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barter ['bRtq], understandable ["Andq'stxndqb(q)l], guilt [gIlt]

But it had all happened just the way I remembered it, of that I was sure. George Staub had come along and picked me up in his Mustang, Ichabod Crane's old pal with his head stitched on instead of under his arm, demanding that I choose. And I had chosen — faced with the oncoming lights of the first house, I had bartered away my mother's life with hardly a pause. It might be understandable, but that didn't make the guilt of it any less. No one had to know, however; that was the good part. Her death would look natural — hell, would be natural — and that's the way I intended to leave it.

I walked out of the graveyard in the lefthand rut (я шел с кладбища по левой колее), and when my foot struck my pack (и когда моя нога ударилась о рюкзак; to strike), I picked it up and slung it back over my shoulders (я подобрал его и забросил за плечи; to sling). Lights appeared at the bottom of the hill as if someone had given them the cue (/тут же/ у подножья холма показались огни, как будто кто-то дал им знак; cue — знак, сигналкначалуспектакля, ккакому-либо действию). I stuck out my thumb (я выставил большой палец), oddly sure it was the old man in the Dodge — he'd come back this way looking for me (странным образом уверенный, что это был старик на “додже”: он возвратился сюда и искал меня), of course he had, it gave the story that final finishing roundness (конечно, так и было, это придавало истории финальную, завершающую округлость).

Only it wasn't the old guy (только это был не старик). It was a tobacco-chewing farmer in a Ford pick-up truck filled with apple baskets (это был жующий табак фермер на пикапе “форд”, наполненном корзинами для яблок/с яблоками; truck — грузовик), a perfectly ordinary fellow (совершенно обычный парень): not old and not dead (не старый и не мертвый).

bottom ['bOtqm], chew [CH], basket ['bRskIt]

I walked out of the graveyard in the lefthand rut, and when my foot struck my pack, I picked it up and slung it back over my shoulders. Lights appeared at the bottom of the hill as if someone had given them the cue. I stuck out my thumb, oddly sure it was the old man in the Dodge — he'd come back this way looking for me, of course he had, it gave the story that final finishing roundness.