"Ward Moore & Avram Davidson - Joyleg" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Ward)

FOURTEEN: The Uninhibited Youth of Isachar Joyleg
FIFTEEN: Further Revelations from an Indiscreet Past
SIXTEEN: Joyleg's Rise and Fall
SEVENTEEN: Muscovy Ducks and Drakes
EIGHTEEN: The Bear That Talks Like a Man
NINETEEN: From the Salt Lick to the Blasted Oak
TWENTY: Stalemate?




I
THE DISCOVERY OF JOYLEG



The chairman, pawing among the papers before him, muttered, "Now, uh, here's a file from the Veterans'
Administration, a sort of list, just picked at random, from the letter J…" He pondered, head down. "Uh,
anybody want to look at it?"

None of the subcommittee, including Lucinda did. Nor did their guest from the Finance Committee. The
room was warm, stuffy, caught between winter's heat and summer's air-conditioning. Lucinda—the
Honorable Lucinda Rose Habersham (R., Tennessee)—thought fleetingly that lovely spring days were
better spent among the willows in Rock Creek Park than in the House office building. She suppressed
the unworthy thought.

The chairman started to put the stapled pages to one side, glanced at them again, smiled. "Odd name.
Joyleg. Unusual." He frowned; clearly unusual suggested controversial to him. He put the file down firmly.
"Eleven dollars a month."

"What!"

Lucinda glanced at the subcommittee's visitor, the Honorable Tully Weathernox (D., Tennessee—from
the district adjoining her own as a matter of irritating fact). The Congressman was on his feet, a look of
utter outrage on his face.
"You mean a veteran is drawing a miserable eleven dollars a month pension? That a grateful Republic, in
the excess of its generosity is flinging such a contemptuous pittance to one of its venerated defenders?"

Good heavens, thought Lucinda, the man is simply an occupational hazard or something he slips into on
the floor of the House. It comes natural, like—like cold feet. He should have been in the Senate,
seventy-five years ago, complete with string tie and goatee. But Representative Weathernox's slightly
archaic rhetoric didn't embarrass her for him, she didn't think him ridiculous. Besides, he being on the
other side of the Aisle, and holding the views he did—outrageous, even for a Democrat—Lucinda
refused to know him well enough to laugh at him.

"What it says here," confirmed the chairman phlegmatically, ignoring their guest's breach of etiquette.
"Isachar Z. Joyleg, Rabbit Notch (care of Sevier Post Office), Tennessee—"

"May I see the file, please?" Lucinda's voice was brisk and cold. As a member of the Committee on
Veterans' Affairs, veterans were her business. As a Congresswoman from Tennessee, Tennessee