"Bud Sparhawk - Jakes Gift" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

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Jake's Gift
by Bud Sparhawk
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Science Fiction




A DF Books NERDs Release

Copyright ©1993 by Bud Sparhawk

First published in Analog, September 1993




The crisp fall wind blew the tops of the pampas grass to and fro, scattering the seed that hung heavy in
their tassels. This late in the year every stand of grass was adorned with their pink plumes, ringing the
marsh and hiding the brackish black waters of the enclosed pond from the nearby creek. Between the
grasses and the water were cattails, displaying their own abundance of seed like fat brown sausages on a
skewer. Nestled among both were the other flora of the Bay, eel grass, sonnet weed, and a broad expanse
of reed, all tough grasses that could survive in the porous sand and resist the incursions of brackish water
that bathed their feet at high tide.

Jake's shack was built on the edge of a small feeder stream between the pond at the center of the marsh
to the beginnings of the black organic muck that was the floor of the marsh, which was home for the
endless variety of frogs and turtles and breeding ground to the twenty varieties of fish that inhabited the
greater Bay beyond the creek. The shack was nondescript, typical of many that sprouted up around the
Bay, its siding turned a uniform gray by the combination of sun and weather. It stood on an assortment
of crazily tilted stilts that lifted the shack's floor above the high tide. Over the years Jake had to add
more supports to prevent subsidence; even buried ten feet into the bottom the poles still did not touch
solid ground. Jake liked to imagine that the black goo beneath him went all the way to the bottom of the
world.

A rambling walkway ran from the one and only door atop a series of floating fifty-five gallon drums to a
small side extension where Jake docked his big boat and, in the other direction, marched on poles and
patches of solid ground to the rutted road that led from the main road to the edge of the marsh. The
walkway was a motley assortment of driftwood planks, rough cut to size and attached to the stringers
with whatever fasteners Jake found at hand; wire, nails, screws, and even worn manila rope dotted the
rail-less walk. Gaps over a foot wide showed in places, since the boards were set to the length of his

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