"John Dalmas - Farside 1 - The Lion of Farside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

Another thing about Varia—she wore her hair long. Not braided, but in two bunches like a pair of shiny
copper-red horses' tails, only kind of out to the sides. That was a time when women hardly ever wore
their hair long. Some old ladies Gramma's age let theirs grow long, but they tied it up back of their head
in a bun. Ma wished she'd wear it different; the way it was showed her ears, which were kind of pointy. I
always thought it looked pretty, though I didn't say so, and her ears went with her eyes just fine.

When I was young, I always thought that what was oddest about Aunt Varia was how she'd laugh, now
and then, when no one else did. I remember once we had a new preacher over for supper, and he was
standing up saying the blessing when Varia laughed like that. First thing he did was look down to see if
his pants were unbuttoned or anything. Most of us saw him look, and Frank and me laughed. Couldn't
help it. Threw the reverend off his prayer so bad, he just sort of limped on through to the amen. A lot
quicker than he might have, which was fine by Frank and me.

Varia was still pretty young then. I mean actually, in years.

But what folks noticed first about her was her eyes. She had two, just like the rest of us, but they were
different. Big and leaf green—leaf green!—and tilted up at the outside corners. Made her look foreign.
She was a pretty woman though, the prettiest around, and those eyes were part of it. They suited her just
right, as if any other color or size or shape would have spoiled her looks.

Along with her eyes, her build was what caught the eye most, even among women I think. A little slim,
maybe, for some tastes, but not where it counted. When I was thirteen, fourteen years old, sometimes I'd
get a hard-on when I looked at her. Whenever I did, she'd look at me and laugh, as if she knew. That
killed it every time.

Not that it was a mean laugh. There wasn't any meanness to Varia at all.

I said earlier that she had to have been strange to marry Uncle Will. As a farmer, Will was seriously
short on judgement, though otherwise he seemed reasonably smart. He'd take a notion to do the
darnedest things. His place was right next to ours, with his northeast forty up against our northwest forty,
and right in the middle of the two forties was a thirty-acre clay pocket too heavy and wet for growing
anything but hay. So that's what we'd always used it for, a hay meadow. Anyway, this one spring day I
was fixing fence and saw Will out there plowing his half of it, turning over that nice stand of grass. His
team had all it could do to pull the moldboard through it.

Naturally I was curious, so I went over and asked how come he was plowing it. "Gonna plant potatoes,"
he told me. Potatoes in clay! Was it anyone else, I'd have thought he was fooling. What he ended up with
was a worn-out team, busted up harness, and twelve acres of ground that, when the top dried out, was
like a cobblestone pavement. Afterward, when he tried harrowing it, the disks just hopped along the top.
I was only fourteen at the time, but I sure as heck knew better'n to do something like that. When Pa saw
it, he just shook his head. So far as I know, he never said anything to Will about it. Wouldn't have done
any good.

But if Will was a little short sometimes between the ears, he made up for it further down. The Macurdy
men were well known for their strength, but Will was almost surely the strongest man in Washington
County, and fast-moving. He could outwork most two men. Even if he didn't have hair on his chest, or
any whiskers beyond a little peach fuzz. That was typical of Macurdy men, too, and a little embarrassing
when I was a teenager.