Читать книгу Heart Songs - Annie Proulx, Энни Пру - Страница 9

The dark fox trotted behind the screen of chokecherries along the highway, undisturbed by the swishing roar of vehicles twenty feet away. This was the extreme southern border of his range and he new crossed this road. The corpse of a less-wise raven lay beneath a bush like a patch of melted tar. The fox rolled in the carrion, grinding his shoulders into it. He got up, shook himself and continued his tour, a black feather in the fur of his shoulder like a dart placed by a picador.

As swiftly as though she were pulling grass Noreen plucked the second bird. The other lay on the white enamel drainboard, a dusky purple color.

“Oh, I don’t mind doin’ it. I done hundreds of ’em. There was one or two years when I was a kid, things were real bad up here, no jobs, no money. We lived on pats and fish – trout, suckers, anything. I used to clean the birds.” Her fingers leaped from the small body in her left hand to the pile of feathers in the sink and back again.

“My brother Raymon’ done the fish. He never liked the smell of a bird’s guts, but it don’t bother me. He can skin out or clean any other kind of animal just as fast and good, but not birds. I don’t mind ’em.”

There were five of six dull pocks as she yanked the difficult wing tip feathers. “Okay, there you are.” They lay side by side, dark cavities between their rigidly upthrust legs. Noreen leaned against the sink, dove-grey twilight washing up around her like rising water. Her russet hair was twisted into curls and there was a downy feather on her cheek. She sang a few words that sounded like “won’t lay down with Cowboy Joe.” The hell with Cowboy Joe, I thought, what about me?

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been in a bed that turned into a confessional afterwards.

“You married?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, me too. I knew you were.” The vixen face was pale in the thickening dusk.

“My brother,” she said. “My brother Raymon’, you know?”

“Yes.”

“He ain’t my full brother, see, he’s only my half brother.” Her voice was a child’s, telling secrets. “See, Ma had him before she met my dad, and Dad give him his name.” The bed was a fox’s den, rank fox smell, the smell of earth. She whispered. “I done it with Raymon’.”

“When?”

“Long ago, the first time, see? He’s only my half brother. That was the only time.” She looked at me. “Now you.”

“Now me what?”

“Now you got to tell something bad you done.”

It stopped being a game. Unbidden, to my mind came childhood crimes and adult cruelties. I was furious to feel prickling tears.

“Tell me about Raymond,” I said.

“See, she was goin’ with this guy, he come from a family that used to live around here—the Stones, they don’t live here now—and Raymon’ was on the way, but before they could get married there was some bad trouble so Raymon’ didn’t have a father. It was real love and she almost went crazy. But she met my father, he was cuttin’ wood over here, workin’ for St. Regis. He come from a town up in Quebec.”

“So Raymond is really a Stone?”

“Yeah. Well, he never used the name, but that’s his blood. That’s half his blood.”

I thought of Stone City, the broken shacks, the blue door with its peeling paint, the iron axles, the outlaw hideout.

“Which one of the Stones was he?”, thinking of what Banger said about the old man.

She got up and began to dress in the faded evening. She smoothed back her hair with both hands. “This is between you and I,” she whispered solemnly. “Floyd. He was the one that got the electric chair.”

It became a regular thing. Every Friday night was confession night. I heard who killed the kitten, who stole a coveted blouse from a girlfriend. She was absorbed in family relationships. Most of all I heard about young Raymie’s troubles with his old man, Raymon’ the Half-Stone, as I thought of him.

“Raymie got another beatin’ last night. See, he’s got to run that trapline every twenty-four hours, and he’s suppose to do it real early in the mornin’ before he goes down to the hardware. Well, he forgot and you shoulda heard the way Raymon’ tore that kid up. He’s got a real violent temper. Raymie, he hates trappin’. He wants to get out of here, go to New York, be a rock singer. You ought to hear him.”