Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 20

Luke Vanderhosen, 34,

Foreman on the Welcome Home Plantation

Darkie wouldn’t work, so damn straight I lashed him, same as I would any brute beast of the field and now comes riding up this great puff of smoke, nostrils flared like a thrusting bull in rut—him with his long coat in this hot heat to hide his pistol I suppose; him who’s fathered a slew of slave bastards; him come to slap my face and challenge me to a fight of first-called quits, like I ain’t never been beat before—Daddy was twice the man he is and he whipped me right as rain. There and then in front of the other foremen and slaves I answered him true—clenched my jaw and hacked and spat between his leather boots, pulled my hair back in a twist tail, stuck my hand forward, and let Overseer Reagan tie us off like you’d do any horse lathered at a drinking trough, and I gripped the bullwhip’s handle, rocked its tip dancing back and forth—its etched handle branding my palm and my knuckles a burning white—I seen in his eyes then that same hell-bent horror of the mama cow that run me down when I was but a child and me trying to doctor her sickly calf—that heifer I later shot out of spite and Daddy beat hell out of me then too—Reagan’s steady talking but all I recall is that bawling cow and the crush of her hooves against my ribs and the first release of my seed as I thought I had died, unable to breathe—of a sudden, I whiff the sweet wang of skunk spray on the wind—Lord God, I hope that ain’t the last thing I smell on Your green earth—and my damp nape goes cold.

Pelham punches my throat and I spin and gasp and fall to a knee—flame spreads across my back and I try to scream but nothing comes—he beats my calves and he beats my neck and I can’t muster the breath to call quits, and turning, I see in his eyes that it does not matter if I ever do.