"Betty Miles - The Trouble With Thirteen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miles Betty)

I tried to squash the feeling down. I started to look for Nora in her favorite sleeping places: the chair she wasn't supposed to lie in, the hall rug, the foot of my bed, Kenny's closet floor.
"Nora!" I called. "Where are you, honey?"
She wasn't anywhere in the house.
So I ran outside, calling as loud as I could. "Nora! Nora! Come on, Nora Please!"
The rain had stopped, but everything was soaked. She'd be in some sheltered place. I looked under the back porch and inside the garage and under the row of evergreens at the edge of the vegetable garden. I ran to the front of the house and looked under the steps and around to the side where the roof hangs out and makes a dry place. She wasn't there.
Then I knew where she had to be. I went toward it, feeling dizzy with fear as I got closer. I called in a softer voice so I wouldn't frighten her. "Nora, are you there? Here I am, Nora. I'm coming."
And she was there-under the lilac bush, curled up into a little mound of damp fur on the wet grass with rain dripping onto her from the lilac flowers. Her tail thumped weakly as I crawled under the wet branches to reach her. Her eyes were open. She looked at me in such a sad way as she tried to inch toward me. Her legs twitched and her tail thumped pitifully and she gave a sharp little moan. Then she began to wheeze.
This wheezing was different, deep and dry. Her whole body trembled when she did it.
"Oh, Nora," I whispered. "Oh, you poor thing!"
I touched her head softly and smoothed my hand down her back as gently as I could. I felt weak from the smell of the lilacs and the chill of the ground and the sight of Nora's stomach swelling out with every wheeze. I wanted to hold her tight so she couldn't wheeze any more. I wanted to carry her to some warm dry place. But I know you aren't supposed to move anyone who's that sick. So I just scrunched down on the wet ground with my head next to hers and put my arm around her and lay there and stroked her while she trembled and wheezed. I know she was glad I was with her. I could tell.
It felt as though we were there for hours but I guess it was only about ten minutes. It was the most awful ten minutes of my whole life. It was so lonely. I wished Mom or Kenny would come back home. The branches dripped, and the ground was so cold. Nora's eyes were dark and far away. I always used to wonder how people know when someone's dying. You can tell. You see it in their eyes. Nora wheezed again, yelping afterward as her body jerked. She was so little and thin! She looked almost like a puppy. I put my face against her wet fur. "I love you, Nora," I said. "I love you so much!"
Nora wheezed again, more quietly this time. "It's O.K., Nora," I comforted her. "You're going to be
O.K." But I knew it wasn't true. She raised her head a little bit and laid it closer to mine so that our eyes looked into each other's. Then, thumping her tail softly as though she was trying to please me by doing a trick just right, she gave a little quick gasp, and died.
Her body twitched and went still. I tried to hear her heart, but there was no sound. "Nora!" I cried, hugging her close. "Oh, Nora, I'm going to miss you so much!" I missed her terribly already.
I took her into my arms very carefully and crawled slowly out of the lilacs. Branches scraped against my face. I carried her to the house and set her down in the old sling chair on the back porch. Then I ran upstairs for something to cover her with. In the linen closet I found the big beach towel with black and honey stripes. The honey was exactly the same color as Nora's fur. Once I used that towel for Nora after a bath and Mom got mad, but I knew she wouldn't be mad now. I was carrying the towel downstairs when the word "shroud" came into my head. It has such a sad, heavy sound. All at once I started to cry. I pressed the shroud against my face and cried and cried and cried.
Mom came in the front door. "Annie! What's wrong, hon?"
She grabbed me in a hug with the towel bunched up between us. "What is it? What's happened?"
It felt so good to be in her arms. "It's Nora!" I sobbed out. "Nora's dead."
"Oh, Annie, are you sure?" Mom hugged me
tighter. "Oh, how terrible I wasn't here." She was crying, too. "Where is she?"
I took her out to the back porch where Nora lay. Mom squatted down beside the chair and listened for her heart. "Oh, Annie," she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry!"
I patted the towel around Nora's soft, thin little body.
"I couldn't do anything, Mom! She just lay there wheezing so pitifully, and I couldn't do anything for her!"
Mom wiped my eyes with a corner of the towel. "Just being with her was the best thing you could do, hon. Giving her love."
I looked down. "I can't get used to the idea. That she's dead."
Kenny ran up the steps and stopped when he saw us. "What happened?"
"Nora died." I said it quickly, before Mom could. It seemed like my responsibility to say it.
"Oh, man." Kenny squatted down beside the chair. "Poor old dog. Poor Nora." He patted her head softly. "The hair on her ear's all tangled," he said. Very gently, he worked the tangle out.
The front door slammed and Mom ran into the house. I heard her talking to Dad. He came out to the porch and hugged me.
"I'm sorry, Coke." He bent down and touched Nora gently. "I'm going to miss her," he said. "She was a good old dog."
"We'll miss her so much!" I said. Suddenly I turned on Dad. "If only you'd taken her to the vet that night! I told you she might be sick, but you wouldn't listen."
Dad stroked my hair. "I'm sorry, Coke."
"It's too late to be sorry!" I yelled. "It's too late- she's dead!"
Dad held me tighter, but he didn't say anything. I knew he felt terrible. He loved Nora. He didn't want her to die. Suddenly, my anger faded. But my sorrow swelled up again. "It's not your fault," I said, putting my arms around him for comfort. "She's just dead, that's all."
"I'm sorry we didn't take her to the vet," Dad said soberly. "Medicine might have helped her. But she was an old dog. She had come to the end of her life." He squeezed me. "She had a long, happy life."
"I know it." In my head I pictured Nora running across our yard after a squirrel. "She was such a fast runner!" I said.
Kenny laughed. "Remember the time she ran off with that little kid's cone at the Dairy Queen?"
I had to laugh too, remembering. "And the time she buried her bone in the vegetable garden and dug up a whole row of cauliflowers looking for it!"
"I won't forget that," Dad said.
"She was a dumb old dog," Kenny said lovingly.
"She was smart!" I said quickly. "She was the smartest dog in the world!"
"The nicest, anyway," said Mom. "There could
never be a dog as sweet and loving as she was." The way she said it, it was like a blessing.
After dinner I had to call Rachel. It was so awful to keep having to tell people. I was almost too choked up to talk, but Rachel began to cry so I guess she heard me. I asked her to come over right away to see Nora before we buried her. Dad had said we had to do it that night, before her body stiffened and changed.
Rachel came with a bunch of tulips for Nora's grave. I was awfully glad to see her. She was the only person outside my family who knew how much I had loved Nora.
"I'm really sorry, Annie," she said. She was crying.
"I know it, Rach. Thanks." Then I cried some more.
We buried Nora under the lilacs. We all took turns digging the hole. Dad arranged Nora's box in it, and Rachel and I covered the box and smoothed the dirt over it with our hands. Rachel put the tulips there, and I put the fresh lilacs I'd cut. Then Kenny pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was a small piece of polished wood. He'd burned NORA, 1969-1979 into it with his woodburning kit.
"It's to mark her grave," he said.
"Oh, Kenny, it's beautiful," I said. Sometimes I just love Kenny.