"Wen Spencer - Ukiah 2 - Taintet Trail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

her life and the Pack kidnapping me, and then she dated me because she felt guilty about seducing someone
so young, and now she's pushing for marriage because I ended up with Kittanning by trying to rescue her."
"It's so like a woman to overanalyze things."
Ukiah dropped into the window seat. "And that's just my family."
"I meant to ask you how the picnic went on Sunday."
"Well, her brothers and sisters seemed to like me. Her older brother Zane said that if Indigo could
run around shooting people, she certainly could date anyone that she pleased."
Max laughed at this.
"Her parents, though ... to them I'm a long-haired, teenage, Native American, Unitarian, Wolf Boy
raised by lesbians, with an infant son obviously from a previous failed relationship."
"Are you quoting?"
"Indigo's mother doesn't realize how well I hear."
"Ouch." Max winced for him. "Don't worry, kid, they'll come around."
Ukiah nodded, but heard again Indigo's quiet "if." "Mom Jo is worried that we haven't given enough
thought of 'how' we could stay married. I don't know the first thing about living on my own, and Mom Jo
says that would throw Indigo into the role of caretaker. She says it could put a lot of stress on Indigo that
she's not expecting."
"Your Mom Jo is a good woman," Max said. "But she's always underrated your ability to learn. If
you want to make this marriage work, you can."
Again—if. Some part of him certainly craved being married to Indigo, despite it being a vast
unknown. Unsuspected, he had a deep want for his wife and his son living in his house—all the fine
trappings of being an adult.
The realization bothered him. Could wanting to be married have nothing to do with loving Indigo?


Pendleton Municipal Airport, Pendleton, Oregon
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
 When Ukiah remembered Oregon, he recalled only steep mountains and towering pines. He was
startled when the turboprop airplane dropped down through the clouds to reveal a land nearly flat and
utterly treeless. More startling, the land was marked with a multitude of huge circles.
"What are those?" he asked Kraynak.
Kraynak leaned over to peer out the window. "Those are from the long, rolling irrigation ... thingies.
They anchor one end and it rolls in a circle about the endpoint."
They landed without Pendleton coming into view. The airport was laughably small after the
Houston airport: four modest-sized public rooms linked together. Over the sole door leading to a single
X-ray device was a sign proclaiming ALL GATES. It was the first airport of the day in which Ukiah wasn't
immediately overwhelmed.
Four children with black hair, dark eyes, and dusky skin played in the largest room. Ukiah watched
the children while Max rented two Chevy Blazers from a Hertz kiosk-styled office, doing the typical
corporate paperwork dance to allow Ukiah to drive under the age of twenty-five. Were the kids Native
Americans, Chinese, or Mexican? None of them came close enough for him to tell.
Max threw him the keys to the first Chevy. "You sure you're okay to drive?"
"If I take a few minutes to get settled in, yeah. There's no crowd to deal with."
The Hertz agent laughed. "Wait two weeks, and there will be. The annual roundup starts then. It's
a rodeo with an Indian powwow. Pendleton goes from a population of twenty thousand to sixty thousand."
"Ouch," Max said. "Well, hopefully we'll be gone by Thursday."
"People will be drifting in starting this weekend," the Hertz agent said.
"Explains why getting hotel rooms was so fun," Max muttered, resetting his watch to local time.
"It's five-thirty now. See you at the hotel in two hours or so? We'll probably both be out of regular
cell-phone range, so take one of the satellite phones with you. Call me if you run into trouble."