Stone Quarry
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Начало книги
Betsy Harding, Royal Huber, Barbara Martin, Jamie Scott (and her damn owls), and, on this one, Becca Armstrong and Steve Landau
Steve Blier, Hillary Brown, Max Rudin, Jim Russell, and Amy Schatz
the muse Richard Wilcox
the genius Deb Peters
and
the goils Nancy Ennis and Helen Hester
Chapter 1
It can be a treacherous road, State Route 30, especially rain slick in the twilight of late winter, but I know it well.
I sped along its badly banked curves faster than legal and faster than necessary. I was heading for Antonelli's; I had plenty of time. I drove that way just for the charge, pushing the road, feeling its rhythm in my fingers, its speed in the current in my spine. Water hissed under my tires and my headlights reflected off the fat raindrops that splattered the blacktop in front of me.
Years ago, 30 carried a fair amount of tourist traffic, but even then it was people on their way to somewhere else. Now that the state highway slices through the northern part of the county and the Thruway wraps around it, no one passes through Schoharie anymore unless they mean to stop, and not many have a reason to do that. The tourist brochures call this countryside picturesque. If you look closely, though, you'll see the caved-in roofs and derelict silos, the junked cars and closed roadside diners with their faded billboards. These rocky hills were never good for much except hunting and dairy farming. Farming's a hard way to make a living, getting harder; and hunters are men like me, who come and go.