'Why did you wait so long?' he asked. 'I mean, my book of short stories was published in 1983, and that's six years ago. Going on seven now.'
'Because I didn't know,' Shooter said. He removed his gaze from the cloud and studied Mort with that discomfiting1 look of faint contempt again. 'A man like you, I suppose that kind of man just assumes that everyone in America, if not everyone in every country where his books are published, reads what he has written.'
'I know better than that, I think,' Mort said, and it was his turn to be dry.
'But that's not true,' Shooter went on, ignoring what Mort had said in his scarily serene3 and utterly4 fixated way. 'That is not true at all. I never saw that story until the middle of June. This June.'
Mort thought of saying: Well, guess what, Johnny-me-bay? I never saw my wife in bed with another man until the middle of May! Would it knock Shooter off his pace if he actually did say something like that out loud?
He looked into the man's face and decided5 not. The serenity6 had burned out of those faded eyes the way mist burns off the hills on a day which is going to be a real scorcher. Now Shooter looked like a fundamentalist preacher about to ladle a large helping7 of fire and brimstone upon the trembling, downcast heads of his flock, and for the first time Mort Rainey felt really and personally afraid of the man. Yet he was also still angry. The thought he'd had near the end of his first encounter with 'John Shooter' now recurred8: scared or not, he was damned if he was just going to stand here and take it while this man accused him of theft -especially now that the falsity had been revealed out of the man's own mouth.
'Let me guess,' Mort said. 'A guy like you is a little too picky about what he reads to bother with the sort of trash I write. You stick to guys like Marcel Proust and Thomas Hardy9, right? At night, after the milking's done, you like to fire up one of those honest country kerosene10 lamps, plunk it down on the kitchen table - which is, of course, covered with a homey red-and-whitechecked tablecloth11 - and unwind with a little Tess or Remembrance of Things Past. Maybe on the weekend you let your hair down a little, get a little funky12, and drag out some Erskine Caldwell or Annie Dillard. It was one of your friends who told you about how I'd copied your honestly wrought13 tale. Isn't that how the story goes, Mr Shooter ... or whatever your name is?'
His voice had taken on a rough edge, and he was surprised to find himself on the edge of real fury. But, he discovered, not totally surprised.
'Nope. I don't have any friends.' Shooter spoke14 in the dry tone of a man who is only stating a fact. 'No friends, no family, no wife. I've got a little place about twenty miles south of Perkinsburg, and I do have a checked tablecloth on my kitchen table - now that you mention it - but we got electric lights in our town. I only bring out the kerosenes when there's a storm and the lines go down.'
'Good for you,' Mort said.
Shooter ignored the sarcasm15. 'I got the place from my father, and added to it with a little money that came to me from my gram. I do have a dairy herd16, about twenty milkers, you were right about that, too, and in the evenings I write stories. I suppose you've got one of those fancy computers with a screen, but I make do with an old typewriter.'
He fell silent, and for a moment they could both hear the crisp rustle17 of the leaves in the light late-afternoon wind that had sprung up.
'As for your story being the same as mine, I found that out all on my own hook. You see, I'd been thinking about selling the farm. Thinking that with a little more money, I could write days, when my mind's fresh, instead of just after dark. The realtor in Perkinsburg wanted me to meet a fellow up in Jackson, who owns a lot of dairy farms in Miss'ippi. I don't like to drive more than ten or fifteen miles at a time - it gives me a headache, especially when some of it's city driving, because that's where they let all the fools loose - and so I took the bus. I got ready to get on, and then remembered I hadn't brought anything to read. I hate a long bus ride without something to read.'
Mort found himself nodding involuntarily. He also hated a ride - bus, train, plane, or car - without something to read, something a little more substantial than the daily paper.
'There isn't any bus station in Perkinsburg - the Greyhound just stops at the Rexall for five minutes or so and then it's down the road. I was already inside the door of that 'hound and starting up the steps when I realized I was empty-handed. I asked the bus driver if he'd hold it for me and he said he was damned if he would, he was late already, and he was pulling out in another three minutes by his pocket-watch. If I was with him, that would be fine by him, and if I wasn't, then I could kiss his fanny when we met up again.'
He TALKS like a storyteller, Mort thought. Be damned if he doesn't. He tried to cancel this thought - it didn't seem to be a good way to be thinking - and couldn't quite do it.
'Well, I ran inside that drugstore. They've got one of those old fashioned wire paperback19 racks in the Perkinsburg Rexall, the ones that turn around and around, just like the one in the little general store up the road from you.'
