"James Van Pelt - A Flock Of Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

The manager shrugged. "Guess we're on an honor system now. Only a dozen or so
customers a day. Maybe a couple hundred total. I'll bet there aren't 50,000
people alive in the whole country. I'll leave the doors open." For a moment
the manager stared into the distance, as if he'd lost his thought. Behind
them, the waiting car rumbled. "You know how they say that if you put a
jellybean in a jar every time you make love the first year that you're
married, and you take one out every time you make love after that, that the
jar will never be empty? This warehouse is a little like that."
When Carson started the truck, the manager leaned into the window, resting his
arms on the car door. This close, Carson could see how greasy the man's hair
was, and it smelled like old lard.
The manager's smile was gone. "How long have you known me?" he said, looking
Carson straight in the eye. His voice was suddenly so serious.
Carson tried not to shrink away. He thought back. "I don't know. Sixteen
months?"
The manager grimaced. "That makes you my oldest friend. There isn't anyone
alive that I've known longer."
For a second, Carson was afraid the man would begin crying. Instead, he
straightened, his hands still on the door.
Tentatively, Carson said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I've ever asked what your
name was."
"Nope, nope, no need," the manager barked, smiling again. "A rose by any other
moniker, as they say. I'll see what I can find you in the coughing line. Don't
know about antibiotics. Come back tomorrow."
It wasn't until Carson had driven blocks away toward the river, as he watched
the boarded up stores slide by, as he moved down the empty streets, past the
mute houses that he realized, other than Tillie, the manager was his oldest
friend too.


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Sitting on his camp chair, Carson had a panoramic river view. On the horizon
to the west, the mountains rose steeply, only a remnant of last winter's snow
clinging to the tops of the tallest peaks. Fifty yards away at the bottom of a
short bluff, the river itself, at its lowest level of the season, rolled
sluggishly. Long gravel tongues protruded into the water where little
long-legged birds searched for insects between the rocks. A bald eagle swept
low over the water going south. Carson marked it in his notebook.
Across the river stood clumps of elm and willows. He didn't need his
binoculars to see the branches were heavy with roosting starlings. Counting
individuals was impossible. He'd have to estimate. He wondered what the
distribution manager would make of the birds. After all, they had something in
common. If it weren't for Shakespeare, the starlings wouldn't be here at all.
In the early 1890's, a club of New York Anglophiles thought it would be
comforting if all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays lived in America.
They tried nightingales and chaffinches and various thrushes, but none
succeeded like the 100 European starlings they released in Central Park. By
the last count there were over two hundred million of them. He'd read an