Джордж Мартин – Mississippi Roll (страница 16)

He left behind a man-shaped, dripping wet spot on the wall.

As he left the refugees’ cabin, Wilbur felt the boat lurch as the stern wheel suddenly engaged, followed by three short blasts from the steam whistle. The calliope wheezed and began playing ‘Southern Nights’ as the Natchez nosed out from the dock, the paddles lashing the brown water into foam as it pushed the boat against the Mississippi’s relentless southward current. Passengers crowded the rails down on the boiler deck, shouting loudly and holding plastic drink cups, waving to those on the shore.

They were under way.

Cool enough now that even if he wished it he was no longer easily visible, Wilbur went up the nearest starboard stairs to the hurricane deck. He could see Gimcrack, the keyboard player for the Jokertown Boys, standing at the calliope keyboard, decked out in a white dress shirt with puffy sleeves held down by sleeve garters, over which he wore a fancifully embroidered vest. The calliope’s pipes vented slightly off-key bursts of white steam in response to his fingers on the keys.

Evidently Captain Montaigne had opened the stairways on the port side of the boat to the passengers, who were normally not permitted on the hurricane deck. Some of them were watching Gimcrack play or gazing out over New Orleans, glittering and alight in the night with the river a dark, winding trail in its midst. Some of the passengers appeared to be jokers themselves: a few steps away, Wilbur saw one older man with a pair of gigantic, curling ram’s horns sprouting from his temples, holding hands with an extremely tall and extremely attractive older woman. Jokers or aces? Wilbur wondered.

The truth was that Wilbur had wondered that about himself. Every ghost he ever heard about in stories had been a cold presence; he was a hot one. And he’d seen how the wild card virus could change someone drastically: after all, he’d been there in New York to see it start.

He would never forget …

It was September 15, 1946 …

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