"Thomas M. Disch - The Genocides" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

ELEVEN A Natural Death

TWELVE Ghosts and Monsters

THIRTEEN Cuckoo, Jug-jug, Pu-we, To-witta-wo!

FOURTEEN The Way Up

FIFTEEN Blood and Licorice
 SIXTEEN Home Safe

EPILOGUE The Extinction of the Species




ONE: The Prodigal

As the lesser and then the greater stars disappeared in the advancing
light, the towering mass of the forest that walled in the cornfield retained
for a while the utter blackness of the night. A light breeze blew in from the
lake, rustling the leaves of the young corn, but the leaves of that dark
forest did not stir. Now the eastern forest wall glowed gray-green, and the
three men waiting in the field knew, though they could not yet see it, that
the sun was up.
Anderson spat--the day's work had officially begun. He began to make his
way up the gentle incline toward the eastern forest wall. Four rows away on
either side of him, his sons followed--Neil, the younger and larger, on his
right hand, and Buddy on the left.
Each man carried two empty wooden buckets. None wore either shoes or
shirts, for it was midsummer. Their denims were in tatters. Anderson and Buddy
had on wide-brimmed hats woven of crude raffia, like the coolie hats you used
to get at carnivals and state fairs. Neil had sunglasses but no hat. They were
old; the bridge had been broken and mended with glue and a strip of that same
fiber from which the hats had been made. His nose was calloused where the
glasses rested.
Buddy was the last to reach the top of the hill. His father smiled while
he waited for him to catch up. Anderson's smile was never a good sign.
"You're sore from yesterday?'
"I'm fine. The stiffness comes out when I get working."
Neil laughed. "Buddy's sore because he _has_ to work. Ain't that so,
Buddy?"
It was a joke. But Anderson, whose style it was to be laconic, never
laughed at jokes, and Buddy rarely found very funny the jokes his half-brother
made.
"Don't you get it?" Neil asked. "_Sore_. Buddy's _sore_ because he has
to work."
"We all have to work," Anderson said, and that pretty well ended what
joke there had been.
They began to work.