Читать книгу The Wicked City - Beatriz Williams, Beatriz Williams - Страница 26

NOW THE B&O branch line into River Junction runs a passenger train but once a day, and even so I find myself in possession of a carriage nearly empty, except for a middle-aged woman in widow’s weeds who stares through the window the entire journey, though a book lies open in her lap.

I don’t blame the folks who aren’t present. Why should you travel into the frigid crook between two godforsaken mountains in the middle of far western Maryland in the middle of winter, unless you have urgent business calling you there? No reason at all. Like the widow, I observe the passing drifts of snow, the pastures all tucked under smooth white blankets, the gray horizon bleeding into the gray sky, the mounting hills and the small, broken-down houses huddled between them, and I cannot raise the slightest whiff of longing. Just a sick weight growing in my stomach, fed by the rattle of wheels and sight of the smoke trailing from all those lonely chimneys. The smell of burning Pennsylvania anthracite.