'Bowie's?'
Shooter nodded. 'That's the place, all right. Anyway, I grabbed the first book my hand happened on. Could have been a paperback Bible, for all I saw of the cover. But it wasn't. It was your book of short stories. Everybody Drops the Dime20. And for all I know, they were your short stories. All but that one.'
Stop this now. He's working up a head of steam, so spike21 his boiler22 right now.
But he discovered. he didn't want to. Maybe Shooter was a writer. He fulfilled both of the main requirements: he told a tale you wanted to hear to the end, even if you had a pretty good idea what the end was going to be, and he was so full of shit he squeaked23.
Instead of saying what he should have said - that even if Shooter was by some wild stretch of the imagination telling the truth, he, Mort, had beaten him to that miserable24 story by two years - he said: 'So you read "Sowing Season" on a Greyhound bus while you were going to Jackson to sell your dairy farm last June.'
'No. The way it happened, I read it on the way back. I sold the farm and went back on the Greyhound with a check for sixty thousand dollars in my pocket. I'd read the first half a dozen stories going down. I didn't think they were any great shakes, but they passed the time.'
'Thank you.'
Shooter studied him briefly25. 'Wasn't offering you any real compliment.'
'Don't I know it.'
Shooter thought about this for a moment, then shrugged26. 'Anyway, I read two more going back ... and then that one. My story.'
He looked at the cloud, which was now an airy mass of shimmering27 gold, and then back at Mort. His face was as dispassionate as ever, but Mort suddenly understood he had been badly mistaken in believing this man possessed28 even the slightest shred29 of peace or serenity. What he had mistaken for those things was the iron mantle30 of control Shooter had donned to keep himself from killing31 Morton Rainey with his bare hands. The face was dispassionate, but his eyes blazed with the deepest, wildest fury Mort had ever seen. He understood that he had stupidly walked up the path from the lake toward what might really be his own death at this fellow's hands. Here was a man mad enough - in both senses of that word - to do murder.
'I am surprised no one has taken that story up with you before - it's not like any of the others, not a bit.' Shooter's voice was still even, but Mort now recognized it as the voice of a man laboring32 mightily33 to keep from striking out, bludgeoning, perhaps throttling34; the voice of a man who knows that all the incentive35 he would ever need to cross the line between talking and killing would be to hear his own voice begin to spiral upward into the registers of cheated anger; the voice of a man who knows how fatally easy it would be to become his own lynch-mob.
Mort suddenly felt like a man in a dark room which is crisscrossed with hair-thin tripwires, all of them leading to packets of high explosive. It was hard to believe that only moments ago he had felt in charge of this situation. His problems - Amy, his inability to write - now seemed like unimportant figures in an unimportant landscape. In a sense, they had ceased to be problems at all. He only had one problem now, and that was staying alive long enough to get back to his house, let alone long enough to see the sun go down.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was nothing he dared to say, not now. The room was full of tripwires.
'I am very surprised,' Shooter repeated in that heavy even voice that now sounded like a hideous36 parody37 of calmness.
Mort heard himself say: 'My wife. She didn't like it. She said that it wasn't like anything I'd ever written before.'
'How did you get it?' Shooter asked slowly and fiercely. 'That's what I really want to know. How in hell did a big-money scribbling38 asshole like you get down to a little shitsplat town in Mississippi and steal my goddam story? I'd like to know why, too, unless you stole all the other ones as well, but the how of it'll be enough to satisfy me right now.'
The monstrous39 unfairness of this brought Mort's own anger back like an unslaked thirst. For a moment he forgot that he was out here on Lake Drive, alone except for this lunatic from Mississippi.
'Drop it,' he said harshly.
'Drop it?' Shooter asked, looking at Mort with a kind of clumsy amazement40. 'Drop it? What in hell do you mean, drop it?'
'You said you wrote your story in 1982,' Mort said. 'I think I wrote mine in late 1979. I can't remember the exact date, but I do know that it was published for the first time in June of 1980. In a magazine. I beat you by two years, Mr Shooter or whatever your name is. If anyone here has got a bitch about plagiarism41, it's me.'
Mort did not precisely42 see the man move. At one moment they were standing43 by Shooter's car, looking at each other; at the next he found himself pressed against the driver's door, with Shooter's hands wrapped around his upper arms and Shooter's face pressed against his own, forehead to forehead. In between his two positions, there was only a blurred44 sensation of being first grabbed and then whirled.
'You lie,' Shooter said, and on his breath was a dry whiff of cinnamon.
