"Robert McCammon - Boy's Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

monster in the river, and a secret in the lake. We had a ghost that haunted
the road behind the wheel of a black dragster with flames on the hood. We had
a Gabriel and a Lucifer, and a rebel that rose from the dead. We had an alien
invader, a boy with a perfect arm, and we had a dinosaur loose on Merchants
Street.
It was a magic place.
In me are the memories of a boy’s life, spent in that realm of
enchantments.
I remember.
These are the things I want to tell you.


ONE

The Shades of Spring

Before the Sun—Down in the Dark—The Invader—Wasps at Easter—The Death of a
Bike—Old Moses Comes to Call—A Summons from the Lady


1
Before the Sun


“CORY? WAKE UP, SON. IT’S TIME.”
I let him pull me up from the dark cavern of sleep, and I opened my eyes
and looked up at him. He was already dressed, in his dark brown uniform with
his name—Tom—written in white letters across his breast pocket. I smelled
bacon and eggs, and the radio was playing softly in the kitchen. A pan rattled
and glasses clinked; Mom was at work in her element as surely as a trout rides
a current. “It’s time,” my father said, and he switched on the lamp beside my
bed and left me squinting with the last images of a dream fading in my brain.
The sun wasn’t up yet. It was mid-March, and a chill wind blew through
the trees beyond my window. I could feel the wind by putting my hand against
the glass. Mom, realizing that I was awake when my dad went in for his cup of
coffee, turned the radio up a little louder to catch the weather report.
Spring had sprung a couple of days before, but this year winter had sharp
teeth and nails and he clung to the South like a white cat. We hadn’t had
snow, we never had snow, but the wind was chill and it blew hard from the
lungs of the Pole.
“Heavy sweater!” Mom called. “Hear?”
“I hear!” I answered back, and I got my green heavy sweater from my
dresser. Here is my room, in the yellow lamplight and the space heater
rumbling: Indian rug red as Cochise’s blood, a desk with seven mystic drawers,
a chair covered in material as velvety blue-black as Batman’s cape, an
aquarium holding tiny fish so pale you could see their hearts beat, the
aforementioned dresser covered with decals from Revell model airplane kits, a
bed with a quilt sewn by a relative of Jefferson Davis’s, a closet, and the
shelves. Oh, yes, the shelves. The troves of treasure. On those shelves are
stacks of me: hundreds of comic books—Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern,