"Martha Soukup - Over the Long Haul" - читать интересную книгу автора (Soukup Martha)

that got us here. We all know it. These are the same people who got
abortion made illegal, and whittled down sex ed next to nothing. (Though
from what my mama told me once before she moved on, people hardly
used birth control even when they had teachers telling them about it.)
They’re punishing us, all right.
I never saw a guy trucking. As far as I ever knew, they didn’t even let
guys choose trucking.
Avis was staring. “Jesus, it’s a man!” she whispered.
“Real good,” I said. “You remember what they look like.”
Maybe I hadn’t, though. Oh, he was tall and he was fine. White, like
Cilehe’s daddy, but dark tan skin. Maybe Latin. His hair came down in a
braid over one shoulder, thick and brown and shiny. Cheekbones cut high
like a TV Indian’s. He had tight old jeans on. The way they hugged his hips
close you could imagine doing yourself.
Man, it had been too long since I’d seen a guy.
He walked over to an empty table across the room and a dozen pairs of
eyes followed him. Nobody said a word.
One skinny girl with a baby on her hip went over and stared down at
him. “Truckers only in this room,” she said in a mean voice.
That broke the silence. Everyone started up with catcalls, hisses, and
“Who cares?” The girl glared back at all of us. Some of them, when they
get put in the trucks, actually buy the crap about our Evil Ways and get
worse than any taxpayer.
The guy just smiled up at her so nice your toes curled. “You’re right,” he
said. His voice was like caramel candy. He pulled out his trucker’s card.
The girl’s lips went white. She grabbed the kid up in her arm, pulled
another off her chair, and left the room.
“This is mine,” Avis said, to me or maybe just to the universe.
“What are you talking about?” Her eyes looked like a cat’s fixing to go
after a mouse. Squintier than a cat’s, though, in her pasty pimply face. No
way a man so fine-looking would go for her.
Not that I was after him.
“Seventeen months,” Avis said. No need to ask seventeen months since
what.
I fluffed my hair up around my forehead. I knew it looked like hell.
Avis was already moving, plowing through a crowd of women all trying
to look like they had some casual reason for happening to go over by that
particular table at that particular time. It sure wasn’t worth it to join the
mob.
“Look after your sister,” I told Tomi. I put him in the pen with the other
kids. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Need some fresh air.”
“Me too, Mama?” he asked, but he’s a good kid. He didn’t complain. I
didn’t want fresh air, I wanted to get out of the room so my eyes wouldn’t
be all over that guy. Something got you in this fix, I told myself. You think
you’d learn someday.
Even the place outside for truckers to walk around is separate from the
place car drivers go to let their poodles piddle. Same sky, though, high and
gray, the wind whipping around pretty good. I took a deep breath of windy
air. I told myself I wasn’t a kid anymore, fourteen and stupid like when
Tomi’s daddy got him on me. When that didn’t work, I tried telling myself