'The fuck I do,' Mort said, and lunged forward against the man's pressing weight.
Shooter was strong, almost certainly stronger than Mort Rainey, but Mort was younger, heavier, and he had the old blue station wagon45 to push against. He was able to break Shooter's hold and send him stumbling two or three steps backward.
Now he'll come for me, Mort thought. Although he hadn't had a fight since a schoolyard you-pull-me-and-I'll-push-you scuffle back in the fourth grade, he was astounded46 to find his mind was clear and cool. We're going to duke it out over that dumb fucking story. Well, okay; I wasn't doing anything else today anyhow.
But it didn't happen. Shooter raised his hands, looked at them, saw they were knotted into fists ... and forced them to open. Mort saw the effort it took for the man to reimpose that mantle of control, and felt a kind of awe47. Shooter put one of his open palms to his mouth and wiped his lips with it, very slowly and very deliberately48.
'Prove it,' he said.
'All right. Come back to the house with me. I'll show you the entry on the copyright page of the book.'
'No,' Shooter said. 'I don't care about the book, I don't care a pin for the book. Show me the story. Show me the magazine with the story in it, so I can read it for myself.'
'I don't have the magazine here.'
He was about to say something else, but Shooter turned his face up toward the sky and uttered a single bark of laughter. The sound was as dry as an axe49 splitting kindling50 wood. 'No,' he said. The fury was still blazing and dancing in his eyes, but he seemed in charge of himself again. 'No, I bet you don't.'
'Listen to me,' Mort said. 'Ordinarily, this is just a place my wife and I come in the summer. I have copies of my books here, and some foreign editions, but I've published in a lot of magazines as well - articles and essays as well as stories. Those magazines are in our year-round house. The one in Derry.'
'Then why aren't you there?' Shooter asked. In his eyes Mort read both disbelief and a galling51 satisfaction - it was clear that Shooter had expected him to try and squirm his way out of it, and in Shooter's mind, that was just what Mort was doing. Or trying to do.
'I'm here because - ' He stopped. 'How did you know I'd be here?'
'I just looked on the back of the book I bought,' Shooter said, and Mort could have slapped his own forehead in frustration52 and sudden understanding. Of course - there had been a picture of him on the back of both the hardcover and paperback editions of Everybody Drops the Dime. Amy had taken it herself, and it had been an excellent shot. He was in the foreground; the house was in the middle distance; Tashmore Lake was in the background. The caption53 had read simply, Morton Rainey at his home in western Maine. So Shooter had come to western Maine, and he probably hadn't had to visit too many small-town bars and/or drugstores before he found someone who said, 'Mort Rainey? Hell, yes! Got a place over in Tashmore. Personal friend of mine, in fact!'
Well, that answered one question, anyway.
'I'm here because my wife and I got a divorce,' he said. 'It just became final. She stayed in Derry. Any other year, the house down here would have been empty.'
'Uh-huh,' Shooter said. His tone of voice infuriated Mort all over again. You're lying, it said, but in this case it doesn't much matter. Because I knew you'd lie. After all, lying is mostly what you're about, isn't it? 'Well, I would have found you, one place or the other.'
He fixed54 Mort with a flinty stare.
'I would have found you if you'd moved to Brazil.'
'I believe that,' Mort said. 'Nevertheless, you are mistaken. Or conning55 me. I'll do you the courtesy of believing it's only a mistake, because you seem sincere enough - '
Oh God, didn't he.
' - but I published that story two years before you say you wrote it.'
He saw that mad flash in Shooter's eyes again, and then it was gone. Not extinguished but collared, the way a man might collar a dog with an evil nature.
'You say this magazine is at your other house?'
'Yes.'
'And the magazine has your story in it.'
'Yes.'
'And the date of that magazine is June, 1980.'
'Yes.'
Mort had felt impatient with this laborious56 catechism (there was a long, thoughtful pause before each question) at first, but now he felt a little hope: it was as if the man was trying to teach himself the truth of what Mort had said ... a truth, Mort thought, that part of 'John Shooter' must have known all along, because the almost exact similarity between the two stories was not coincidence. He still believed that firmly, but he had come around to the idea that Shooter might have no conscious memory of committing the plagiarism. Because the man was clearly mad.
He wasn't quite as afraid as he had been when he first saw the hate and fury dancing in Shooter's eyes, like the reflection of a barn-fire blazing out of control. When he pushed the man, he had staggered backward, and Mort thought that if it came to a fight, he could probably hold his own ... or actually put his man on the ground.
