JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 171 из 359The two took a cigar box, lined it carefully with silk, painted the outside black, and then dug a hole in the back yard. Bing carefully lowered the "coffin" into the grave, said a long, heartfelt prayer, and sang a hymn. At the end of the service, the boy's eyes were shining with sorrow and excitement. Then Bing asked if he would like to have one last look as his pet before they covered the coffin with earth. The boy said he would, and Bing raised the cigar-box lid. The two gazed down reverently, and suddenly the turtle moved. The boy stared at it for a long time, then looked up at his father and said, "Let's kill it." *
Kids are endlessly, voraciously curious, not only about death but about everything-and why not? They are like people who just came in and sat down during a good movie that's been on for thousands of years. They want to know what the story is, who the characters are, and most of all, what the interior logic of the play may be-is it a drama? a tragedy? a comedy? perhaps an out-and-out farce? They don't know because they have not (as yet) had Socrates, Plato, Kant, or Erich Segal to instruct them. When you're five, your big gurus are Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald; life's burning questions include whether or not you can eat crackers upside down and if that stuff in the middle of the golfball really is a deadly poison. When you're five, you seek knowledge down those avenues that are open to you.
Pursuant to this, I'll tell you my own dead cat story. When I was nine and living in Stratford, Connecticut, two friends of mine-brothers-from down the street discovered the stiffening body of a dead cat in the gutter near Burrets' Building Materials, which was across the street from the vacant lot where we played baseball. I was called into consultation to add my thoughts to the problem of the dead cat. The very interesting problem of the dead cat.
It was a gray cat, quite obviously mashed by a passing car. Its eyes were half-open, and we all noticed that there seemed to be dust and road grit gathering on them. First deduction: You don't care if dust gets in your eyes when you're dead (all our deductions assumed that if it was true for cats, then it must be true for kids) .
We examined it for maggots No maggots "Maybe there's maggots inside it," Charlie said hopefully (Charlie was one of the fellows who referred to the William Castle film as McBare , and on rainy days he was apt to call me up and ask me if I wanted to come down the street to his house and read "comet bwoots").
*From Kids: Day in and Day Out , edited by Elisabeth Scharlatt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979) ; this particular story related by Walter Jerrold.
Kids are endlessly, voraciously curious, not only about death but about everything-and why not? They are like people who just came in and sat down during a good movie that's been on for thousands of years. They want to know what the story is, who the characters are, and most of all, what the interior logic of the play may be-is it a drama? a tragedy? a comedy? perhaps an out-and-out farce? They don't know because they have not (as yet) had Socrates, Plato, Kant, or Erich Segal to instruct them. When you're five, your big gurus are Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald; life's burning questions include whether or not you can eat crackers upside down and if that stuff in the middle of the golfball really is a deadly poison. When you're five, you seek knowledge down those avenues that are open to you.
Pursuant to this, I'll tell you my own dead cat story. When I was nine and living in Stratford, Connecticut, two friends of mine-brothers-from down the street discovered the stiffening body of a dead cat in the gutter near Burrets' Building Materials, which was across the street from the vacant lot where we played baseball. I was called into consultation to add my thoughts to the problem of the dead cat. The very interesting problem of the dead cat.
It was a gray cat, quite obviously mashed by a passing car. Its eyes were half-open, and we all noticed that there seemed to be dust and road grit gathering on them. First deduction: You don't care if dust gets in your eyes when you're dead (all our deductions assumed that if it was true for cats, then it must be true for kids) .
We examined it for maggots No maggots "Maybe there's maggots inside it," Charlie said hopefully (Charlie was one of the fellows who referred to the William Castle film as McBare , and on rainy days he was apt to call me up and ask me if I wanted to come down the street to his house and read "comet bwoots").
*From Kids: Day in and Day Out , edited by Elisabeth Scharlatt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979) ; this particular story related by Walter Jerrold.