"Holly Lisle - World Gates 03 - Gods Old and Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

THORRSON,

Wisconsin had seen in ten years, suddenly smelled spring in the air. He slid his hammer
into his tool belt, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

The scent that he caught this time wasn’t spring, but it had the same feel to it. Newness,
and life, and goodness—but fragile. Fragile.

“Hmmm,” he said. And, “Well. By damn.”

He yelled to his fellow roofer, “Hey, Lars, I’m on break.” Lars, sweating and shirtless and
looking like he’d been run through a wringer, just grunted. Heyr took the time to go down
the ladder, though it would have been easier just to jump. He kept breathing deeply,
making sure all the time that this wasn’t just his imagination, just wishful thinking,
because jobs were hard enough to come by anymore and he didn’t want to do anything
stupid.

The smell was still in his nose when he went to the foreman, who gave him a little smile
when he walked up and said, “You could have the decency to pretend to be as exhausted
as the rest of us. Doesn’t this heat bother you?”

Heyr shrugged. Extremes of weather had never bothered him. “Just lucky,” he said. And

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then, one more quick breath. Still there. “I hate to do this to you in the middle of a job,
Colly, but I’ve got someplace I need to be.”

Colly shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. You never miss a day, never ask for time off. You
need to go someplace this afternoon, go ahead.”

“I don’t mean this afternoon. I mean I have to leave now. I quit.”

Colly, whose real name was something so dreadful that Heyr had never heard him or
anyone else use it, held his hands out wide and stared at the development springing out of
dirt. “We got this house and fifteen more just like it. You know you got a job until this is
done, and for anything else I get when this project is finished. You’re my best guy. You
quit, I’m going to have to hire three other people to replace you. You can’t just walk out
on me like this, man. In the middle of the day. In the middle of a roof…. Jesus wept, your
nail box is still up there, and half a flat of shingles.”

“Told you when I signed on I’d stay as long as I could. Well—this is as long as I could.”

Colly looked at him, exasperated. “You said that six years ago. I figured by now you’d
made up your mind.”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Heyr said. “I like you, liked working with you.
You treated me right, and the rest of your men, too, and I appreciate it. I just got my call.