"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

remember. Mark rubbed his eyes and nodded. That was the problem with them all, he reminded himself.

“Why didn’t you get off at the Arlington stop?” he asked Johnny. The man next to the window closed his
eyes, turned his head from the wintry scene, and hunched his head down into his shoulders as he
attempted to snuggle some warmth from the collar of his faded olive jacket.

“Why didn’t you get off at the cemetery?” Mark insisted. “You made a contract with the group.”

“I know. Sorry.” Johnny let out a long sigh and closed his eyes. “I just couldn’t.”

“You’ve heard it a thousand times, man. If you don’t face what happened and accept it, you’re never
going to be able to let go of it.”

A flash of anger passed over Johnny’s features. It quickly faded, leaving him as he had been for twenty
three years: frightened, hostile, confused, depressed, and desperate in his isolation and loneliness.
“They’re all still alive in my head, Mark. I see them just like they were then. That’s the way I want to
remember them.” He pulled a bare hand from his jacket pocket and waved it around. “On the TV I see
these beer-gutted, balding old farts carrying signs in front of the V.A., and I don’t know them.” He
lowered his hand to his lap. “I see my own balding head in the mirror, and I don’t know me.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a photograph from it. He looked down at the plastic
laminated picture, then faced it toward Mark. It depicted eleven young soldiers standing, squatting, and
sitting before a burned out piece of North Vietnamese artillery. The young men were grinning and waving.
Not one of them looked older than twenty, although back in group Johnny had said his sergeant, Glenn
Dunham, had been close to thirty. Mark could see the young Johnny Nolan standing in the center at the
back. He had his arms over the shoulders of the two men who stood at either side.

Young, thought Mark. We were all young once upon a time.

Johnny put the photo back onto his pocket and resumed his look out the window of the bus. The traffic
on the icy bridge was slow and heavy. It was getting dark. Evening rush hour was beginning, more snow,
more cold. “You know what really pisses me off?” asked Johnny.
“What’s that?”

“The new kid. The one who joined the group day before yesterday?”

“Dennis,” Mark stated.

“Yeah. Desert Storm Dennis.”

“How does he make you angry?”

Johnny turned from the window and stared at Mark, his expression shocked. “Why? What kind of a
stupid question is that?”

“My kind, I guess.”

“Jesus, Mark, don’t you ever get tired being a saint?”

“How does Dennis make you angry?”