"Robert Reed - Hidden Paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

Hidden Paradise
by Robert Reed
"Can I go outside, Uncle John? Please?"

"Outside, inside," sings the fat man sitting behind the register. "It's your damn vacation. Go where you
want, boy!"

"Thanks, Uncle John!"

Vick kicks the door open and leaps, escaping the gloomy, chilled world of the restaurant. The sun blinds
and the air is suddenly twenty degrees warmer, suffused with the brutal humidity that would gladly kill
some men. But boys who are almost twelve years old are immune to this kind of heat. Vick is skinny and
strong, blessed with jittery, almost endless energies. He leaps and leaps again, then settles into a headlong
sprint, charging across the mostly empty parking lot, barely giving the road half a glance before darting
across. A pickup truck wearing Nixon-Agnew bumper stickers slams on its brakes, its driver throwing
out curses. But Vick has already vanished, sliding down one of the steep trails that leads to the stream.
Only at the bottom does he finally stop, panting rapidly and happily, one tiny portion of his very busy
brain wondering who belongs to the angry voice that keeps shouting at some crazy little son of a bitch.

In Colorado, water such as this wouldn't mean much. But this far from the mountains, any fast and clear
and halfway-cold stream is a treasure. Vick watches the rippling current for several moments. He wears
nothing but cut-off jeans and ragged tennis shoes and a young tan edging very close to a full burn. His
hair is hippie-long and uncombed. His face is bright and engaged, eyes dark and quick and full of a
graceful mischief always looking for opportunity. Somebody has stowed a pair of large inner tubes in the
brush behind him. Across the stream are a line of shabby little cabins—summer retreats and little
rentals-and there's no telling who belongs to these black tubes. It would be difficult to ask for anyone's
permission. With that in mind, Vick makes a string of moral calculations, and to keep the math even more
agreeable, the boy selects the smaller tube—the less desirable one, he reasons—propping it on a
shoulder while telling himself that he'll bring it back in just a few minutes.

The stream lives inside a brief little valley, fed by cold springs and runoff from the occasional windmill.
Dozens of cabins line the waterway, most of them upstream from here, while the downstream route
winds through woods and wet glades. Vick has caught glimpses of the woods from the access road. He
has been living here for three days but still hasn't floated downstream. Which makes it the more
interesting voyage. And besides, if he wants to float the upstream route, he has to walk uphill, now and
for the next ten or fifteen minutes—an unendurable delay in his quest for satisfaction.

The decision is made; he will start from here.

With a grace born from practice as well as luck, Vick throws the tube into the water, turns and leaps
backward, landing butt-first in the moving hole, gouging himself only a little on the sharp metal valve.

Just as he imagined, everything downstream is new. The current shows him fresh turns, and the last of the
cabins drop away, replaced by trees on the banks and a funny quiet made quieter by the gentle swishing
of water.

This is nothing like wilderness. Instead of rock, the occasional rapids are made from cut-down trees and
slabs of old concrete. An abandoned Buick hugs one embankment—a helmet-shaped behemoth like the
one Vick's mom used to drive. Then the stream takes a long turn, and the valley suddenly widens and
turns to forest. A wild turkey strolls along the shoreline, and the boy pulls close enough to see its stupid