"Трумэн Капоте. The grass harp (Луговая арфа, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

a drumstick for anybody that would like it."
Sheriff Candle said, "You make it hard on me, ma'am," and pulled
himself nearer. A branch, cracking under his weight, sent through the tree a
sad cruel thunder.
"If he lays a hand on any one of you, kick him in the head," advised
Judge Cool. "Or I will," he said with sudden gallant pugnacity: like an
inspired frog he hopped and caught hold to one of the Sheriff's dangling
boots. The Sheriff, in turn, grabbed my ankles, and Catherine had to hold me
around the middle. We were sliding, that we should all fall seemed
inevitable, the strain was immense. Meanwhile, Dolly started pouring what
was left of our orangeade down the Sheriff's neck, and abruptly, shouting an
obscenity, he let go of me. They crashed to the ground, the Sheriff on top
of the Judge and the Reverend Buster crushed beneath them both. Mrs. Macy
Wheeler and Mrs. Buster, augmenting the disaster, fell upon them with
crow-like cries of distress.
Appalled by what had happened, and the part she herself had played.
Dolly became so confused that she dropped the empty orangeade jar: it hit
Mrs. Buster on the head with a ripe thud. "Beg pardon," she apologized,
though in the furor no one heard her.
When the tangle below unraveled, those concerned stood apart from each
other embarrassedly, gingerly feeling of themselves. The Reverend looked
rather flattened out, but no broken bones were discovered, and only Mrs.
Buster, on whose skimpy-haired head a bump was pyramiding, could have justly
complained of injury. She did so forthrightly. "You attacked me. Dolly
Talbo, don't deny it, everyone here is a witness, everyone saw you aim that
mason jar at my head. Junius, arrest heri"
The Sheriff, however, was involved in settling differences of his own.
Hands on hips, swaggering, he bore down on the Judge, who was in the process
of replacing the violets in his buttonhole. "If you weren't so old, I'd damn
well knock you down."
"I'm not so old, Junius: just old enough to think men ought not to
fight in front of ladies," said the Judge. He was a fair-sized man with
strong shoulders and a straight body: though not far from seventy, he looked
to be in his fifties. He clenched his fists and they were hard and hairy as
coconuts. "On the other hand," he said grimly, "I'm ready if you are."
At the moment it looked like a fair enough match. Even the Sheriff
seemed not so sure of himself; with diminishing bravado, he spit between his
fingers, and said Well, nobody was going to accuse him of hitting an old
man. "Or standing up to one," Judge Cool retorted. "Go on, Junius, tuck your
shirt in your pants and trot along home."
The Sheriff appealed to us in the tree. "Save yourselves a lot of
trouble: get out of there and come along with me now." We did not stir,
except that Dolly dropped her veil, as though lowering a curtain on the
subject once for all. Mrs. Buster, the lump on her head like a horn, said
portentously, "Never mind, Sheriff. They've had their chance," and, eyeing
Dolly, (hen the Judge, added: "You may imagine you are getting away with
something. But let me tell you there will be a retribution -not in heaven,
right here on earth."
"Right here on earth," harmonized Mrs. Macy Wheeler.
They left along the path, erect, haughty as a wedding procession, and