"Robert F. Young - Flying Pan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Halloween was for children, not for an embittered old woman of twenty-two who worked in a
frying-pan factory. She walked down the street to the apartment building and picked up her mail at the
desk. There were two letters, one from her mother, one from—
Marianne's heart pounded all the way up in the elevator and all the way down the sixth-floor corridor
to her apartment. But she forced herself to open her mother's letter first. It was a typical letter, not
essentially different from the last one. The grape crop had been good, but what with the trimming and the
tying and the disking and the horse-hoeing, and paying off the pickers, there wasn't going to be much left
of the check—if and when it came; the hens were laying better, but then they always did whenever egg
prices dropped; Ed Olmstead was putting a new addition on his general store (it was high time!); Doris
Hickett had just given birth to a 7 lb. baby boy; Pa sent his love, and please forget your foolish pride and
come home. P.S.—Marianne should see the wonderful remodeling job Howard King was doing on his
house. It was going to be a regular palace when he got done.
Marianne swallowed the lump in her throat. She opened the other letter with trembling fingers:

DEAR MARIANNE,
I said I wasn't going to write you any more, that I'd already written you too many times asking
you to come home and marry me and you never gave me an answer one way or the other. But
sometimes a fellow's pride don't amount to much.
I guess you know I'm remodeling the house and I guess you know the reason why. In case you
don't it's the same reason I bought the house in the first place, because of you. I only got one
picture window and I don't know whether I should put it in the parlor or in the kitchen. The
kitchen would be fine, but all you can see from there is the barn and you know how the barn
looks, but if I put it in the parlor the northwest wind would be sure to crack it the first winter
though you'd get a good view of the road and the willows along the creek. I don't know what to
do.
The hills behind the south meadow are all red and gold the way you used to like them. The
willows look like they're on fire. Nights I sit on the steps and picture you coming walking down the
road and stopping by the gate and then I get up and walk down the path and I say, "I'm glad
you've come back, Marianne. I guess you know I still love you." I guess if anybody ever heard me
they'd think I was crazy because the road is always empty when I get there, and there's no one
ever standing by the gate.
HOWARD

There had been that crisp December night with the sound of song and laughter intermingling with the
crackling of the ice beneath the runners and the chug-chugging of the tractor as it pulled the hay-filled
sleigh, and the stars so bright and close they touched the topmost branches of the silhouetted trees, and
the snow, pale and clean in the starlight, stretching away over the hills, up and up, into the first dark fringe
of the forest; and herself, sitting on the tractor with Howard instead of in the hay with the rest of the
party, and the tractor lurching and bumping, its headbeams lighting the way over the rutted country road
Howard's arm was around her and their frosty breaths blended as they kissed. "I love you,
Marianne," Howard said, and she could see the words issuing from his lips in little silvery puffs and
drifting away into the darkness, and suddenly she saw her own words, silver too, hovering tenuously in
the air before her, and presently she heard them in wondrous astonishment: "I love you, too; Howie. I
love you, too. . . ."

She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there crying before she first became aware of the ticking
sound. A long time, she guessed, judging by the stiffness of her limbs. The sound was coming from her
bedroom window and what it made her think of most was the common pins she and the other kids used
to tie on strings and rig up so they'd keep swinging against the windowpanes of lonely old people sitting
alone on Halloween.