Still, it would be better if it didn't come to that. In an odd, backhand sort of way, he had begun to feel a bit sorry for Shooter.
That gentleman, meanwhile, was stolidly57 pursuing his course.
'This other house - the one your wife has now - it's here in Maine, too?'
'Yes.'
'She's there?'
'Yes.'
There was a much longer pause this time. In a weird58 way, Shooter reminded Mort of a computer processing a heavy load of information. At last he said: 'I'll give you three days.'
'That's very generous of you,' Mort said.
Shooter's long upper lip drew back from teeth too even to be anything but mail-order dentures. 'Don't you make light of me, son,' he said. 'I'm trying my best to hold my temper, and doing a pretty good job of it, but -'
'You!' Mort cried at him. 'What about me? This is unbelievable! You come out of nowhere and make just about the most serious accusation59 a man can make against a writer, and when I tell you I've got proof you're either mistaken or lying through your damned teeth, you start patting yourself on the back for holding your temper! Unbelievable!'
Shooter's eyelids60 drooped61, giving him a sly look. 'Proof?' he said. 'I don't see no proof. I hear you talking, but talking ain't proof.'
'I told you!' Mort shouted. He felt helpless, like a man trying to box cobwebs. 'I explained all that!'
Shooter looked at Mort for a long moment, then turned and reached through the open window of his car.
'What are you doing?' Mort asked, his voice tight. Now he felt the adrenaline dump into his body, readying him for fight or flight ... probably the latter, if Shooter was reaching for the big handgun Mort suddenly saw in the eye of his imagination.
'Just gettin m'smokes,' Shooter said. 'Hold your water.'
When he pulled his arm out of the car, he had a red package of Pall62 Malls in his hand. He had taken them off the dashboard. 'Want one?'
'I have my own,' Mort said rather sulkily, and took the ancient pack of L & M's from the pocket beneath the red flannel63 overshirt.
They lit up, each from his own pack.
'If we keep on this way, we're going to have a fight,' Shooter said finally. 'I don't want that.'
'Well, Jesus, neither do I'
'Part of you does,' Shooter contradicted. He continued to study Mort from beneath his dropped lids with that expression of country shrewdness. 'Part of you wants just that. But I don't think it's just me or my story that's making you want to fight. You have got some other bee under your blanket that's got you all riled up, and that is making this harder. Part of you wants to fight, but what you don't understand is that, if we do start to fight, it's not going to end until one or the other of us is dead.'
Mort looked for signs that Shooter was exaggerating for effect and saw none. He suddenly felt cold along the base of his spine64.
'So I'm going to give you three days. You call your ex and get her to send down the magazine with your story in it, if there is such a magazine. And I'll be back. There isn't any magazine, of course; I think we both know that. But you strike me as a man who needs to do some long, hard thinking.'
He looked at Mort with a disconcerting expression of stern pity.
'You didn't believe anybody would ever catch you out, did you?' he asked. 'You really didn't.'
'If I show you the magazine, will you go away?' Mort asked. He was speaking more to himself than to Shooter. 'I guess what I really want to know is whether or not it's even worth it.'
Shooter abruptly65 opened his car door and slid in behind the wheel. Mort found the speed with which the man could move a little creepy. 'Three days. Use it the way you like, Mr Rainey.'
He started the engine. It ran with the low wheeze66 characteristic of valves which need to be reground, and the tang of oilsmoke from the old tailpipe polluted the air of the fading afternoon. 'Right is right and fair is fair. The first thing is to get you to a place where you see I have really got you, and you can't wiggle out of this mess the way you've probably been wiggling out of the messes you have made all your life. That's the first thing.'
He looked at Mort expressionlessly out of the driver's-side window.
'The second thing,' he said, 'is the real reason I come.'
'What's that?' Mort heard himself say. It was strange and not a little infuriating, but he felt that sensation of guilt67 creeping relentlessly68 over him again, as if he really had done the thing of which this rustic69 lunatic was accusing him.
'We'll talk about it,' Shooter said, and threw his elderly station wagon in gear. 'Meantime, you think about what's right and what's fair.'
'You're nuts!' Mort shouted, but Shooter was already rolling up Lake Drive toward where it spilled out onto Route 23.
He watched until the wagon was out of sight, then walked slowly back to the house. It felt emptier and emptier in his mind as he drew closer and closer to it. The rage and the fear were gone. He felt only cold, tired, and homesick for a marriage which no longer was, and which, it now began to seem to him, had never been at all.
