"Emil Petaja - The Time Twister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

on its sheltered porch and then went in. Rillo's Bar was in case you preferred beer.
"Resting, beat from my long hike, I let my eyes fol-low the gently nodding cottonwoods lining the
river-bank up the mill road. Yes, Swenson's sawmill was still there. The three screen-topped smokestacks
loomed above the amorphous lumps of buildings that constituted the sawmill proper, the planer, and even a
small box factory. The mill lay against a pale wall of rock rising a sheer three hundred feet, with the
towering ridge above it still showing evidences of that long-ago holocaust. Steam rose whitely out of a
minor pipe stack; but it was the great trapezoidal sawdust burner that dominated the mill. Its big bullet
shaped end glowed red from the droning work going on in the mill, even at that hour.
"You know, Doc, somehow I wasn't so surprised. This was just how Dad said Hellmouth was. Why
should it be any different? I rested up, munching down a dry sandwich of cold meat and stale French bread;
then I picked up my packsack and hiked down to the pump and had a long cool drink of fresh mountain
water. Then I went over to Mamie Puski's Boardinghouse and got me a room for the night. She seemed
happy to see me, as if we were old friends. She showed me to a little empty room under the eaves and
wished me goodnight. In Finnish. Boy, did I sleep! Not only from the two-day hike in country that would
defy a Rocky Mountain sheep, but out of a sublime kind of gratitude for everything. It was like—you
know—like coming home."

Steve scowled down at the dwindling tape. Damn Art! He had wasted most of his time getting into that
bucolic Shangri-La. What about Ilma? Where was she? What about her ancient tale-teller father and that
kooky brother, Yalmar?
The tape wound on aggravatingly while Art repacked his pipe and took his time about lighting it. Steve
could just see him, his booted legs dangling down from that hay-pitching door of the Halvor barn, taking his
time about striking a match and drawing the smoke in to his critical satisfaction. Steve swore down at the
fast-dwindling tag end of tape.
"What about Ilma?" he yelled out loud.
"Doc, it's funny..."
"Funny!"
"Everything's just the way Dad said it was—sixty years ago! Doc, I know these people live long and
healthy lives but—you know, the next morning I walked across the field to the little schoolhouse to have a
talk with Toini Teckilla, the schoolteacher, also librarian. Also the one person who relates this dreamy little
mountain village with the Great Outside. When I asked questions about the mill and how come Hellmouth
showed no change, I got nowhere. Mamie Puski. The storekeeper. Two old codgers whittling on the bench
in front of Rillo's Bar. Nowhere. They smiled, friendly as hell. I was a Finn like them, not a toistalainen.
Surely I didn't need explanations for such obvious things as this! Of course, the able-bodied men were all at
the mill, working! Why wouldn't they be?
"So I went to see Toini Teckilla, the old-maid schoolteacher. She only gave me a few minutes away
from her class, and she seemed more annoyed than anything else by the kind of questions I asked her about
Hellmouth. As if I were putting her on or something. Making a joke. My talk about San Francisco and the
Army and having flown in from Spokane didn't register.
She pursed her lips tight, finally, and wouldn't talk at all.
"Until I asked about Ilma and the Halvors. Then she ushered me outside between the gigglers at the
old-fashioned double desks and pointed toward the old covered bridge across the river, where it makes a
sharp turn. 'They're on their farm, as they always are! You know the Halvors! They don't mix. They aren't
really part of the town, you know!'
"I knew, Doc. Even when Ilma was a child, old Izza and the rest stuck to their farm across the river and
seldom went into town at all. Ilma said Izza made some-thing of a story about trolls and evil spirits living
under the bridge on the cattail islands. Ilma tried school for a year or so, but it didn't work out somehow.
She was so painfully shy from living alone with her father and her hunchbacked brother, Yalmar; and then
Yalmar, being so possessive and protective of Ilma's every step, he'd lurk around the schoolhouse and peek
in the windows, scaring the kids and getting called names. So when her mother was drowned in the river