"Thomas A. Easton - Down on the Truck Farm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Down on the Truck Farm by Thomas A. Easton

The house was a Swiss chalet with a cantilevered deck. It looked like it would be quite at home on a
mountainside, overhung by beetling cliffs, overlooking some deep valley through which ran a far-off
thread of silver. Jimmy Brane could close his eyes and imagine the thin whistle of mountain wind, the
echoing yodels of distant shepherds, the bleating of sheep and goats in some meadow just around the
bulge of the alp. He didn't have to imagine the smell of honeysuckle.

He knew he should laugh at himself, but he just didn't have the energy. The house was supported not by
a mountain but by a massive gengineered beanstalk, stiffened by a single concrete pillar. The deck was
overhung by bean leaves the size of tabletops, and it overlooked only the yard next door.

It was no coincidence that Jimmy was leaning on the deck's railing and staring at that yard now. That was
where his best friend, Tommy, had lived. Now Tommy's mother lay stretched out on a towel, dark haired
and nearly bare, sunbathing, sipping again and again, as she did all day, every day, at.... Until very
recently, she had always been puttering about her pumpkin house, touching up the sealants that had been
sprayed onto the dried shell, washing windows, pruning the vine that still provided shade. But she had
once fooled around with the chalet's previous owner, and Tommy had found out. He had, in fact, learned
that the man he had always called his father bore to him no blood relationship at all. That was when he
had run away.

Tommy hadn't even waited to graduate from high school. He had cut and run, leaving Jimmy to peer over
the railing at the ground below and think that, yes, he was high enough. High school was behind him now,
and he didn't want to go to college-he hadn't even applied!-and he didn't want a job and his best friend
was God knew where. He could climb up on the railing and bend his knees and dive out past the gnarly
twists of bean stem and the billows of honeysuckle blossoms, their viney stems twined around the
beanstalk, arch his body against the sky, and plunge down headfirst upon the flagstoned patch that held
the family's Neoform Armadon.

Instead, he leaned over the railing to wave away a drunken hummingbird and pluck a choice honeysuckle
blossom, the size of a wine glass, its narrow base plump with nectar. He held it up to the light, marveling
at its shadings of rose and cream, at how quickly the vine had grown that spring when the seed had
appeared, dropped by some high-flying bird or planted by a wandering jonnyseeder, in the soil below.
There had been no such thing just the year before. Now they were everywhere, and some people said
they were a problem. But....

Tommy's mother, Petra, had just plucked another for herself. He gestured with his own, though he knew
she would not see his acknowledgement of what they shared. Then he tipped the blossom up and drained
its liquid contents down his throat. He shuddered at the cloying sweetness, but he did not regret the dose.
There was a self-fermented alcoholic tingle as well, and beneath that a mellowing, relaxing, euphoric
haze. He stopped caring about friends, jobs, schools, long falls to nowhere, everything except reaching
for another blossom.

****

“Hey, Ma! He's been suckin’ honey again!”

Jimmy opened one eye. That was his kid brother, Caleb, taking a thirteen-year-old's malicious pleasure
in the shit that was about to fly Jimmy's way. He was standing in the half-open door to the house, staring,
grinning, at Jimmy sprawled in the wood-and-canvas deck chair, at the honeysuckle blossoms littering the