"Orson Scott Card - Vessel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

ORSON SCOTT CARD

VESSEL

PAULIE HARDLY KNEW HIS cousins before that first family reunion in the mountains
of North Carolina, and within about three hours he didn't want to know them any
better. Because his mom was the youngest and she had married late, almost all
the cousins were a lot older than Paulie and he didn't hit it off very well with
the two that were his age, Celie and Deckie.

Celie, the girl cousin, only wanted to talk about her beautiful Arabians and how
much fun she would have had if her mother had let her bring them up into the
mountains, to which Paulie finally said, "It would have been a real hoot to
watch you get knocked out of the saddle by a low branch," whereupon Celie gave
him her best rich-girl freeze-out look and walked away. Paulie couldn't resist
whinnying as she went.

This happened within about fifteen minutes of Paulie's arrival at the mountain
cabin that Aunt Rosie had borrowed from a rich guy in the Virginia Democratic
Party organization who owed her about a thousand big favors, as she liked to
brag. "Let's just say that his road construction business depended on some words
whispered into the right ears."

When she said that, Paulie was close enough to his parents to hear his father
whisper to his mother, "I'll bet the left ears were lying on cheap motel pillows
at the time." Mother jabbed him and Father grinned. Paulie didn't like the
nastiness in Father's smile. It was the look that Grappaw always called
"Mubbie's shit-eatin' smile." Grappaw was Father's father, and the only living
soul who dared to call Father by that stupid baby nickname. In his mind, though,
Paulie liked to think of Father that way. Mubbie Mubbie Mubbie.

Late in the afternoon Uncle Howie and Aunt Sissie showed up, driving a BMW and
laughing about how much it would cost to get rid of the scratches from the
underbrush that crowded the dirt road to the cabin. They always laughed when
they talked about how much things cost; Mubbie said that was because laughing
made people think they didn't care. "But they're always talking about it, you
can bet." It was true. They hadn't been five minutes out of the car before they
were talking about how expensive their trip to Bermuda had been ha-ha-ha and how
much it was costing to put little Deckie into the finest prep school in Atlanta
ha-ha-ha and how the boat salesmen insisted on calling thirty-footers "yachts"
so they could triple the price but you just have to grit your teeth and pay
their thieves' toll ha-ha-ha like the three billy goats gruff ha-ha-ha.

Then they went on about how their two older children were so busy at Harvard and
some Wall Street firm that they just couldn't tear themselves away but they
brought Deckie their little accident ha-ha-ha and they just bet that he and
Paulie would be good friends.