Читать книгу The Marrowbone Marble Company - Glenn Taylor - Страница 10
ОглавлениеRACHEL WATCHED HIM PACE back and forth in front of the fireplace. Once in a while, he’d stop and stoke the embers, but mostly he checked his wristwatch.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a fire going in the middle of the day.
On the Philco, a man told any ladies listening that Lava soap would get their extra-dirty hands shades whiter in only twenty seconds.
Outside, a car engine roared, then cut out. Ledford could tell it was Lucius Ball’s Lincoln Zephyr, but he walked to the window anyway. “Your daddy,” he said.
“Well, what’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know.” He walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He closed it without having gotten anything, came back to the living room, and said, “But he’d better not talk over this broadcast. So help me, if he interrupts the president—”
The doorknob turned and in came Lucius. He took off his fedora and brushed at the snow before he acknowledged either of them. Then the same with his overcoat. When he’d hung everything up and slapped his driving gloves against the end table to announce his presence, he shot his cuffs and said, “Let’s see what old Roosevelt’s got to say on this one.”
Ledford walked back to the kitchen and stared inside the refrigerator some more.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed Ledford?” Lucius Ball hollered. “Aren’t you on the clock in three hours?”
When the broadcast started, Rachel turned the volume knob as high as she ever had. She sat back down on the sofa with her knees pulled to her chest. Ledford poked at the fire, and Lucius stood with his arms crossed. His nose ran, and he sniffed hard every ten seconds.
The president’s words were carefully chosen, and his voice carried vengeance and sorrow. The three in the small room were as still as the congressmen who watched their man before them. There was a cough through the radio’s grate. There was a pop from the wet hickory in the fire.
Then Roosevelt said, “Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.” Something had moved inside Ledford’s gut, and now it surged upward as the congressmen beat their hands together like they never had as one. “No matter how long it may take to overcome this premeditated invasion,” Roosevelt went on, “the American people in their righ teous might will win through to absolute victory.” The roar from the Philco caused Rachel’s eyes to tear, and her heart seemed, for a moment, to stop.
She knew before looking at him that Ledford was gone from her.
He hung the poker on the cast iron holder and slowly turned. His teeth were grit behind his lips and his nostrils flared wide. He looked to Lucius, who was dumbstruck, unable for once to speak his mind. “Mr. Ball,” Ledford said, “I quit.”
He put on his coat and told Rachel he’d ring her later. With his hand on the knob to leave, he stopped. She was crying on the sofa. Her father did not console her. He’d walked to the window and was watching the snow fall. It had picked up since earlier.
Ledford stood in the doorway and thought of their dance. Their song. He spoke her name and she looked up at him. He winked and was gone.
