The Bushwacked Piano

Начало книги

Years ago, a child in a tree with a small caliber rifle bushwhacked a piano through the open summer windows of a neighbor’s living room. The child’s name was Nicholas Payne.

Dragged from the tree by the piano’s owner, his rifle smashed upon a rock and flung, he was held by the neck in the living room and obliged to view the piano point blank, to dig into its interior and see the cut strings, the splintered holes that let slender shafts of light ignite small circles of dark inside the piano.

“You have spoiled my piano.”

The child would remember the great wing of the lid over his head, the darkness, the cut wires curling upon themselves, the smell of spice and the sudden idea that the piano had been sailed full of spice from the Indies free of the bullet holes that would have sent it to the bottom, resonant with uncut strings, its mahogany lid slicing the wind and sheltering a moist and fragrant cargo of spice.

Читать дальше →