two and see how the new one goes." Willy did hate dogs with their sloppy wet noses and great bone-white teeth, but he hated Rick teasing him about it even more. After tonight, no one would be able to say that he was afraid of dogs ever again. "There's no harm in it. Pa used to—"
The unfinished sentence hung there in the air between them like a blow waiting to fall. Willy swallowed hard, trying not to say anymore than he already had. He didn't want to make his mother cry again.
"I see." Her weary face, drained of color now, tightened until her cheekbones stood out stark white against her skin. "You were just going traipsing off all over the countryside without telling me, is that it?"
He hung his head. "I was gonna tell you."
"When? After you broke your neck and laid out there all night in the cold and wet?"
_ —like your Pa did._
Willy heard the words as plainly as if she'd actually said them. Suddenly, he could almost see his pa again, sitting here in the kitchen, letting Willy help him off with his heavy boots after a long day's work.
"You better think on this, boy. Look what happened to your pa and he weren't out under no Outhouse Moon neither." The front legs of Grandpa's chair thumped back onto the floor. "I knowed how it was gonna be when I saw that brazen sickle moon ahangin' up there like that, all cozied up to that Jezebel-lookin' star. No decent star fools around with the moon like that." He aimed another sideways shot of dark liquid into the spittoon. "Course you never listen to your poor old Grandpa."
"That's just Venus!" Willy twisted the doorknob with both hands and hauled back on the door, letting the cold anger of the late autumn wind blast past him into the kitchen. "We learned about it in school! Miss Robinson said we could see Venus near the moon tonight!"
"William Bennett Harrison, you come back—"
His heart thumping like it would bang clean out of his chest, he scooted through the open doorway out into a cold that bit at his eyes and scared his breath away. The door slammed behind him with the force of a gunshot. He hunched into his thin jacket and dashed into the stand of tall maples that lined the stretch from his house to the lane, plowing dead leaves behind him like a plume of spray.
Why did she have to listen to that crazy old man? No one with any sense ever believed a thing he said. If Grandpa said do this, then it was sure a sure thing you should do just the opposite. Willy crammed his fists down into his pockets and waded through the rustling dried leaves up to his ankles.
A dark shape leaped out from behind the solid mass of a tree, screeching and waving its arms. Startled, Willy staggered backwards and fetched his head up sharp against a trunk. He caught a glimpse of the mean-faced Outhouse Moon through skeletal dark tree limbs as he fell without ever hitting bottom—
"—jeez, I said I was sorry, Willy!" Hands tugged at his jacket. "Quit playing around, will you?"
The back of Willy's head was wet and numb and sore, all at the same time. "R-Rick?"
The dark figure sat back on its heels and stared down at him. "This ain't funny, Willy," it said reproachfully.
Willy tried to sit up, then felt his stomach roll sickly. He clenched his teeth and fought it off.
"Are you gonna be all right? Do you want me to go fetch your grandpa or something?"
"No! You leave my grandpa out of this!" A tree root gnarled into the shape of a bony knee was digging into the back of his neck. Willy squirmed weakly, trying to ease off it. "Where's your dogs?"
"I left 'em shut up in the barn." The other boy swallowed hard. "I was planning to pick 'em up on our way over to Fox Hollow, but you don't feel like hunting no more, do you?"
"Sure I do." Willy hoped that he sounded better than he felt. "Help me up, toadface."
Taller than him by a head, Rick grabbed his shirt and hauled him back onto his feet. "Willy, I didn't think you'd really be scared or I'd never have done it."
"I know." Willy balanced there, the world spinning around in silly circles, the stupid Outhouse Moon floating around up in the air where it belonged one minute, then fooling around down somewhere below his feet the next. He shook his head and started on wobbly legs toward the fields.
By the time they reached the barn, Rick's dogs were all shivery with excitement, yelping and jumping up on his chest when Rick let them out, and practically beating him to death with their whip-thin tails. Shuddering, Willy pushed the slobbery things away, then backed against the rough boards of the barn until Rick whistled them off into the night.
"I dunno. Maybe you ought to go on home, Willy." Rick fingered the barrel of his twenty-two. "You still don't look so good. We can go out again tomorrow night."
Willy was half-inclined to agree, what with the burning throb in the back of his head and all, but he thought of how Ma would be waiting with her birch-bark switch for him to get home, and how Grandpa's toothless mouth would smirk because he'd been right after all. "Naw, I'm fine, and besides, I ain't never been hunting before."
Just then, one of the hounds belled loud and clear. Whooping, Rick thrust his rifle into the air. "There's Daisy! She's always first and she's always true! Come on!"
He sprinted away into the darkness across the hay meadow, headed for the edge of the woods on the far side. Willy struggled after him.
The shorn meadow shone silver under their feet in the faint moonlight. Their steps crunched in the cold brittle air. Willy heard the hounds moving farther and farther away, their baying voices building into a frantic crescendo. At least they were having a good time, Willy thought, glancing up at Grandpa's Outhouse Moon and hating it with all his might.
When he caught up to Rick at the edge of the trees, the other boy was just standing there, listening.
"What is it?" Willy managed to wheeze out between breaths.
"The dogs sound different." Rick climbed up on a low rock and craned his head around, trying to get a fix on the baying as it echoed through the thick trees. "Listen. They don't sound like they're on coon track no more. Can't you tell?"
"Sure." Willy grimaced behind Rick's back in the dark. It didn't sound any different to him, but he'd rather have been skinned alive than admit it.
"Come on!" Rick pulled him into the dark underside of the forest, keeping Willy beside him. The low leaveless limbs whipped across their faces and tore at their clothes. Willy's chest felt like it was on fire as he gasped down lungful after lungful of the scorchingly cold air. They ran on and on, following the hounds' voices.
"That's Singer now with the lead," Rick called back over his shoulder.
Willy could only follow. His feet hardly seemed to touch the rocky ground at all.
Then a dog screamed, a high thin wail that cut off as abruptly as it began. Rick stopped dead under a huge tree and listened with all his strength. "Damn!" He shook his head. "That sounded like Slim. That stupid dog is always getting too close."