Читать книгу About Grace - Anthony Doerr, Anthony Doerr - Страница 26

He had been in St. Vincent six days when he went to the post office and passed his wristwatch to the woman behind the counter.

“I need to make another call.”

“You won’t reverse the charges?”

“Not this number.”

“Will these people be home?” She started to laugh.

“Goddamn it.”

Her smile wilted. She raised a hand to her crucifix. “Permiso,” she said. “I am sorry. I should not make fun.” She held the watch at arm’s length and studied it in a pantomime of interest. She raised the buckle up and down; she squinted at the second hand, which stood motionless over the nine. “What do I do with this?”

“Tell the time. Sell it. They wouldn’t take it at the market.”

She glanced behind her at the thin man who managed the place but he was paging through a newspaper and paying no attention.

“Is it broken?”

“It works. It got a bit waterlogged. It just needs to dry out.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Please.”

She looked over her shoulder again. “Two minutes.”

He told her the number for Herman Sheeler’s house in Anchorage and she dialed and handed over the receiver. After the first ring he thought he might pass the phone back and tell the woman no one was home but then he heard the handset being lifted on the other side and it was Sandy.

There was a satellite delay in the line. Her two syllables—”Hello?”—repeated, tinny and distant, as if she had spoken through a culvert pipe. Somewhere inside the connection an electronic beep reverberated. His throat caught and for a long moment he thought he might not be able to speak. April in Anchorage, he thought. Wind against the garage door, slush sliding off the roof The trout print in the paneled hallway.

“Hello?” she said again.

He supported his head against the wall. “It’s David.”

Silence. He had the sense she had covered the mouthpiece with her palm.

“Sandy? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

He said, “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay?”

“You’re all right, I mean. Alive. I’m glad.”

The line fizzed; the beep sounded. “Alive?”

“I keep trying the house.”

“I’m not there.”

“How long have you been gone? Are you back with him?”

She did not reply.

“Sandy? Is Grace there? Is Grace okay?”

“You left. You just got up and left.”

“Is Grace with you? Is she all right?”

There was the sound of the receiver clattering onto a counter or maybe the floor. A second later Herman’s voice was in his ear. “Don’t call here again. Get some help. You need help. Do you understand?” Then a click, and the static fell off.

He stood a moment. The wall was warm and damp against his forehead. The air smelled like wet paint. He had a sudden image of Sandy in the doorway of that house, toboggan-riding polar bears printed on her pajamas, her bare feet whitening in the cold.

“I was disconnected,” he managed to say.

The woman’s voice was low: “I’ll dial again.” The line rang, and rang. Finally it picked up and then clicked off.

He listened to the dead space in the line for a moment, then passed the receiver back. “Lord,” the woman said. “You sit down for a moment.” She clasped the telephone over the big crucifix on her chest. “I’ll get some tea.”

But he had already turned and was blundering through the doors into the throbbing green light. What was left? His shirt was stiff with sweat and grime; the knees had come out of his trousers. He had a half jar of rum and three Eastern Caribbean dollars in his pocket, enough for nothing: a bag of crackers, maybe, a tin of luncheon meat.

Below the town the ocean gleamed like a huge pewter plate and the sun beat murderously upon it. He stopped in the middle of Bay Street and braced his hands on his knees a long time. The asphalt seemed to tremble, the way an image reflected in water trembles. Inside him a slow vertigo had started. He had the odd sensation that the light in the sky was entering his skin somehow and penetrating the cavities of his body. Any minute now he would not be able to contain it.

He raised a hand to his mouth and retched. A man, passing on a bicycle, gave him a wide berth. Two small boys pointed at him and covered their mouths with the hems of their T-shirts. The faces of the pastel storefronts seemed to leer and pitch. Somewhere in the harbor a ship sounded. He staggered down the thin track south of town. Each cell in my body is disconnecting, he thought. All the neurons have torn loose.

The light was such that he could only keep his eyes open for a few seconds at a time. A bus with PATIENCE AND GOD painted across it, its windows full of sleepy women, churned past and left him dusty. He found the path leading off the road and picked his way through the dense growth. On his little beach he knelt and watched horizontal scraps of clouds inch across the sky. Cumulus humilis fractus, he thought. Everything I know is useless.

He crouched in the sand and shivered. Twice in the hours to come he woke to feel another man’s hands in his pockets and he reached to grab the wrist but it was gone. The first had robbed him of his remaining money and he wondered hazily what the second had found. In half dreams in which he wasn’t sure if he was awake or asleep, he watched regiments of crabs sidle onto the beach, cantering among the tide pools on their needle-tipped feet, pausing, then moving on again.