Walking Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the headland.”
    â€œThat right?” said the man, not at all interested.
    â€œYes. What do you do?”
    â€œI keep this hut. I’m the boss round here. My name’s Trotter.”
    â€œUh?”
    â€œNo need to be surprised, man. How else you think I come to run a joint like this? What do I know ’bout hotels? All my life I tell them I going to be a herbalist, and they push me into this job. Honey, you can take that fur coat off if you want—the boss ain’t looking, and ’bout every-one else gone watching my cousin ride through the streets.”
    Foxe was a fairly reticent person with strangers, but there was something oddly appealing about this drunk young man that made him want to keep the conversation going.
    â€œI was talking to your cousin this morning, then,” he said. “He brought his mother to look at my rats.”
    Mr Trotter’s eyes widened.
    â€œYou hear this, honey?” he called softly. “This gentleman been talking with the Old Woman this morning.”
    The girl stopped smiling, put a finger to her tongue and drew a little cross on her forehead.
    â€œShe struck me as a pretty formidable figure,” said Foxe.
    â€œFormidable! You got the word for her. Formidable! Sure. She try anything. She try anything. She don’ know nothing, but she got the power, and she try anything!”
    His voice was losing its clipped, neutral accent and becoming closer to that of the poorer Islanders, deep and a little slurred, with a rhythm that brought some sentences to the verge of song.
    â€œShe tried to tell my boss a spell about planting melonpips on a virgin’s grave,” said Foxe.
    Mr Trotter gave a sour laugh.
    â€œThis one everybody know,” he said. “Sure, sure, all the little girls. I take you up the cemetery, show you graves with twenty, thirty melon-plants growing there!”
    â€œDoes it work?” asked Foxe.
    Mr Trotter reverted to more learned tones.
    â€œCourse not,” he said. “Wrong kind of melon, wrong grave, wrong phase of Venus, wrong words to say on the grave … Oh, it work with the Old Woman if she try it. It work for her with a plastic tulip from a Datsun show room. She got the power!”
    â€œHaven’t you?”
    â€œA little bit. Just a little bit. I ain’t so interested in that. I’m after the knowledge .Listen here. There’s a little tree grows on Main Island— Ferdinandusa hirsuta —glittery long leaf, hairy stem, red flower like a bunch of little ball-point pens—we call it the sorry-bush. Reason why, it’s a little poisonous, not enough to kill you, but you try smelling one of those flowers and you cry all morning. Sorry you smelt it. Sorry-bush, see?”
    Foxe nodded. He realised now why he felt at home with Mr Trotter—he was a creature of the same kind as himself, who knew his subject well and liked to talk about it.
    â€œOK,” said Mr Trotter. “All the little girls know that. Hide a piece of sorry-bush in a bunch of flowers and send it to the girl who steals your boy, make her sorry, see? That ain’t knowledge . But listen. Every sorry-bush got one little leaf on it—’nother drink for the gentleman, honey—just one leaf. Now, suppose there’s a feller wants to kill you. You find a sorry-bush, find this leaf, take it to the priest, give him a dash of money, tell him ‘Here’s this enemy wants to kill me.’ OK, the priest takes your leaf and gives it a blessing. Saturday night he wraps it round one holy wafer. Sunday morning your enemy comes to Mass, and priest takes care to give him that one wafer. After Mass he gives you back the leaf. OK? Now, long as you keep that leaf, your enemy stops wishing to kill you. Still your enemy, sure, but not your murderer.”
    â€œI see. And what you mean by knowledge is not knowing the story, but knowing which leaf to pick.”
    â€œRight. And that I