"Robert F. Young - St Julie and the Visgi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"But she doesn't go to school. You see, she's— She's not quite—"
Mother paused. The big man looked at Julie closely. Something very odd happened to his eyes. They
had been like winter, and now, suddenly, they were like summer—soft and deep and misted. He looked
back at Mother. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know."
"Of course you didn't," Mother said. "It's all right."
"I hate to take the tree down. You know that, don't you?"
"I know," Mother said. Her hand tightened on Julie's. "Come, Julie, we'll go back to the house."
The big man fumbled in the pockets of his breeches. He handed Julie a quarter. "Here," he said. "You
be a brave girl now, won't you?"
Julie ignored the quarter. She looked up into the man's eyes. "Please don't hurt my tree," she said.
The big man stood there helplessly. "Come, Julie," Mother said again. "We have to get out of the way
so the men can work."
Julie accompanied her reluctantly. "We'll go in and have breakfast," Mother said. "We'll have
scrambled eggs, just the way you like them."
"No!"
"Yes, Julie."
Julie cried, but Mother made her go in the house and sit at the kitchen table. The swishing sounds and
the thuds of falling limbs kept coming through the open window, and the singing of saws. Mother
scrambled eggs and made toast. She poured Julie a glass of milk. Julie listened to the saws. There was
another saw now, a saw that sang in a loud rasping voice. Suddenly someone shouted "Timber!" and
right after that there was a heavy sickening thud. Julie tried to run to the window, but Mother caught her
in her arms and held her very close. "It's all right, darling," she said over and over. "It's all right. Don't cry,
baby, don't cry."
But Julie cried and cried.

That night she dreamed of the tree. She dreamed of it the way it had been in winter, dark and forlorn,
its branches charcoal tracings on somber metallic skies. She dreamed of it the way it had been in spring,
with new buds filming its branches with pale green mist. But most of all she dreamed of it the way it had
been in summer, a green cloud above her head as she sat in her swing, a lovely cloud with the wind
sighing through it, with the sky a robin's egg blue all around it.
A little girl and a cloud of a tree adrift on the top of a hill.

The next day the landscape men came. Julie woke to the huffing and puffing of a giant crane. Looking
out her window she saw the big claw of the crane sinking into the stump of the tree and the steel cables
tightening. There was a thick ripping sound when the stump pulled loose, and a shower of dark earth.
The stump came out of the ground like a grisly tooth, its roots trailing wildly below it. The crane swung
the stump around and dropped it into a waiting dump truck and the truck thundered down the hill into the
valley. Another dump truck backed up to the dark deep wound where the stump had been and
disgorged its load of reddish Visge soil; then a bulldozer began to chug-chug, creeping back and forth
across the yard like a mechanized triceratops.
Julie dressed slowly. Mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the white table looking at her hands. She
looked up when Julie came in. "Good morning, darling," she said. "Did you have a nice sleep?"
"Will they plant a new tree?" Julie asked.
"No, Julie. They'll plant grass. The kind of grass that grows on Visge."
"But why, Mother?"
Mother looked down at her hands again. "Because they must, dear. Because that's the way they are.
. . Shall I scramble you some eggs?"
 "I'm not hungry," Julie said.
The bulldozer labored all morning. By noon the ground where the tree had stood was level, and after
they ate their lunch the landscape men got long rakes from their pickup truck and began raking the Visge