Читать «Английский язык с С. Кингом "Верхом на пуле"» онлайн - страница 62

perhaps [pq'hxps], [prxps], virgin ['vWGIn], born [bLn]

He didn't reply. Perhaps he didn't know. The trees blurred by like black ink. The headlights rushed and the road rolled. I was twenty-one. I wasn't a virgin but I'd only been with a girl once and I'd been drunk and couldn't remember much of what it had been like. There were a thousand places I wanted to go — Los Angeles, Tahiti, maybe Luchenbach, Texas — and a thousand things I wanted to do. My mother was forty-eight and that was old, goddammit. Mrs. McCurdy wouldn't say so but Mrs. McCurdy was old herself. My mother had done right by me, worked all those long hours and taken care of me, but had I chosen her life for her? Asked to be born and then demanded that she live for me? She was forty-eight. I was twenty-one. I had, as they said, my whole life before me. But was that the way you judged? How did you decide a thing like this? How could you decide a thing like this?

The woods bolting by (деревья, проносящиеся мимо). The moon looking down like a bright and deadly eye (луна, смотрящая вниз, как яркий и мертвый глаз).

“Better hurry up, man (лучше поторопись, приятель), George Staub said. “We're running out of wilderness (мы выезжаем из дикой местности; wilderness — дикаяместность; глухомань).”

I opened my mouth and tried to speak (я открыл рот и попробовал говорить). Nothing came out but an arid sigh (ничего не вышло, только сухой вздох).

“Here, got just the thing (погоди, у меня есть как раз то, что /тебе/ нужно),” he said, and reached behind him (сказал он и протянул руку назад). His shirt pulled up again and I got another look (его рубашка снова задралась, и я получил возможность еще раз взглянуть) (I could have done without it (я мог бы обойтись без этого)) at the stitched black line on his belly (на покрытую стежками черную линию на его животе). Were there still guts behind that line (были ли еще внутренности под этой линией; guts — кишки; внутренние органы) or just packing soaked in chemicals (или просто набивка = вата, пропитанная химикатами)? When he brought his hand back (когда он притянул руку обратно), he had a can of beer in it (в ней была банка пива) — one of those he'd bought at the state line store on his last ride, presumably (по-видимому, одна из тех, которые он купил в магазине у границы штата во время последней поездки; to presume — предполагать, полагать).