"Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George - The Cobweb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

platonic. Clyde was vindicated six years later when Dick won a gold medal at the Olympics, but this had
done him no good during high school.

Desiree went off to nursing school. She was the only Dhont who could not obtain a full-ride wrestling
scholarship to any school, and so she went the ROTC route instead. After she got her degree she spent
four years in the Army, paying back her obligation, and then reupped for another couple of years. She
married a guy she'd met in the Army and settled down in California. Two years later she divorced him
and came back to Wapsipinicon.

Clyde worked construction for a couple of years, ostensibly to fund a future college education, but by the
time he could afford it, he was no longer interested. He did not have any specific job ambitions that
required a formal degree, and he had learned that he could read books in the EIU library for free and
spend his money traveling.
He spent his tuition money riding a motorcycle around the United States and Canada and even did the
wandering-around-Europe thing for a while. He came back to Wapsipinicon, goofed off for a year, got
bored with that, and finally went to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy in Des Moines. After he
graduated, first in his class, he was able to obtain his current job as a deputy county sheriff in Forks
County, which included both Wapsipinicon and Nishnabotna. Sooner or later he ran into Desiree. They
discovered to their mutual surprise that they had a lot to talk about. They dated for a few months, rented
a house in Wapsipinicon and moved in together, then got married a year later.

After a couple of years of relatively carefree fun, they decided to start a family. They made this decision
in June of 1989. They knew other couples who had had trouble getting pregnant and who had spent
years pursuing various therapies and adoption strategies, and so they felt that they should start trying as
soon as possible. Desiree got pregnant within approximately forty-five minutes.

Not long afterward Clyde Banks began to think about career issues again. It was time to move up in the
world or find another line of work. The only way to move up was to run for Forks County sheriff in the
1990 election. This would mean putting his boss, Kevin Mullowney, out of a job. Mullowney was a
Democrat. Clyde Banks had no choice but to grit his teeth and become a Republican. The Republican
party was glad to have him, but there weren't many Republicans in the area, and the party did not have a
lot of money.

So Clyde Banks had to do some serious thinking about inexpensive campaign strategies. He was thinking
about them at six-thirty A.M. on the morning of March 1, 1990, as he stood in his kitchen, browning one
pound of ground beef in a large black iron skillet. He had just come off the night shift and was still
wearing his brown uniform. The walls were making a hissing, whining noise as hot water rushed through
the pipes; Desiree was taking a shower. If he stepped away from the stove and got his head out of the
column of grease vapor rising from the skillet, he could get a whiff of the peachy stuff she used on her
hair.

On the counter next to the stove there was a big piece of white paper that had until recently been
wrapped around the ground beef. It had MARCH 01 90 stamped on it in several places. Next to it was
a stack of three other white paper bundles, each one of which contained a single sirloin steak and was
also stamped MARCH 01 90.

The first thing that the Big Boss had done when she'd got out of bed that morning was gone to the
freezer, which was stacked from the bottom to the top with bundles wrapped in white paper, and sifted
through them until she had found the four items stamped with today's date. Clyde would never have even
thought of doing this; none of their meat had expired in at least two months, and it was neither his habit