"David Eddings - High Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

The yard around our house was cluttered with a lot of old junk abandoned by previous tenants — rusty
car bodies and discarded appliances and the like — but it was a good place to play. Jack and I were
involved in one of the unending, structureless games of his invention that filled the days of our boyhood.
My brother — even then thin, dark, quick, and nervous — was a natural ringleader who settled for
directing my activities when he couldn't round up a gang of neighborhood kids. I went along with him
most of the time — to some extent because he was older, but even more, I suppose, because even then I
really didn't much give a damn, and I knew that he did.

After supper it was too dark to go back outside, and the radio was on the blink, so we started tearing
around the house. We got to playing tag in the living room, ducking back and forth around the big old
wood-burning heating stove, giggling and yelling, our feet clattering on the worn linoleum. The Old Man
was trying to read the paper, squinting through the dime-store glasses that didn't seem to help much and
made him look like a total stranger — to me at least.

He'd glance up at us from time to time, scowling in irritation. "Keep it down, you two," he finally said.
We looked quickly at him to see if he really meant it. Then we went on back out to the kitchen.

"Hey, Dan, I betcha I can hold my breath longer'n you can," Jack challenged me. So we tried that a
while, but we both got dizzy, and pretty soon we were running and yelling again. The Old Man hollered
at us a couple times and finally came out to the kitchen and gave us both a few whacks on the fanny to
show us that he meant business. Jack wouldn't cry — he was ten. I was only eight, so I did. Then the
Old Man made us go into the living room and sit on the couch. I kept sniffling loudly to make him feel
sorry for me, but it didn't work.

"Use your handkerchief" was all he said.

I sat and counted the flowers on the stained wallpaper. There were twelve rows on the left side of the
brown water-splotch that dribbled down the wall and seventeen on the right side.

Then I decided to try another tactic on the Old Man. "Dad, I have to go."

"You know where it is."

When I came back, I went over and leaned my head against his shoulder and looked at the newspaper
with him to let him know I didn't hold any grudges. Jack fidgeted on the couch. Any kind of enforced
nonactivity was sheer torture to Jack. He'd take ten spankings in preference to fifteen minutes of sitting in
a corner. School was hell for Jack. The hours of sitting still were almost more than he could stand.
Finally, he couldn't take anymore. "Tell us a story, Dad."

The Old Man looked at him for a moment over the top of his newspaper. I don't think the Old Man
really understood my brother and his desperate need for diversion. Jack lived with his veins, like Mom
did. Dad just kind of did what he had to and let it go at that. He was pretty easygoing — I guess he had
to be, married to Mom and all like he was. I never really figured out where I fit in. Maybe I didn't, even
then.

"What kind of a story?" he finally asked.

"Cowboys?" I said hopefully.