"Bruce Holland Rogers - These Shoes Strangers Have Died Of" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

"Sell it to Rosado."
"In God's name, why?" Nina said. "Why do you want someone like him to have it?"
"If I'm lucky," I said, "he'll install it over his bed."
Nina's face was pale.
"Sell it to him, Nina. In a way, it's his already."
Then I picked another bid, one Nina liked no better.
The last carving we sold openly to the Museum of Modern Art.
***


Once or twice a year, I look for trees in the killing fields. Some are old fields. Some are fresh. I walk
around the tree trunks, touching them, feeling for the echoes. Then I direct the cutting of the logs that will
be shipped to the States, trucked from Denver to the house and studio in the mountains.
Usually, the freshest sources are the hardest to get to. Not always, though. Not always.
***


A logging road runs parallel to my canyon, on the other side of the ridge. If I have unwelcome visitors,
that's usually where they come from.
The night I found my guest, I was reading. I heard the crack of a rifle shot.
I turned my lights off, shut down the generator.
Snow was falling. It had been coming down for hours in a fine powder, the sort of snow that
continues, steadily, all through one day and into the next.
When I stepped outside, I could hear their voices at the top of the ridge.
There was another shot. Youthful laughter. Raised voices.
Then silence.
When at last I heard one of the voices again, there was no mirth in it. Indistinct words. Then another
voice, pleading.
Again, silence. Enduring silence.
I waited a long time before getting the kerosene lantern out and putting on my boots. Ordinary boots.
Sorels. I had no way of knowing that something special would be waiting for me at the top of the ridge.
Lighting my way with the lantern, I found my way up the slope to a small clearing. Fresh snowfall
hadn't yet covered the shell casings and beer bottles that appeared in the lantern's circle of yellow light.
A shadow caught my eye, and I extended the lantern toward it. Stretched out on bloody snow was a
body. The bald head was uncovered. Vapor clouds of breath rose from the face. The eyes were closed.
An old man, I thought. Lantern light is tricky. It took a moment for me to see that, no, his face was
unlined. He was young. Stepping closer, I saw the swastikas tattooed on his arm.
When I leaned to see his face, my hand fell upon the trunk, and I paused, taking it all in.
***


I got my first taste of fighting in the fall of '44, in the Hürtgen Forest. The trees of the Hürtgen were still
just trees to me then. I had the same feelings for them any infantryman would. When they gave cover to
my unit's advance, I loved them. When German shells exploded among the branches over our heads,
they rained down limbs heavy as stones, splinters sharp as shrapnel. We grenade-felled trees to clear
booby traps, to build an instant bridge over tangles of barbed wire. Trees were obstacles, trees were
useful. The tang of fresh resin filled the air.
I paid more attention to the Germans.
Up close, as I stepped over them, the German dead in the Hürtgen could have been my cousins. Even
after news of Malmèdy, I didn't hate them. I understood what had to be done. I did it.