"Woods, Stuart - Run Before The Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Woods Stuart)

"Except there's nobody aboard."

/ AM TWENTY-FOUR years old, and everyone I love is dead.

I see the land. The land is green. It invites me. but I must sail
past it to my destination. What is my destination? It must be more
than a port, a berth, a hot shower. What is my true destination?

I put the unlabeled cassette into the player expecting to hear a lost
Count Basie album, and instead my own voice booms from the speakers. It
is a profound shock. Those words were the last I spoke into the tape
recorder, and now they speak back at me in a curious, mid-Atlantic
accent (midway between Savannah and the British Isles), and they are
full of self-pity. Granted, I had been through a lot, but I was
possessed, at the very least, of parents whom I loved and who loved me,
and perhaps even a girl, though I had reason to be uncertain, at that
moment and for a little while longer, whether that thing was love on
her part.

/ see the land. The land is green.

My style has improved since then, I hope. It has been a long time,
after all, and I have had a lot of practice. But even through the
filter of those words something in that young voice, like a scent that
instantly, vividly reconstructs a moment in time, rushes at me, and
those two extraordinary years of my extreme and careless youth rise up
and demand, at whatever price, to be lived again.

On a Friday morning in May of 1970 I finished the last of my final
examinations for my junior year at the University of Georgia Law
School. I left the lecture hall and was immediately stopped in the
hallway by the woman who was secretary to the clean.

"Oh, Will," she said, breathlessly, "I'm glad I caught you. Dean Henry
would like to see you in his office right away."

"Thank you, ma'am," I said to her.

"I'd just like to get a drink of water, then I'll be right there."

She hurried back toward her desk while I dawdled over the drinking
fountain, trying to compose myself. I had spent most of the day trying
to forget that the night before had happened, and I had not been able
to manage it. I had more than one kind of hangover, too, and my
performance on the exam I had just finished had not improved my day.
Now, this summons from on high, on top of everything else, had me just
about coming unglued. I splashed some cold water on my face, wiped -it
with my handkerchief, took a few deep breaths, and strode purposefully
toward the administrative offices. I would just have to fake it.