The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
Billie picked him up after breakfast. The highway snaked through erosion-farmed prairie spreading sixty miles west to the jagged blue sawtooth range of the Rocky Mountains. That highway beneath heaven’s blue bowl sky led to Mexico. She turned left off that oiled route, put the Rockies at their backs as they followed a graveled snake trail. The farmland became hilly with the breaks for the river named Marias after some woman in Meriwether Lewis’s life. Gene thought Lewis was damn lucky to be able to do that for her.
The peeling Woon house and barn stood against the horizon at the end of the road.
“There’s two bedrooms upstairs, one down, and a room in the barn,” said Doyle as he came off the front porch to where Gene and Billie parked. “I got the downstairs where I can hear the screen doors creak. You’re upstairs, palooka, the woman, too. Hophead is in the barn.”
Doyle led them into the barn, where the oven air was thick with the scent of hay and manure. Flies buzzed. A black horse whinnied from a stall. A heavy punching bag hung down into the open other end from one beam, while another dangled a speed bag. Dumbbells waited on a table next to boxing gloves, rolls of tape, and five pairs of canvas shoes.
“Taylor guessed about your size,” said Doyle. “We’ll get other stuff if you need it.”
“I’ve got my own shoes and gloves for the fight.” Gene picked up a pair of sneakers. “These’ll work in the meantime.”
From ten feet away, Doyle said: “So what now?”
“You got a knife?”
Doyle’s right hand snapped like a whip to drop a switchblade out of his sleeve. Light flashed between him and Gene, and with a thunk the knife stuck into a stall wall. “Help yourself.”
So I gotta watch out for that, too. Gene pulled the knife from the barn wood and cut his pants into shorts. Tossed the knife to the dirt in front of Doyle’s shined shoes. Gene took off his shirts, changed his work boots for the new sneakers, said: “Time to train.” Working the oil rigs had kept him strong with endurance. That was crucial, but he’d need explosive power, too. He spent an hour working with dumbbells while telling Harry how to construct a flat bench for chest presses. He put a ten-pound weight in each hand to shadowbox. When his arms were on fire, he put on training gloves and moved first to the heavy bag, then to the speed bag. Gene’s arms were so heavy that even if he’d had his old timing, the twenty-minute display of tap tap miss he gave the watching Doyle, Billie, and Harry would still have been pitiful.
“Seems you’re working it backward,” said Doyle. “Skill stuff should come first.”
“Find out what skill you got when you’re at your worst.” Sweat covered Gene’s bare chest. “Then you know how much further you’ve got to make yourself go.”
“ ’Pears to me you’ll be lucky to make it out of this barn.”
“I might not be the only one.”
“ ’Least you talk like a fighter.” Doyle spit. “Woman: I’m hungry. Go make lunch.”
“Make your own lunch,” said Gene. “I need a spotter for road work and I don’t fancy your company or figure Harry can handle the heat.”
“Your job ain’t to figure, palooka.”
“Fine. You explain to Taylor how you chose to screw up me getting ready.”
“I explain nothing to nobody.” Doyle’d taken off his suit jacket so his white shirt showed dampness around the leather straps of the .45’s shoulder holster.
But you won’t push things too far, thought Gene. Not yet.
Doyle said: “I’m going to the house.”
As he walked away, Gene told Billie what he needed.
She bridled the black horse. Didn’t even look for a saddle. Swung herself up on its back, her dress swirling, hiking up past her knees. Her feet were bare, as were her legs that gripped the naked flanks of the black horse. Harry draped glass jars of water on each side of the quivering animal’s neck. Billie tapped her heels against the animal, and he carried her out of the barn, her round hips split evenly along the beast’s spine and rocking with the rhythm of each step. When she got into the sunlight, she turned back, gave Gene a nod.
Gene ran.
Out of the barn, through the yard, along the gravel road. Dust filled his panting mouth. Rocks stabbed the soles of his feet. He followed a wagon trail along the crests of the river breaks. A quarter mile and the house vanished behind rises and dips in the land. He dropped the strong set of his shoulders. Heard the clump clump of the horse behind him, the rattle of the glass water jars. A half-mile and he vomited, staggered, and would have fallen but somehow she was down on the ground beside him, holding him up as he wheezed and gasped and the world spun in bright explosions of light.
She poured water over him, made him wash his mouth and drink. “Can you do it?”
“Have to, don’t we?”
Billie touched his sweaty chest. His slamming heart made her hand twitch. “Thank you.”
“Have to run ten miles a day by end of next week.”
She got back on the horse. He stumbled along for another three minutes before he turned around and made his mind see him running back to the house. He wouldn’t let Doyle see him have to be carried back. Billie made Gene eat four scrambled eggs for lunch. Hosed him off behind the house. Laid him down on the bed upstairs while she unpacked his suitcase with his clothes, the canvas bag with his still supple ring shoes, blue satin trunks, and those blood-smeared black gloves. Before dinner she held his ankles while he did sit-ups until his midriff cramped at ninety-seven and he thrashed out of her control on the barn’s dirt floor. He sparred with the heavy bag and the speed bag and lost both times. She watched for the five minutes he hung swaying from a pipe by both arms to stretch out and give himself a whisker longer reach. She couldn’t tell that he’d tried to finish with a set of pull-ups and failed. Hosed him down again. Dinner was whatever and he ate it all, including the nighttime-only bone-building milk that could cut his wind. Upstairs, in only his underpants, he lay helpless while she sponged his face in the pickle brine he’d made Doyle get from town. Some trickled in his eye, but she was fast and put her hand over his mouth so his scream stayed muffled in the bedroom walls. She eased both of his hands into other bowls of brine: working the rigs had toughened their flesh, but every trick mattered. The brine stung in the dozens of cuts on his hands. He was too tired for pain.
“Would he do it?” said Gene. “Your brother. Make you... let them force you into...”
“Harry would hate that but he already hates himself. He’d shoot up and believe it was a trick of fate he couldn’t help and can’t help, something that’ll go away if we just get through it.”
“What about you?”
She turned away. “My mom died. My baby died. My brother’s all I’ve got left to lose.”
“There’s you.”
“You’re the only one who cares about that.” She shook her head. “Besides, they wouldn’t just kill Harry, they know he wouldn’t care. So they’d kill me, too, to prove the point to the world. At least if the two of us are still alive... we’ve got that.”
She turned back to him. “You know that... whatever you want from me, you can have.”
“I don’t want anybody to hurt you. I don’t want you to ever have to cry.”
Billie left the bedroom. He lay there with his hands in the bowls of brine. If the house catches fire, here’s where I’ll die. The bedroom door opened and she came in carrying a roll of blankets and a pillow. She made a bed for herself on the floor, took his hands out of the bowls, pulled a blanket over him, but then he was gone into a sleep beyond rest.