Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 32

Conor MacKenna, 57,

Protestant & Foreman of the L & N Train Line

I willna lose this contest, not to him nor any of his kind, what lost me both me boys, Owen and Callum, in the war conscripted by Lincoln, leaving me alone with the great herd of hogs and slop and row upon row of wheat and corn and oats and the rye I’d fashion into a fine little whisky—I was forced to sell our Pennsylvania farm—both me boys killed wandering in the Virginia, cold and hungry, fighting for the freedom of these blasted brutes and for what, so this black blow-in could destroy me livelihood now by unionizing me labor, well by God, industry will win ever time, boyo, and these men can become memory a-fadin just like that Yokum boy what jumped me back when I was but a lad and I come home with the torn collar and the bloody nose and upset me mam, saying through me tears, That Lamar Yokum and his two big brothers ganged up on me and salted me somehow fierce, now thinking I’d get me a coddle, but me mam caught me up by me eartop and marched me down to their shack and shouted their ma to the front porch and called her all kinds of nasty names—bitches and cunts and such—said, Look here at what your little monkeys have done, and me lip throbbed great against each pounding pulse and I smiled as their ma beat em about the heads with the ladle she held and the boys begged and scurried and Lamar swore he’d done the deed his lone self and so me mam said, Well, I don’t believe that for one feckin second now, do I? and me tongue swoll in me mouth, liked to of choked me dead, it did, and we tumbled and we tussled and he busted me lip once more and he busted me nose this time too and I slipped in the slick grass and he pinned me arms down with his knees and I could smell that sour pig smell on him and then he just vanished—heroically, me mam had snatched him from off me but then she began to beat me gob with the ham of her fists, yelling, I’ll teach you to lie to me, you rotten bastard, you! and for what all I know she was right—I have never even laid eyes upon me father—I cockroached out from under her and lost me shoes and still I ran all the way home in me sock feet, which got all soaked and one slipped halfway off and flopped and flapped about me, but she caught me up and she beat me arse-end with a thin switch for a good long while and to this day I still have the scars to show for it—

And then this here bluegum he falls and I know he’s not to prove whatever he thinks he was set to prove and his union will be busted, me machines are the future of labor, aye, and sure now I can visit me mam’s grave and tell her, You were right all along, dear—can’t no coon whip me, Ma.