Читать книгу Postcards - Annie Proulx, Энни Пру - Страница 17

Loyal, going along the roads, the shadows of white poplars like strips of silk in the wind; pale horses in the field drifting like leaves; a woman seen through a window, her apron slipping down over her head the hairnet emerging from the neckhole, the apron faded blue, legs purple mosquito bites no stockings runover shoes; the man in the yard nailing a sign onto a post; RABIT MEAT; a plank across Potato Creek; a swaybacked shed, the door held closed with a heavy chain, white crosses, windmills, silos, pigs, white poplars in the wind, the leaves streaming by as he drove. A fence. More fence. Miles and miles and miles of fence, barbwire fence. Three girls standing at the edge of the woods, their arms encircling masses of red trillium, the torn root bulbs dangling. Sigurd’s Snakepit, OVER 100 LIVE SNAKE’S SEE THE GILA MONSTER 7 FT. ANACONDA COTTON MOUTH COACH WHIP BULL SNAKE’S RAT SNAKE, and old Sigurd in his long, long overalls and his leather coat standing, beckoning, calling, with a bull snake around his neck, his mouth flickering with promises. A Boston fern in the window. A sofa on the porch. A newspaper on the sofa. A man sleeping under a tractor in a black strip of shade. U.S. POST OFFICE. Take Home Kern’s Bread. Black oak, shellbark hickory, shagbark hickory, black walnut, black maple, Kentucky coffee tree, highbush blackberry, Appalachian cherry, chinquapin oak, moss, winter grapes, creeping savin, white pine, a burial mound in the shape of a bird, white cedar, spruce, balsam, tamarack, prairie chickens. Seed clover. A cow lying in a sea of grass like a black Viking boat, a table with a white cloth under an apple tree and at the table a shirtless man with a mahogany face and soft white breasts.

In a diner the painted wooden tables, each place set with a paper napkin, the fork resting on the napkin, to the left a spoon and a knife and an empty water glass. The simple menu is held up by the salt and pepper shakers. Clouds shaped like anteater tongues, like hawk tails, like eraser bloom on a chalkboard, like vomited curds. The ray of the flashlight in the darkness. Wet boulders along a lakeshore.