Twilight

Начало книги

T he wagon came out of the sun with its attendant din of iron rims turning on flinty shale, its worn silvergray fired orange by the malefic light flaring behind it, the driver disdaining the road for the shortcut down the steep incline, erect now and sawing the lines, riding the brake onehanded until the wheels locked and skidded, then releasing it so that wagon and team and man moved in a constantly varying cacophony of shrieks and rattles and creaks and underlying it all the perpetual skirling of steel on stone.

Patton’s store. A grinning man would halt the wagon with an upraised arm but it would not halt. When he noticed the quiltcovered cargo the wagon transported, he called, What you got there, Sandy?

The driver turned and spat and wiped his mouth and glanced back briefly but he didn’t stay the wagon. Dead folks, he said. The wagon went on and vanished like some ghostwagon in the vaporous mist rising from the river.

Читать дальше →