"Joe Haldeman - Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

She squeezed my hand. "I'm sorry." She shook her head. "You lost them."
"A long time ago."
"Long." She toyed with a piece of fish. "My father died at Shiloh. I barely
remember him; I was only two."
"I was three when I left them. They lived a few years, until Sherman took
Atlanta."
"Have you forgiven them? The Northerners?"
"I am a Northerner." An odd conversation, the first one I'd had with an adult in a
week. "The ones who killed my parents . . ."
"What of them?" she said quietly.
There was something in her nature that compelled truthfulness. "I take comfort in
knowing that they burn in hell, or will soon."
"Do I know ... I do know how you feel." She sprinkled salt on her fish. "I'm Toba
Bacharach. I'm a minister here."
"Truly!" That was not common in the nineties.
"A missionary, actually, to the Indians. So I'm an expert when it comes to
bitterness."
I took a pinch of salt and rubbed it over my plate. "So how do you feel about the
Rebels? The ones at Shiloh?"
"Sometimes I hope they found Jesus, and their sins were washed clean.
"Other times?"
She smiled. "I'm a terrible sinner, too. In fact, I sometimes hope they drank and
gambled"—she covered her mouth—"and took pleasure where they might. And then
were surprised to wake up in hellfire."
I had to laugh. "I never thought it through so elaborately."
"Then you must not be a minister. We're thorough."
"No, schoolteacher." I took a deep breath: God forgive me, the first person I was
to tell the whole lie to had to be a minister! "My husband passed away last year—"
"Oh—I'm so sorry!"
"He was . . . never well. I couldn't stay in Philadelphia; there are too many
memories there. So I decided to come out west, to Kansas, where teachers are in demand.
My fourteen-year-old son was very much in favor of the idea."
 She nodded, smiling. "Boys. He talked you into letting him do the rapids."
"He's persuasive. Should I have said no?"
"No, it's perfectly safe. I know both the boys who act as guides. They've done it
so often it bores them to distraction."
"Not too distracted, I hope."
"No." She smiled. "But they do have a strange way about them. It's as if they were
dreaming, though they steer the boats quickly, with precision. They say the river talks to
them."
"That makes sense," I said. "As metaphor, at least."
Her eyebrows went up, then down. I'd revealed more education than a
schoolmarm needed. "No, not at all; not to them. The river is as real a person as you or
me. It talks and they listen." In a drawing room in Philadelphia, this would have been an
opportunity to bring up Ruskin and his pathetic fallacy. Instead, I nodded.
"Everything has a spirit to them. The river, the rocks, the trees." She carefully
extracted the backbone and ribs from her fish. "The fish, the deer, the sun and stars. It
makes preaching to them difficult." She shook her head, smiling. "Last Sunday we
wrestled with the idea of the Trinity. One God with three aspects. They thought that was
funny—only three?"