Mississippi Roll. Джордж Р. Р. МартинЧитать онлайн книгу.
for the next few hours. Tell him I’m terribly sorry, but this was the easiest way for you to understand me.’
With that, Wilbur slid away from the joker again. The young man’s clothing was drenched, and he was suddenly and rather explosively ill from the effects of the hot steam and the water his body had taken in. ‘Really, really sorry,’ Wilbur said again, though he knew none of them could hear him now. They were all staring at him, uncertain. ‘Okay, then … I’ll check in on you later.’
With that, he turned – all of them moving back quickly except for the four-armed joker, who crouched, moaning, on the floor as a young woman with incredibly long arms but only short stubs for legs put an arm around him in comfort and stared at Wilbur with decided malice. Wilbur slid across the room to the outside wall and through.
He left behind a man-shaped, dripping wet spot on the wall.
As he left the refugees’ cabin, Wilbur felt the boat lurch as the stern wheel suddenly engaged, followed by three short blasts from the steam whistle. The calliope wheezed and began playing ‘Southern Nights’ as the Natchez nosed out from the dock, the paddles lashing the brown water into foam as it pushed the boat against the Mississippi’s relentless southward current. Passengers crowded the rails down on the boiler deck, shouting loudly and holding plastic drink cups, waving to those on the shore.
They were under way.
Cool enough now that even if he wished it he was no longer easily visible, Wilbur went up the nearest starboard stairs to the hurricane deck. He could see Gimcrack, the keyboard player for the Jokertown Boys, standing at the calliope keyboard, decked out in a white dress shirt with puffy sleeves held down by sleeve garters, over which he wore a fancifully embroidered vest. The calliope’s pipes vented slightly off-key bursts of white steam in response to his fingers on the keys.
Evidently Captain Montaigne had opened the stairways on the port side of the boat to the passengers, who were normally not permitted on the hurricane deck. Some of them were watching Gimcrack play or gazing out over New Orleans, glittering and alight in the night with the river a dark, winding trail in its midst. Some of the passengers appeared to be jokers themselves: a few steps away, Wilbur saw one older man with a pair of gigantic, curling ram’s horns sprouting from his temples, holding hands with an extremely tall and extremely attractive older woman. Jokers or aces? Wilbur wondered.
The truth was that Wilbur had wondered that about himself. Every ghost he ever heard about in stories had been a cold presence; he was a hot one. And he’d seen how the wild card virus could change someone drastically: after all, he’d been there in New York to see it start.
He would never forget …
It was September 15, 1946 …
Wilbur had served during the war as an ensign, then later a lieutenant (junior grade) aboard the USS Natchez, from 1943 until her return to Charleston for decommissioning in June of 1945. He found it amusing that he’d been assigned to a ship bearing the same name as his family’s boat, even if the USS Natchez was a patrol frigate in the Atlantic on anti-submarine duty, and resembled a steamboat not at all. Wilbur even saw action aboard the ship as they escorted convoys, most notably when the Natchez sank a German U-boat they spotted not far off Cape Henry, Virginia. For a time, Wilbur even considered making the navy a career, but then he met Eleanor at a nightclub in Charleston two weeks after leaving the USS Natchez. Everything about her entranced him: her dancing blue eyes, her easy smile, her laughter, the smell of her goldsilk hair, her husky, low voice that reminded him of Lauren Bacall … He fell in love with her quickly and completely, and decided that serving long tours of duty at sea as he made his way up the ranks no longer seemed quite so appealing a prospect.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.