"Steven Gould - Wildside" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

"It's not the same place," said Rick. "Just what it should be. The ranch next door and the other
end of the runway. No buffalo. No wolves." He paused for a moment, then said, "No sabertooths."

I took another sandwich from the cooler and didn't say anything.
 "So that's the secret?" said Joey.

I nodded.

"What's happening, Charlie?" Marie asked.

"I'm eating lunch."

Clara raised her voice, "You know what she means! Is it a time machine? What's that stuff on
the other side? Did we just go back in time? Those were ice age mammals, weren't they?"

I put the sandwich down, "that's what I first thought, too, but I don't think so."

Rick uncrossed his arms and sat down, leaning back against the porch post. "Why don't you
start at the beginning, Charlie. We know about the door in the barn—we might as well know the
rest."

I looked at each of them in turn, waiting. Joey looked as if he was angry about something he
couldn't understand. Marie's eyes were wide and she kept moistening her lips as if they were dry.
Rick's face was blank, as if his mind was a universe away. Clara looked downright excited.

I cleared my throat and began. "Okay. It starts when I was seven. My dad was still active duty
air force and stationed at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. During the summer break, they shipped
me out here to spend a month with Uncle Max and Aunt Jo.

"Well, Uncle Max took me hunting with him. I use the term loosely—he'd take a rifle and a pistol
and we'd go through the tunnel and walk. He never shot anything, though once he fired in the air to
turn away this hairy elephant."

"Mammoth?" said Clara.

"I don't know. I was only seven. Mammoth or mastodon, I'm not sure. Had a wonderful time,
though. Until I went back to school." The corners of my mouth turned down and I frowned. "I tried to
tell my classmates about the stuff I saw and they said I lied. The teachers weren't too hard on
me—they suggested I had an 'overactive' imagination. No one believed me and eventually, I came to
doubt it myself.

"The next time we came here was when my Aunt Jo died, when I was nine. We were living in
Atlanta—Dad had left the air force and was working for the airlines then—and we flew into Houston
and drove up. We stayed in town, in a hotel, and the services and reception were at the Methodist
Church, so we never got out here. I thought about the door during the funeral, but the memory was
like memories of pretend games you play when you're a kid and it was all tangled up with memories
of Aunt Jo alive.

"Uncle Max visited us a few times after that, but we never talked about the door. Seven years