"Mary Rosenblum - Rainmaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

She didn't turn on the light, and she didn't say anything, but I felt the edge
of the bed sink. For a while we both just sat there. The air was thick with heat
up here, and for a moment, I felt it again --clouds, rain, wind -- like a giant
quilt that was constantly changing, shifting, moving above us. "Uncle Kenny's a
good Sheriff, right?" The words sort of came out on their own. I didn't mean to
say anything, hoped she'd let it pass.

"Yes, he is." She brushed the hair off my forehead, like she did when I was
sick. "Julio didn't do it, you know.* Sell drugs. He was so lonely." Her voice
faltered. "He was in love with a girl in Oaxaca. He made up songs for her on his
guitar. What's wrong, Donny?" She had her hand under my chin now, so that I
couldn't look away from her. "What happened between you and Kenny?"

I swallowed, but the .words had balled up in my throat. I could only shake my
head, glad it was dark.

"This is a hard place to live." She stood up. "He's a good man, Donny, even if
he has to be hard, at times. Justice means everything to him. That's why he's
good for the county."

I didn't have anything to say to that. She took her hand away after a while, and
stood up without ,saying anything .more. I lay on 'my back, staring up at the
ceiling for along time after she went downstairs. I heard my uncle drive away in
his county Jeep, I heard my parents come upstairs to bed. Dad stumbled on' the
stairs and it sounded like he fell. Mom said something in the tone she uses when
a cow is having trouble calving. I waited until their door closed, then I got up
and went to the window. It was cool outside now, and the stars still glittered.
But as I leaned over the sill into the night, I could feel the distant rain
pressing against the air,. pushing at it. It was on its way.

I waked before the sun was up and left the house just as it got light. The
eastern sky had gone pink and soft gray as I followed the wash down across the
east pasture. When it rained, the steep-sided little canyon filled up with
water. Fast. My dad and I had had to ride out in a freak storm one spring, to
move cattle out from where they'd holed up in the bottom, before it flooded. I
remember that afternoon real well --lightning breaking across the sky in blue
forks, rain falling in stinging sheets, the homes snorting and trying to bolt.
The cattle milled in the shelter of the willow brush in the bottom, not wanting
to move. Uncle Kenny had showed up on his rangy black mustang to help, still in
uniform because he was on duty. The three of us had finally gotten the twenty or
so cows and calves started up the bank -- just as a wave of brown water had come
foaming down the bed. It had caught my pony, and he had reared, bellydeep in an
instant. I knew we were goners. But then Uncle Kenny had grabbed the reins and
hauled us both out of the flood. "Too cold for swimrain'," he'd said, and
laughed.
I left the wash and climbed the slope, squinting at the first blaze of sun above
the distant horizon. I stopped to get my breath on the ridge. Down below, near
the highway fence, a dusty blue Dodge Caravan was parked by a crooked juniper.
The Rainmaker was sitting on a little folding stool beside the car, a steaming
mug in his hand. He smiled and nodded as I reached him, and stood up as if he'd