Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 31

John Henry, 28,

Steel-Driving Man

Done drove twenty durn miles of line and that machine on my heels steady behind, comin down on me like rain on the tin roof above where I slept as a youngun—chicken and dumplins stewin in the pot lure me out a dream of Daddy comin home from the workhouse with a sackful of orange rock candy, back into the world of Ma Ma Ma and she be hammerin home her orders with that two-inch-thick belt she call “Mercy”—Get yo ass out that bed and slop them hogs, boy, and gather them greens fore I tan yo hide—I shore do as she say and when I come back it’s her ladlin in our best bowl the chicken and ramps and carrots and pellets of dough—I come over the top again for the ten one thousandth time today and my bones brittle beneath my muscles all stove up and tight—a pang of fire runs right through my arm and catches a stitch in my heart—I hear a poundin there and know that machine gonna pound on past, poundin, like Ms. Freeman poundin on the front door, her askin Ma if she’s seen the egg layers that skidaddled out her yard, and if we find em, wouldn’t we please just please let her know and I get the guilt-face lookin at the food afore me but Ma just suck her teeth and say, Nah, Miss Lady, I ain’t see no bird ’round here today—I like to of died from shame but Ma say Miss Lady a uppity-actin old biddy anyway, say she just wish I’d drop dead of a stroke fore she’d even give one yard bird back to that uppity-actin old biddy—I remember a dozen times when I squeamed at loppin the head off a hen but Ma would grab that heavy axe out my hand quick as you please and say, What kindly man you gon be? And she’d cut that thing clean in two and hand me back that tool and say, Don’t never you need to send no man to do what a woman can damn well do, because she will, by God, and do it even better too.

I am my mother’s stout arms steady swingin my axe down on chicken necks and it clangs and sparks and trues the rail and I slip to a knee and my hammer fails and I grab up my arm, it burnin like the stew on the stove top, burnin, and I can’t hardly breathe—breathless, headless—I fall on my side and see Ma Ma Ma in the mountaintop cawin like crows shakin they tail feathers, she shakin her head, sayin, Who is the chicken now, my big baby boy?