Edenville Owls
- Автор: Паркер Роберт Браун
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Sleuth Philomel
- ISBN: 978-0-399-24656-2
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Edenville Owls». Краткое содержание книги:
“Yowch,” she said.
“So you can see why Krauss would want to be somebody else.”
“You think that’s what happened?”
“He was in the same outfit that Oswald Tupper was. I say he deserted. Knew about Tupper dying and getting a medal. So he took his name.”
“Wouldn’t he have been smarter?” Joanie said. “Not to take a guy who won the Medal of Honor? I mean, other guys must have gotten killed too, that no one would ever hear of.”
“Maybe Tupper hadn’t gotten the medal,” I said, “when Richard Krauss took his identity. Maybe Krauss is a little crazy. You heard him talking to Miss Delaney.”
I ate some of the ice cream out of my black cow with the long spoon that came with it. The Andy Russell song was over. Eddy Howard was on.
...or its lovely promise won’t come true,...
“Do you think they’d actually execute him?” Joanie said.
“They’d do something,” I said.
“God,” Joanie said. “If we turned him in and they executed him... wouldn’t you feel weird about that?”
“I don’t think we’re going to turn him in,” I said.
“So what are we going to do?”
To each his own, I’ve found my own. And my own is you...
“I don’t think we have to turn him in,” I said. “If he knows we know, maybe he’ll leave Miss Delaney alone.”
“Or we’ll turn him in?” Joanie asked.
“I guess so,” I answered.
“It’s like we’d blackmail him,” Joanie said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“But what if he... did something to us.”
“We’d have to be careful,” I said.
“If a bunch of people knew...,” Joanie said.
“He couldn’t do something to all of us,” I said.
The third record came up on the jukebox.
When Madame Pompadour was on a ballroom floor...
“But we promised Miss Delaney we wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Actually,” I said, “I promised, and then I told you.”
“Telling me is different,” Joanie said.
Said all the gentlemen “Obviously, the madam has the cutest personality.”
“Because?”
“Because we’re best friends,” Joanie said. “We tell each other everything.”
I nodded.
And when Salome danced and had the boys entranced...
“But she’ll know what we’ve done,” Joanie said. “Maybe she won’t like it.”
“We gotta tell her,” I said.
“Together?” Joanie said.
“If you don’t want to,” I said, “I can do it alone.”
Joanie nodded and put her hand out suddenly and rested it on my forearm. She smiled, and I felt as if I might start on fire or something.
“We’ll do it together,” she said.
What did Romeo see in Juliet?
Or Pierrot in Pierrette?
Or Jupiter in Juno?
You know!
Chapter 38
It was snowing again. We stayed after class until everyone else had gone, and then I said, “Miss Delaney, can we see you?”
“Of course,” she said. “Come down front.”
I got up and went and closed the classroom door. Miss Delaney smiled.
“Are we going to have a confession?” she said.
Joanie and I sat at the two desks in front of Miss Delaney. Outside the windows, the snow was different than the last snow. The flakes were small, and the wind was blowing the snow around. I looked at Joanie. Then at Miss Delaney. I took in a big breath.
“We know about Mr. Tupper,” I said.
Miss Delaney didn’t move. Her expression didn’t seem to change, but somehow her face got sort of sharp and hard, and she looked kind of pale.
“What do you know about Mr. Tupper?” she said.
I felt very small and stiff. I felt like if I moved quick, I might break.
“We know he was married to you. We know about your son.”
Miss Delaney’s voice was as flat as the top of her desk.
“We is you and Joanie?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Anyone else?”
I shrugged.
“Mr. Tupper,” I said.
“Besides him.”
“No.”
Joanie was completely still at the next desk. I wanted to reach out and touch her. But I didn’t.
“I thought we had a promise,” Miss Delaney said.
“We had to break the promise,” I said. “So we could help you.”
“You and Joanie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Delaney leaned back in her chair and the sharpness kind of went away. She put her hands over her face for a minute. And rubbed her eyes. Then she took her hands away and rested them on her desk.
“What have you done to help me?” she said finally.
“I... we... we know Mr. Tupper is really Mr. Krauss.”
She nodded silently. She seemed tired, like too tired to fight about it, like she had given up.
“We know Mr. Krauss is a deserter,” I said.
Miss Delaney stopped nodding.
“What?”
“The army wants him as a deserter,” I said. “Did you know that?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t. I never knew why he took another name.”
“Oswald Tupper really did win a Medal of Honor,” I said. “But he got killed in the war. He and Mr. Strauss were in the same place in the army.”
“And Richard took his name,” Miss Delaney said.
The snow outside was getting blown all around, so that sometimes it was going sideways, and sometimes it even looked like it was going up.
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?” Miss Delaney said. “Anyone?”
I wanted to lie.
“I told the Owls a little about it,” I said. “They’re ready to help.”
Miss Delaney stared out at the snow blowing around outside the second-floor window. Then she looked up at the ceiling.
“My gang,” she said.
“They won’t tell,” I said.
Miss Delaney nodded. She seemed very sad.
“What do you think of all this, Joanie?” she asked.
“I think Bobby was right to try to help.”
Miss Delaney nodded again.
“If he weren’t a fourteen-year-old boy,” she said.
“He’s very smart,” Joanie said.
Miss Delaney put her elbows on the desk and her fingertips together and rested her fingertips on her chin. She tapped her chin gently and didn’t say anything. Then she took a big breath and blew it out.
“I met Richard in college,” Miss Delaney said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Colby College.”
She looked at Joanie.
“That’s why you wanted my yearbook.”
Joanie nodded.
“He was a hero in college,” Miss Delaney said. “Football star, very handsome, good student. The other boys looked up to him. Girls all wanted to date him.”
Joanie and I were very quiet.
“We began dating in our junior year, and we got married the day after graduation. Three months later I was pregnant and he was in the army, overseas. My son was born June 5, 1943. His name is John Strauss. I lived with my parents during that time. Richard was in Italy then, and we wrote each other often, and I sent pictures of Johnny. After Italy he went to England, and in 1944, he was in the Normandy invasion. And then one day he wrote me a letter saying good-bye. No explanation. Just good-bye for a while. He hoped he’d see me again. I wrote back. But I never got an answer. I wrote the War Department and never got an answer. My parents didn’t have much money. My father couldn’t support us forever. I had a baby. I didn’t know what had happened to my husband. I started looking for a teaching job. I didn’t want to tell them about the baby, for fear they wouldn’t hire me. I didn’t know what to tell them about my husband. So I pretended to be single, and I used my maiden name.”