JК
The Colorado Kid :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 25 из 81Probably he’s been dead since midnight, but I’m no expert in stuff like that. If the wind was coming in stiff from offshore, that could have changed when therigor set in—’
“ ‘No wind at all last night,’ I says, joining them. ‘Calm as the inside of a churchbell.’
“ ‘Well lookit here, another damn country heard from,’ says Doc Robinson. ‘Maybe you’d like to pronounce the time of death yourself, Jimmy Olson.’
“ ‘No,’ I says, ‘I’ll leave that to you.’
“ ‘I think I’ll leave it to the County Medical Examiner,’ he says. ‘Cathcart, over in Tinnock. The state pays him an extra eleven grand a year for educated guttossin. Not enough, in my humble opinion, but each to his own. I’m just a GP. But…ayuh, this fella was dead by two, I’ll say that much. Dead by the time the moon went down.’
“Then for maybe a minute the three of us just stood there, looking down on him like mourners. A minute can be an awful short space of time under some circumstances, but it can be an awful long one at a time like that. I remember the sound of the wind—still light, but starting to build in a little from the east. When it comes that way and you’re on the mainland side of the island, it makes such a lonely sound—”
“I know,” Stephanie said quietly. “It kind of hoots.”
They nodded. That in the winter it was sometimes a terrible sound, almost the cry of a bereft woman, was a thing she did not know, and there was no reason to tell her.
“At last—I think it was just for something to say—George asked Doc to take a guess as to how old the fella might be.
“ ‘I’d put him right around forty, give or take five years,’ he says. ‘Do you think so, Vincent?’ And I nodded. Forty seemed about right, and it occurred to me that it’s too bad for a fella to die at forty, a real shame. It’s a man’s most anonymous age.
“Then the Doc seen something that interested him. He went down on one knee (which wasn’t easy for a man of his size, he had to’ve gone twoeighty and didn’t stand but fivefootten or so) and picked up the dead man’s right hand, the one that’d been lying on the beach. The fingers were curled a little, as if he’d died trying to make them into a tube he could look through. When Doc held the hand up, we could see some grit stuck to the insides of the fingers and a little more dusted on the palm.
“ ‘What do you see?’ George asks. ‘Doesn’t look like anything but beachsand to me.’
“ ‘That’s all it is, but why’s it sticking?’ Doc Robinson asks back.
“ ‘No wind at all last night,’ I says, joining them. ‘Calm as the inside of a churchbell.’
“ ‘Well lookit here, another damn country heard from,’ says Doc Robinson. ‘Maybe you’d like to pronounce the time of death yourself, Jimmy Olson.’
“ ‘No,’ I says, ‘I’ll leave that to you.’
“ ‘I think I’ll leave it to the County Medical Examiner,’ he says. ‘Cathcart, over in Tinnock. The state pays him an extra eleven grand a year for educated guttossin. Not enough, in my humble opinion, but each to his own. I’m just a GP. But…ayuh, this fella was dead by two, I’ll say that much. Dead by the time the moon went down.’
“Then for maybe a minute the three of us just stood there, looking down on him like mourners. A minute can be an awful short space of time under some circumstances, but it can be an awful long one at a time like that. I remember the sound of the wind—still light, but starting to build in a little from the east. When it comes that way and you’re on the mainland side of the island, it makes such a lonely sound—”
“I know,” Stephanie said quietly. “It kind of hoots.”
They nodded. That in the winter it was sometimes a terrible sound, almost the cry of a bereft woman, was a thing she did not know, and there was no reason to tell her.
“At last—I think it was just for something to say—George asked Doc to take a guess as to how old the fella might be.
“ ‘I’d put him right around forty, give or take five years,’ he says. ‘Do you think so, Vincent?’ And I nodded. Forty seemed about right, and it occurred to me that it’s too bad for a fella to die at forty, a real shame. It’s a man’s most anonymous age.
“Then the Doc seen something that interested him. He went down on one knee (which wasn’t easy for a man of his size, he had to’ve gone twoeighty and didn’t stand but fivefootten or so) and picked up the dead man’s right hand, the one that’d been lying on the beach. The fingers were curled a little, as if he’d died trying to make them into a tube he could look through. When Doc held the hand up, we could see some grit stuck to the insides of the fingers and a little more dusted on the palm.
“ ‘What do you see?’ George asks. ‘Doesn’t look like anything but beachsand to me.’
“ ‘That’s all it is, but why’s it sticking?’ Doc Robinson asks back.