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

"She's worked hard, she deserves to have things as she wants them. It's our
fault, someway we failed her, there was no place for us in her house."
Catherine's cotton-wadding squirmed in her Jaw like chewing tobacco.
"Are you my Dollyheart? or some hypocrite? He's a friend, you ought to tell
him the truth, how That One and the little Jew was stealing our medicine..."
The Judge applied for a translation, but Dolly said it was simply
nonsense, nothing worth repeating and, diverting him, asked if he knew how
to skin a squirrel. Nodding dreamily, he gazed away from us, above us, his
acomlike eyes scanning the sky-fringed, breeze-fooled leaves. "It may be
that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is, somewhere;
and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves
blessed. This could be your place," he said, shivering as though in the sky
spreading wings had cask a cold shade. "And mine."
Subtly as the gold watch spun its sound of time, the afternoon curved
toward twilight. Mist from the river, autumn haze, trailed moon-colors among
the bronze, the blue trees, and a halo, an image of winter, ringed the
paling sun. Still the Judge did not leave us: 'Two women and a boy? at the
mercy of night? and Junius Candle, those fools up to God knows what? I'm
sticking with you." Surely, of the four of us, it was the Judge who had most
found his place in the tree. It was a pleasure to watch him, all twinkly as
a hare's nose, and feeling himself a man again, more than that, a protector.
He skinned the squirrels with a jackknife, while in the dusk I gathered
sticks and built under the tree a fire for the frying pan. Dolly opened the
bottle of blackberry wine; she justified this by referring to a chill in the
air. The squirrels turned out quite well, very tender, and the Judge said
proudly that we should taste his fried catfish sometime. We sipped the wine
in silence; a smell of leaves and smoke carrying from the cooling fire
called up thoughts of other autumns, and we sighed, heard, like sea-roar,
singings in the field of grass. A candle flickered in a mason jar, and gipsy
moths, balanced, blowing about the flame, seemed to pilot its scarf of
yellow among the black branches.
There was, just then, not a footfall, but a nebulous sense of
intrusion: it might have been nothing more than the moon coming out. Except
there was no moon; nor stars. It was dark as the blackberry wine. "I think
there is someone-something down there," said Dolly, expressing what we all
felt
The Judge lifted the candle. Night-crawlers slithered away from its
lurching light, a snowy owl flew between the trees. "Who goes there?" he
challenged with the conviction of a soldier. "Answer up, who goes there?"
"Me, Riley Henderson." It was indeed. He separated from the shadows,
and his upraised, grinning face looked warped, wicked in the candlelight.
"Just thought I'd see how you were getting on. Hope you're not sore at me: I
wouldn't have told where you were, not if I'd known what it was all about."
"Nobody blames you, son," said the Judge, and I remembered it was he
who had championed Riley's cause against his uncle Horace Holton: there was
an understanding between them. "We're enjoying a small taste of wine. I'm
sure Miss Dolly would be pleased to have you join us."
Catherine complained there was no room; another ounce, and those old
boards would give way. StiB, we scrunched together to make a place for
Riley, who had no sooner squeezed into it than Catherine grabbed a fistful