"Avram Davidson - Or The Grasses Grow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

Oh, people-of-the-hollow-Earth,
Take our message to the hollow Earth,
Take our song to our Fathers and Mothers,
Take our cry to the Spirit People,
Take and go, take and go,
Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The snakes rippled across the ground and were gone, one by one. The old man's
sister's son helped him back to his sheepskin, spread in the shade, where he
half sat, half lay, panting.
His great-nephews, Billy Cottonwood and Sam Quarter-horse, were talking
together in English. "There was a fellow in my outfit," Cottonwood said; "a
fellow from West Virginia, name of Corrothers. Said his grandmother claimed
she could charm away warts. So I said my great-uncle claimed be could make
snakes. And they all laughed fit to kill and said, 'Chief, when you try a snow
job, it turns into a blizzard!' . . . Old Corrothers," be reflected. "We were
pretty good buddies. Maybe I'll go to West Virginia and look him up. I could
bitch, maybe."
Quarter-horse said, "Yeah, you can go to West Virginia, and I can go to
L.A.-but what about the others? Where they going to go, if Washington refuses
to act?"
The fond smile of recollection left his cousin's lean, brown face. "I don't
know," be said. "I be damned and go hell if I know." And then the old pickup
came rattling and coughing up to the house, and Sam said, "Here's Newton."
Newton Quarter-horse, his brother Sam, and Billy Cotton-

wood were the only three Tickisalls who bad passed the physical and gone into
the Army. There weren't a lot of others who were of conscripting age (or any
other age, for that matter), and whom TB didn't keep out, other ailments
active or passive did. Once there had been trees on the Reservation, and
birds, and deer, and healthy men.
The wash-faded Army sun tans bad been clean and fresh as always when Newt set
out for Crosby, but they were dusty and sweaty now. He took a piece of wet
burlap out and removed a few bottles from it. "Open these, Sam, will you,
while I wash," be said. "Cokes for us, strawberry pop for the old people . . .
How's Uncle Fox-Head?"
Billy grunted. "Playing at making medicine snakes again . Do you suppose, if
we believed him-that he could?"
Newt shrugged. "Well, maybe if the telegram don't do any good, the snakes
will. And I'm damned sure they won't do no worse. That son of a bitch Easly,"
he said, looking out over the drought-bitten land. " 'Sending a smoke signal
to the Great White Father again, Sitting Bull?' he says, smirking and
sneering. 'You just take the money and send the wire,' I told him . . . They
looked at me like coyotes looking at a sick calf." Abruptly, he turned away
and went to dip his handkerchief in the bucket. Water was hard come by.
The lip of the bottle clicked against one of Uncle FoxHead's few teeth. He
drank noisily, then licked his lips. "Today we drink the white men's sweet
water," he said. "What will we drink tomorrow?" No one said anything. "I will
tell you, then," he continued. "Unless the white men relent, we will drink the
bitter water of the Hollow Places. They are bitter, but they are strong and