Читать книгу Pynter Bender - Jacob Ross - Страница 14
Оглавление‘GIDEON TAKE MY father,’ Pynter said.
Elena shook her head. She didn’t understand him.
‘I come from Eden. I shelter under de house and when I went in he wasn’ there.’
His mother shook her head again. She still didn’t understand him. ‘You look in dem other room?’
‘Gideon take my father,’ he repeated.
‘Where he gone to?’
He heaved his shoulders and turned his face away.
‘Where…’ She stopped herself short. The cloth that she was drying her hands with dropped softly on the floor. She brought her face down close to his. She touched his cheek and looked into his eyes. ‘Gideon take your father where?’
He heaved his shoulders again. ‘Gideon come and take ’im when I wasn’ there.’
‘You get wet,’ she said. ‘Your head soakin wet. You couldn shelter from the rain?’ She began unbuttoning his shirt.
He was staring at the wall behind her head.
‘Pynter,’ she said.
He did not answer. She peeled the shirt from his shoulders. ‘You must learn to cry. Y’unnerstan?’
She touched his cheeks again. Her face was working. ‘When you feel like this, when you feel like you feeling now, you must try to cry. Y’hear me? You have to learn to cry.’
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and pulled him close to her.
He did not tell her everything – how he’d gone to Miss Maddie’s house to ask her where his father was. How she had looked away from him as if she didn’t want to answer, her eyes red. And all she had said was that she wished Paso had been there when Gideon came. She had stood him in the kitchen and wiped the rain off him. She’d done it the way Tan Cee or his mother would have done, pausing every now and then to examine him. She’d stretched his arms out and slid her fingers along the bones all the way down to his wrists. Had turned his palms up towards her and examined them under the gaslight in the kitchen. She’d passed her fingers along the small drain at the back of his neck, followed the fissure all the way down to his spine. She had come closer to his ear as if she were about to whisper something, traced the shape of his lobes with her fingers, and spent a long time over his feet. She’d gone to the fridge and offered him some food. He didn’t want anything to eat. She’d left him for a while and come back with a towel. She had tried to smile. He had seen that she had three gold teeth. She had told him the towel was hers, spent a long time wiping his hair dry.
‘You got feet like Paso,’ she had said. ‘An’ them fine little hairs on your back same like all my father children.’
‘Miss Maddie,’ he had turned his head to look up at her, ‘you could tell me where Gideon live?’
He could not make out the expression on her face because the evening had thickened into night. He had only her voice to go by.
‘You shouldn think of goin there.’
‘Tell me where he live.’
‘He’s not a good man. He my brother, but I have to say it.’
‘If you don’ tell me, I’ll still find him.’
She had nodded. ‘Take one o’ your people with you. He got dogs.’
‘Where he live?’
‘Westerpoint. Take your family with you.’
‘G’night, Miss Maddie.’
‘Y’hear me!’
‘G’night.’
She had placed two mangoes in his hands and told him she was sorry.
He didn’t tell his mother either that he knew now why they’d chosen him instead of Peter to go to live with Manuel Forsyth.