The telephone started ringing when he was halfway70 along the driveway which ran down the steep hill from Lake Drive to the house. Mort broke into a run, knowing he wasn't going to make it but running anyway, cursing himself for his foolish reaction. Talk about Pavlov's dogs!
He had opened the screen door and was fumbling71 with the knob of the inside door when the phone silenced. He stepped in, closed the door behind him, and looked at the telephone, which stood on a little antique desk Amy had picked up at a flea72 market in Mechanic Falls. He could, in that moment, easily imagine that the phone was looking back at him with studied mechanical impatience73: Don't ask me, boss - I don't make the news ' I only report it. He thought that he ought to buy one of those machines that take messages ... or maybe not. When he thought about it carefully, he realized that the telephone was hardly his favorite gadget74. If people really wanted you, they eventually called back.
He made himself a sandwich and a bowl of soup and then discovered he didn't want them. He. felt lonely, unhappy, and mildly infected by John Shooter's craziness. He was not much surprised to find that the sum of these feelings was sleepiness. He began to cast longing75 glances at the couch.
Okay, an interior voice whispered. Remember, though -you can run but you can't hide. This shit is still gonna be here when you wake up.
That was very true, he thought, but in the meantime, it would all be gone, gone, blessedly gone. The one thing you could definitely say for short-term solutions was that they were better than nothing. He decided he would call home (his mind persisted in thinking of the Derry house as home, and he suspected that was a circumstance which would not soon change), ask Amy to pull the copy of EQMM with 'Sowing Season' in it and send it down by express mail. Then he would sack on the couch for a couple of hours. He would arise around seven or so, go into the study refreshed, and write a little more shit.
And shit i's all you will write, with that attitude, the interior voice reproached him.
'Fuck you,' Mort told it - one of the few advantages to living alone, so far as he could see, was that you could talk to yourself right out loud without having anyone wonder if you were crazy or what.
He picked up the phone and dialled the Derry number. He listened to the customary clicks of the long-distance connection being made, and then that most irritating of all telephone sounds: the dah-dah-dah of a busy signal. Amy was on the telephone with someone, and when Amy really got going, a conversation could go on for hours. Possibly days.
'Oh, fuck, great!' Mort cried, and jacked the handset back into the cradle hard enough to make the bell jingle76 faintly.
So - what now, little man?
He supposed he could call Isabelle Fortin who lived across the street, but that suddenly seemed like too much work and a pain in the ass2 besides. Isabelle was already so deeply into his and Amy's breakup that she was doing everything but taking home movies. Also, it was already past five o'clock - the magazine couldn't actually start to move along the postal77 channel between Derry and Tashmore until tomorrow morning no matter what time it was mailed today. He would try Amy later on this evening, and if the line to the house was busy again (or if Amy was, perchance, still on the same call), he would call Isabelle with the message after all. For the moment, the siren-song of the couch in the living room was too strong to be denied.
Mort pulled the phone jack18 - whoever had tried to call him just as he was coming down the driveway would have to wait a little longer, please and thank you - and strolled into the living room.
He propped78 the pillows in their familiar positions, one behind his head and one behind his neck, and looked out at the lake, where the sun was setting at the end of a long and spectacular golden track. I have never felt so lonely and so utterly horrible in my whole life, he thought with some amazement. Then his lids closed slowly over his slightly bloodshot eyes, and Mort Rainey, who had yet to discover what true horror was all about, fell asleep.
收听单词发音 |
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discomfiting
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| v.使为难( discomfit的现在分词 )；使狼狈；使挫折；挫败 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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utterly
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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kerosene
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tablecloth
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funky
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wrought
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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herd
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rustle
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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paperback
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dime
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spike
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boiler
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squeaked
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miserable
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briefly
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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shimmering
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possessed
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shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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throttling
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| v.扼杀( throttle的现在分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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plagiarism
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| n.剽窃，抄袭 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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caption
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| n.说明，字幕，标题；v.加上标题，加上说明 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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conning
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| v.诈骗，哄骗( con的现在分词 )；指挥操舵( conn的现在分词 ) | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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wheeze
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| n.喘息声，气喘声；v.喘息着说 | |
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guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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relentlessly
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| adv.不屈不挠地；残酷地；不间断 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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flea
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| n.跳蚤 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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gadget
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| n.小巧的机械，精巧的装置，小玩意儿 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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76
jingle
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| n.叮当声，韵律简单的诗句；v.使叮当作响，叮当响，押韵 | |
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postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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