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

mountain-side still unwilling to receive. There was not much left for the
Judge when he came back; politicians like Meiself Tallsap and his gang had
come into power: those boys couldn't afford to have Charlie Cool sitting in
the courthouse. It was sad to see the Judge, a fine-looking man dressed in
narrowcut suits with a black silk band sewn around his sleeve and a Cherokee
rose in his buttonhole, sad to see him with nothing to do except go to the
post office or stop in at the bank. His sons worked in. the bank,
prissy-mouthed, prudent men who might have been twins, for they both were
marshmallow-white, slump-shouldered, watery-eyed. Charles Jr., he was the
one who had lost his hair while still in college, was vice-president of the
bank, and Todd, the younger son, was chief cashier. In no way did they
resemble their father, except that they had married Kentucky women. These
daughters-in-law had taken over the Judge's house and divided it into two
apartments with separate entrances; there was an arrangement whereby (he old
man lived with first one son's family, then the other. No wonder he'd felt
like taking a walk to the woods.
"Thank you. Miss Dolly," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand. "That's the best drumstick I've had since I was a boy."
"It's the least we can do, a drumstick; you were very brave." There was
in Dolly's voice an emotional, feminine tremor that struck me as unsuitable,
not dignified; so, too, it must have seemed to Catherine: she gave Dolly a
reprimanding glance. "Won't you have something more, a piece of cake?"
"No ma'm, thank you, I've had a sufficiency." He unloosened from his
vest a gold watch and chain, then lassoed the chain to a strong twig above
his head; it hung like a Christmas ornament, and its feathery faded ticking
might have been the heartbeat of a delicate thing, a firefly, a frog. "If
you can hear time passing it makes the day last longer. I've come to
appreciate a long day." He brushed back the fur of the squirrels, which lay
curled in a corner as though they were only asleep. "Right through the head:
good shooting, son."
Of course I gave the credit to the proper party. "Riley Hen-derson, was
it?" said the Judge, and went on to say it was Riley who had let our
whereabouts be known. "Before that, they must have sent off a hundred
dollars' worth of telegrams," he told us, tickled at the thought. "I guess
it was the idea of all that money that made Verena take to her bed."
Scowling, Dolly said, "It doesn't make a particle of sense, all of them
behaving ugly that way. They seemed mad enough to kill us, though I can't
see why, or what it has to do with Verena: she knew we were going away to
leave her in peace, I told her, I even left a note. But if she's sick-is
she. Judge? I've never known her to be."
"Never a day," said Catherine.
"Oh, she's upset all right," the Judge said with a certain contentment
"But Verena's not the woman to come down with anything an aspirin couldn't
fix. I remember when she wanted to rearrange the cemetery, put up some kind
of mausoleum to house herself and all you Talbos. One of the ladies around
here came to me and said Judge, don't you think Verena Talbo is the most
morbid person in town, contemplating such a big tomb for herself? and I said
No, the only thing morbid was that she was willing to spend the money when
not for an instant did she believe she was ever going to die."
"I don't like to hear talk against my sister," said Dolly curtly.