Читать книгу The City Still Breathing - Matthew Heiti - Страница 8

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Normando sits on the tail of his Warlock, bow legs dangling, sun coming up. He uses the fender of the truck to pop the cap on his Northern and takes a long pull of warm beer. Scratches his belly through blue-checkered flannel, looks at the twenty-foot head of King George looking back at him. Damned big thing. Bunch of damned wood with some silver paint – doesn’t know that but it’s what he’s heard.

A red two-door pulls up, kicking gravel. Laughter and teenagers sliding out. The girl skips up to the pedestal, suddenly self-conscious as she poses underneath the damned big thing while the boy Polaroids her. She’s in her pyjamas, for chrissakes. Normando slips off the tailgate, knees cracking, and limps to the edge of the hillside, the town spilling out before him. His back hurting like it always does, only worse.

He breathes it in, the fall air and dead-looking trees on the neighbourhood lanes, the black rock hills jumping up, leaning over the houses clustered around and beneath them. He has gone up and down every one of those streets. This is his town.

The long keen of a whistle and an old itch tells him the morning shift’s going underground. He turns back to King George, the face on the giant coin glowing in the early sun. At its base, those two damned kids rolling around on the ground like it’s their town. Like there could never be nothing else around that alive.

Behind them he catches the black smoke coming off the smelter. Getting on fine without him.