"Bruce McAllister - Dream Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcallister Bruce)

BRUCE MCALLISTER

Dream Baby

Here's as powerful and hard-hitting a story as you're likely to read this
year, a compassionate study of those who actually have to face up to those
horrors of war we hear so much about.

Bruce McAllister published his first story in 1963, when he was
seventeen (it was written at the tender age of fifteen). Since then, with
only a handful of stories, he has managed to establish himself as one of the
most respected writers in the business. His short fiction has appeared in
Omni, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, In the Field of Fire, The
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His first novel
Humanity Prime was one of the original Ace Specials series. Upcoming is
a new novel from Tor, and he is at work on several other novels. McAllister
lives in Redlands, California, where he is the director of the writing
program at the University of Redlands.



DREAM BABY
Bruce McAllister


I don't know whether I was for or against the war when I went. I joined
and became a nurse to help. Isn't that why everyone becomes a nurse?
We're told it's a good thing, like being a teacher or a mother. What they
don't tell us is that sometimes you can't help.

Our principal gets on the PA one day and tells us how all these boys
across the country are going over there for us and getting killed or
maimed. Then he tells us that Tony Fischetti and this other kid are dead,
killed in action, Purple Hearts and everything. A lot of the girls start
crying. I'm crying. I call the Army and tell them my grades are pretty
good, I want to go to nursing school and then 'Nam. They say fine, they'll
pay for it but I'm obligated if they do. I say it's what I want. I don't know if
any other girls from school did it. I really didn't care. I just thought
somebody ought to.
 I go down and sign up and my dad gets mad. He says I just want to be a
whore or a lesbian, because that's what people will think if I go. I say, "Is
that what you and Mom think?" He almost hits me. Parents are like that.
What other people think is more important than what they think, but you
can't tell them that.

I never saw a nurse in 'Nam who was a whore and I only saw one or two
who might have been butch. But that's how people thought, back here in
the States.

I grew up in Long Beach, California, a sailor town. Sometimes I forget