"Steven Gould - Jumper 03 - Griffin's Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

given out and it seemed the gas pumps were swaying in the wind. "Whoa."
"Dizzy, eh?" He looked at me a moment longer. "Gonna gas up. Don't really need it but it'll
give the deputy time to move off. You just sit here, right? Wish I–oh, well. Just sit. Rest. You
feel faint, put your head between your knees."
I nodded.
He went back to the truck. They'd just finished putting Pablo in the back of the ambulance
and Sam exchanged a few words with the paramedic before they closed up and drove off
down the highway, lights flashing but no siren. I closed my eyes for a few seconds–I
thought–then the truck was there, right in front of me.
"Why don't you lie down in back, Griff?"
I wondered if I should go with them at all, but I didn't know what else to do. The thought
of lying down was good, really good. I nodded and he helped me climb over the tailgate and
drop onto the canvas stretcher. He gave me a folded blanket to use as a pillow. "We're headed
west–cab should shade you, takes about forty–five minutes, all right?"
"All right," I said.
He tucked the Gatorade between my arm and my side. I thought about drinking again, but it
was too much effort.
I don't even remember him pulling out of the petrol station.



Chapter Three
Burning Bridges
Consuelo lived with Sam, but it was a strange relationship, almost as if she was his
girl–of–all–work and he was her little boy. I mean, she cleaned and cooked and did laundry.
But she also scolded him constantly, long bursts of rapid–fire Spanish to which he almost
always answered, "I Clam que si!" At first I thought they were married, but she had her own
little bedroom in the back with a wall of religious icons, saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus.
They stayed at home the day after they'd found me but for the next four days after that, they
loaded the truck up with the stretcher and medical supplies and bottled water and drove out.
Consuelo would make me a lunch and show it to me before leaving. "Ahi te deje listo to
lonche." Then she would say, "Descanza y bebe mucha agua." And she would mime drinking
from a bottle.
And I would say, "/Claw que si!"
And Sam would laugh and she would start scolding him again.
I did rest and drank mucha water the first day. And slept. It was very easy to sleep. I was
tired but thinking about anything–well, about Mum and Dad–exhausted me. It was cry or sleep
and sometimes both.
The second day I walked around outside. It was an old adobe house in the middle of the
desert, with weathered outbuildings for livestock and horses but they were long gone. The
only remotely domesticated animals on the property were a few feral cats.
"They keep having kittens but the coyotes keep their population down," Sam'd told me.
"My dad sold off most of the land in the fifties, when he went from ranching to running the
co–op in town, but it's been in the family since before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Wouldn't be if they hadn't married Anglos into the family, but that way the land grant stuck.
Didn't hurt that nobody really wanted this desert crap."
He said there were neighbors about a mile away, but nobody closer. "Water's iffy. I've got a
spring but most places around here you have to drill six hundred feet to get water."
I spent most of the time outside by the concrete tank that captured the spring. The runoff
poured over a little notch in the edge and ran down into a gulley–I guess it would be called an