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

of his hair. "That's for today with you pointing your gun at us like I told
you not to; and this," she said, yanking again and speaking distinctively
enough to be understood, "pays you back for setting the Sheriff on us."
It seemed to me that Catherine was impertinent, but Riley grunted
good-naturedly, and said she might have better cause to be pulling
somebody's hair before the night was over. For there was, he told us,
excited feelings in the town, crowds like Saturday night; the Reverend and
Mrs. Buster especially were brewing trouble: Mrs. Buster was sitting on her
front porch showing callers the bump on her head. Sheriff Candle, he said,
had persuaded Verona to authorize a warrant for our arrest on the grounds
that we had stolen property belonging to her.
"And Judge," said Riley, his manner grave, perplexed, •they've even got
the idea they're going to arrest you. Disturbing the peace and obstructing
justice, that's what I heard. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this-but outside
the bank I ran into one of your boys, Todd. I asked him what he was going to
do about it, about them arresting you, I mean; and he said Nothing, said
they'd been expecting something of the kind, that you'd brought it on
yourself."
Leaning, the Judge snuffed out the candle; it was as though an
expression was occurring in his face which he did not want us to see. In the
dark one of us was crying, after a moment we knew that it was Dolly, and the
sound of her tears set off silent explosions of love that, running the full
circle round, bound us each to the other. Softly, the Judge said: "When they
come we must be ready for them. Now, everybody listen to me..."

Three


We must know our position to defend it; that is a primary rule.
Therefore: what has brought us together? Trouble. Miss Dolly and her
friends, they are in trouble. You, Riley; we both are in trouble. We belong
in this tree or we wouldn't be here." Dolly grew silent under the confident
sound of the Judge's voice; he said: "Today, when I started out with the
Sheriffs party, I was a man convinced that his life will have passed
un-communicated and without trace. I think now that I will not have been so
unfortunate. Miss Dolly, how long? fifty, sixty years? it was that far ago
that I remember you, a stiff and blushing child riding to town in your
father's wagon-never getting down from the wagon because you didn't want us
town-children to see you had no shoes."
"They had shoes. Dolly and That One," Catherine muttered. "It was me
that didn't have no shoes."
"All the years that I've seen you, never known you, not ever
recognized, as I did today, what you are: a spirit, a pagan..."
"A pagan?" said Dolly, alarmed but interested.
"At least, then, a spirit, someone not to be calculated by the eye
alone. Spirits are accepters of life, they grant its differences-and
consequently are always in trouble. Myself, I should never have been a
Judge; as such, I was too often on the wrong side: the law doesn't admit
differences. Do you remember old Carper, the fisherman who had a houseboat
on the river? He was chased out of town-wanted to marry that pretty little