"Elizabeth Moon - Horse of Her Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

Horse of Her Dreams
By: Elizabeth Moon
****
Think of a parade on Main Street, any Main Street, in a small Texas town. Think of
the horses, and riding them, tall “Texas girls” with the brilliant smiles and flowing
manes of hair you’ve seen on television and in magazines—more spectacular than
cheerleaders, more vibrant than California surfers.
A stereotype, you say? Maybe, or a fantasy—most deeply held by those who
can never, never possess it.
Elizabeth Moon, who rides and lives in a small town in Texas, has seen those
parades and the shadows they cast across even the most sunlit lives.
****
It was just another little wide spot in the road. One of those towns with a hot
shadeless Main Street, some old brick or rock buildings on each side, and a big ugly
new government building intended to look modern and urban and progressive, but
clunky as a cinder block in a display case of Chinese porcelain. Here it combined
City Hall, Fire Station, Library, and Community Center, all in one big chunk of beige
precast-concrete panels that hadn’t had time to mellow, but had been there long
enough for rust streaks to come down the sides. Three spindly little oaks in planters
out front hadn’t really taken hold.
We knew the town’s reputation as the county scapegoat—it’s our business to
know—but that’s not why we came. We—the Frontline News team, Channel 8—
had come to cover their annual festival, producing a thirty-second clip for our
Weekend Previews on the Friday-night six-o’clock news. So on this July
Wednesday, there we were square in the middle of that two blocks of Main Street, in
trouble.
What you want is local color, and what the locals think is color isn’t what you
want. Which meant the big sign draped across the City Center saying “Welcome
Frontline News!” wasn’t it. Nor the pair of girls in shorts and clogs who stared at us
through the windows of Clara’s Cafe and then sauntered out, flipping their long
out-of-date hair and pretending to ignore us. Obviously they didn’t understand what
a long lens does to a rear view… anyone’s rear view.
Main Street had been modernized back in the Fifties or Sixties, more stucco
and plate glass than stone or brick. No old hitching rails, no antique streetlights.
There weren’t any shady benches for old men to sit and talk and look rural on—so
of course we didn’t see any local-color kind of old men. The fiberglass horse over
the door of Sim’s Western Wear and Saddlery would have done, except that the
week before we’d used a fiberglass horse over the door of another western wear
somewhere else. And that one had had a fancy saddle on it.
Aside from Main Street, all two blocks of it, the town had something under
two thousand inhabitants living on maybe sixteen miles of streets. I know, because
we drove up and down every single damn street, looking for local color. We found
what you always find: a few neat brick houses maintained by fanatics (curtains
matching, grass plucked with tweezers at the sidewalk, freshly tarred drive), many
more comfortable-looking old brick or frame houses with shaggy yards and big hairy
dogs lying in the shade, a few backyards enlivened by a sheep, calf, or pony, and
some much older but very dilapidated old shacks that were the wrong sort of local
color if we ever wanted to come back.
Then Joe stepped hard on the brakes and said “God bless,” under his breath,
which isn’t his usual expletive.