Не геном единым. Трой Дэй
head.
"Hunting for what?"
"Ducks. He got invited out once, to hunt. We had a good time."
Dr. Crow nodded.
"You been out there alone?"
Minnow shook his head.
"No sir. But I could go."
"You think so?"
"I came here on my own."
Dr. Crow's head turned just slightly toward the door.
"I know you did. And now you're alone."
"Please."
Dr. Crow leaned back and gestured at the shelves.
"I don't got what you need."
"What?" The word tasted sour in Minnow's mouth, like vomit.
"I don't got it. But I can get it. Real easy."
"Please." Minnow held out the coins. His eyes struggled, and he saw just two faded rings of silver in his palm. The candlelight showed Dr. Crow's features, but the man stayed still like a statue, one leg crossed over the other.
"You keep that for your quest. You gonna need it."
"Quest?"
"You gonna take a journey."
"To where?"
Dr. Crow stood up and took a jar from the shelf. He set it on the low table next to the candle. The yellow label had long faded away, and the jar was empty.
"You gonna bring me something."
"Sir?"
"You said you could do anything for me. Ain't that what you said?"
"Yessir."
"Then you gonna bring me something I can't get myself, by nature of what it is."
"I'll do anything."
Dr. Crow smiled and Minnow could not see his teeth because they were blackened with rot. "You ever hear of Sorry George?"
"No sir."
"Let me tell you about Sorry George, and you listen, and when I'm done you decide what you want to do. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you this."
Minnow nodded.
"Sorry George lived out past the Island. You know it goes way out, lots of islands, down to tiny hummocks that ain't really islands at all. Just a lump of sand grown up out of the mud, maybe without even one tree growing on it. Sorry George lived out there on one of those islands, and he was a lot like me. But he was different, too. They say Sorry George was the best root doctor ever worked. He was the great-grandson of a slave brought over in chains on a boat from Spain called Espiritu. That boat brought two hundred men, but his great-granddaddy was the only witch doctor among them. Warriors, kings, princes. But only one spirit man. So his great granddaddy passed his mantle down to his granddaddy, and then his granddaddy to his daddy, and then his daddy to him.
"So Sorry George practiced out there on them little islands, way out there, and people came from all over to get his help. Only he didn't make all his money helping. Plenty of doctors was helping. But he would do the hurting, too. He made most of it with black magic. Bad stuff. He make a root that could kill you dead, or kill someone you want dead. He could break up your marriage, or make your neighbor's cow get skinny and rot away while it's still alive. He was a powerful man, and he was called Dr. Shrike, 'cause a shrike is a bird that will nail something to a thorn to kill it before it eats it.
"One day a man comes looking for Dr. Shrike for a reason lots of men did. His woman was messing around on him. She was with lots of different men, all over the islands. Now normally Dr. Shrike would maybe make the woman sick, maybe give her burning inside, or maybe break her heart with a potion and make her never want to mess around again. But not this time.
"No one knows why this time was different. Maybe that man had a lot of money. Maybe that man was someone important. But Dr. Shrike did up a root that spread not just to one guilty man, but to all of them. Dr. Shrike could kill a man, I told you, but this time he killed fifty-two. No less than fifty-two men came down with the fever, and they died in their fields or their beds that very same day. Their bodies shriveled up where they fell, and their eyes turned blood red. Each one of them coughed up some bloody thing, like a little thing that might have been alive once. A piece of them. Every one of them died, but the woman lived.
"Fifty-two men were dead. Somebody's brother, somebody's cousin. Maybe their daddy or their granddaddy, even. If you weren't related to one of them, maybe he was your carpenter, or your bricklayer, or your field hand. Everyone on the islands knew one of them or more. Even the white folks. Wasn't a person didn't feel it when those men died, whether in their heart or in their wallets. Families fell apart. Businesses shut down. Whole villages were put into a dire way. They just stick huts out in the woods now, empty but for ghosts, maybe.
"People asked. People found out. It wasn't no secret who the most powerful root doctor on the islands was. They found out Dr. Shrike did it, but they couldn't do nothing about it. No way to prove it—and if there was, no one was brave enough to stand up to a man like that. Dr. Shrike got a new name, though. They called him by his real name, now, trying to take his power away. And they called him Sorry, for what he done to the people on those islands. Because of all the people he ever cursed and all the lives he ruined and all the evil he did. And people cursed him and hated him.
"Sorry George got old and no one ever got to him. People were too scared even when he was old—even other root doctors. He kept practicing until he was shriveled and old like I am now. I was just a boy when he died, but I knew of him. He died of natural causes, after all that. They buried him way out on one of them little islands where he was from. No one knows just where they put him, but lots of people think they know. It's like a riddle to find out where."
Dr. Crow paused. Minnow drew a long dry breath in through his nostrils.
"And now we come to where you come to my shack looking for help. And I got something I can help you with. I can get what you need easy, but I can't get what I need easy. I don't leave this place. I go to Bay Street when I need something. Everything else comes to me, just like you did. I'm safe right here. I can't be safe out there on them islands, where there's still strong magic and bad ghosts."
The candle flame drew long in the still air, a slender unmoving almond of yellow light.
"What do you need me to do?"
"This jar was full once," Dr. Crow said, picking up the little glass container, then setting it down again. "I need it full."
Minnow squinted, but the writing on the label was far too faded and the words were spidery and looped.
"If you want your daddy's medicine you gonna bring me goofer dust."
"Goofer dust?"
"Graveyard dust."
"Dust?" Minnow asked.
"From a grave."
"You don't mean from the church down the road."
Dr. Crow smiled again.
"No I do not. You gonna bring me dirt from Sorry George's grave, and I'll get you the medicine."
"You said no one knows where he's buried."
Dr. Crow shook his head.
"No one who is telling. But you may find someone if you look just right. Ain't no one like you ever tried to find it."
"Who can I look for?"
"Way out on them islands. You'll find someone."
"I don't even know where to start."
"First you got to get there. People live out there like there ain't no world across the river. I ain't seen them for years, but they may know."
"Is there a name? A place to look? I can't possibly find just one person on all those islands."