"Fritz Leiber - Gonna Roll the Bones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Professor Stythe Thompson spent considerable time and ef-
fort in the exploration of myth, legend and folk-motif. After
having read something of his works, I thought that I could
put my finger on a particular piece and say -what it was.
Myth, as I understand it, involves the gods, deals with the
open end of the human condition. Legend may involve the
supernatural, but not in so distinct or religious a fashion as
myth. Folklore, basically, is just that: the lore of the folk,
passed down, generation to generation, without supernatural
overtones.
I'll be damned if I know how to categorize the following
Story.
Maybe that's why it won a Nebula, however. ". . . The sky
was dark, the moon was yellow, the leaves came tumbling
down." I am reminded of Stagalee and Red Hanrahan, and
of all the people half of light and half of darkness who pass
in the night, fight with the Devil on the banks of the Brazos,
crash in their U-2's and cling to coffins while white whales
destroy their ships.
Here is a piece of future myth/legend/folkloremaybe.
It is timeless, though, and like all such things, timely.

GONNA ROLL THE BONES

Fritz Leiber

Suddenly Joe Slattermill knew for sure he'd have to get out
quick or else blow his top and knock out with the shrapnel
of his skull the props and patches holding up his decaying
home, that was like a house of big wooden and plaster and
wallpaper cards except for the huge fireplace and ovens and
chimney across the kitchen from him.
Those were stone-solid enough, though. The fireplace was
chin-high at least twice that long, and filled from end to
end with roaring flames. Above were the square doors of the
ovens in a rowhis Wife baked for part of their living.
Above the ovens was the wall-long mantelpiece, too high for
his Mother to reach or Mr. Guts to jump any more, set with
all sorts of ancestral curios, but any of them that weren't
stone or glass or china had been so dried and darkened by
decades of heat that they looked like nothing but shrunken
human heads and black golf balls. At one end were clustered
his Wife's square gin bottles. Above the mantelpiece hung
one old chromo, so high and so darkened by soot and grease
that you couldn't tell whether the swirls and fat cigar shape
were a whaleback steamer plowing through a hurricane or a
spaceship plunging through a storm of light-driven dust
motes.
As soon. as Joe curled his toes inside his boots, his Mother