Читать онлайн «Life or Death»
Автор Майкл Роботэм
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
Newsletters
Copyright Page
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming—That is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Life or Death
1
Audie Palmer had never learned how to swim. As a boy when he went fishing with his father on Lake Conroe he was told that being a strong swimmer was dangerous because it gave a person a false sense of security. Most folks drowned because they struck out for shore thinking they could save themselves, while those who survived were found clinging to the wreckage.
“So that’s what you do,” his daddy said, “you hang on like a limpet. ”
“What’s a limpet?” Audie asked.
His daddy pondered this. “OK, so you hang on like a one-armed man clinging to a cliff while he’s being tickled. ”
“I’m ticklish. ”
“I know. ”
And his daddy tickled him until the whole boat rocked from side to side and any fish in the vicinity swam into dark holes and Audie spotted his pants with pee.
This became a running joke between the two of them—not the pee, but the examples of holding on.
“You got to hold on like a giant squid hugging a sperm whale,” Audie might say. “You got to hold on like a frightened kitten on a sweater,” his daddy replied. “You got to hold on like a baby being breast-fed by Marilyn Monroe. ”
Standing in the middle of a dirt road sometime after midnight, Audie recalls these fishing trips with fondness and thinks how much he misses his daddy.
The moon is blooming overhead, pregnant and white, creating a silver path on the surface of the lake. He can’t see the far side, but he knows there must be one. His future lies on the distant shore, just as death stalks him on this one.Headlights swing around a bend, accelerating toward him. Audie plunges down a ravine, turning his face to the ground so it won’t reflect the light. The truck hurtles past, kicking up a cloud of dust that balloons and settles around him until he can feel it on his teeth. Getting to his hands and knees, Audie crawls through the tangle of brambles, dragging the plastic gallon containers behind him. At any moment he expects to hear someone shouting and the telltale click of a bullet sliding into a chamber.
Emerging at the edge of the lake, he scoops mud in his hands and smears it over his face and arms. The bottles knock emptily against his knees. He has tied eight of them together, lashing them with scraps of rope and strips of torn bedsheet.
He takes off his shoes, laces them together, and hangs them over his neck. Then he knots the calico laundry bag around his waist. There are cuts on his hands from the razor wire, but they’re not bleeding badly. He tears his shirt into bandages and wraps them around his palms, tightening the knots with his teeth.
