"Thomas M. Disch - Minnesota Gothic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

Minnesota Gothic
by Thomas M. Disch


Gretel was caught in the bright net of autumn—wandering vaguely in the golden, dying woods, vaguely
uncertain where she was but not yet frightened, vaguely disobedient. Ripe gooseberries piled in her
basket; the long grass drying. Autumn. She was seven years old.

The woods opened onto a vegetable garden. A scarecrow waved the raggedy stumps of his denim arms
at the crows rustling in the cornstalk sheaves. Pumpkins and squash dotted the spent earth, as plump and
self-sufficient as a convention of slum landlords. Further down the row, an old woman was rooting in the
ground, mumbling to herself.

Gretel backed toward the wood. She was afraid. A strand of rusted barbwire snagged at her dress. The
crows took to the air with graceless to-do. The woman pushed herself up and brushed back a tangle of
greasy white hair. She squinted at Gretel, who began to cry.

"Little girl?" Her voice crackled like sticks of dry wood burning. "Little girl, come here. I give you some
water, eh? You get lost in the woods."

Gretel tore her dress loose from the barb and stepped nervously around the fat pumpkins, tripping on
their vines. Her fear, as is often the way with fear, made her go to the old woman, to the thing she
feared.

"Yes, I know you," the old woman grated. "You live two houses down the road. I know your mother
when she is little." She winked, as though they had shared an amusing secret. "How old are you?"

Gretel opened her mouth but couldn't speak.

"You're only a little girl," the old woman went on, with a trace of contempt. "You know how old I am?
A hundred years old!" She nodded her head vigorously. "I'm Minnie Haeckel."

Gretel had known who the woman was, although she had never seen her before. Whenever Gretel was
especially bad or muddied her Sunday frock or wouldn't eat dinner, her mother would tell her what
terrible things Old Minnie Haeckel did to naughty piglets who didn't eat cauliflower. Mother always
concluded these revelations with the same warning: "You do it once more, and I'm going to take you to
live with that old Minnie. It's just what you deserve." Now too, Gretel recognized the clapboard house
with the peeling paint and, around it, the sheds—omens of a more thorough disintegration. The house
was not as formidable viewed across the vegetable garden as it had seemed in brief glimpses from the car
window, the white hulk looming behind a veil of dusty lilacs. It looked rather like the other old
farmhouses along the gravel road—the Brandts', the Andersons'.

Minnie took Gretel by the hand and led her to an iron pump. The pump groaned in time to the woman's
slow heave and stagger and a trickle of water spilt over its gray lip, blackening it.

"Silly girl!" Minnie gasped. "Use the dipper."

Gretel put the enamel dipper under the lip of the pump to catch the first gush of cold water. She drank
greedily.