"Robert F. Young - The Moon of Advanced Learning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

aluminous world whirls round and round the Earth. I think they are looking at the stars.

Betty precedes me upstairs. I check to see if all the doors are locked. When I enter our room, she is
kneeling beside the bed. Her hands are steepled on the bedspread and her eyes are closed. She is of
Polish descent, and both of us go to early mass every Sunday when I am off, and take the kids with us.
But I have never seen her pray at home before. Without saying anything, I undress and slip between the
sheets. Presently she slips in beside me. Then I say, "Were you praying about the mill?" and she answers,
"Yes." I do not say anything more, but turn off the light. We lie there in the darkness side by side, and
then we make love.

In the morning there is a wind from the south, and the sky is a cloudless blue. During the week it was
cool for this time of year, and now the weather forecasters are ecstatic as they promise a warm and
beautiful weekend. After breakfast we take the kids and go shopping. I cash my check at the
supermarket-office window. It is a big check; it needs to be what with the price of food. With kids,
shopping is quite a chore. Janet wants everything she sees. Little Chuck is too young to know what he
wants and keeps grabbing at bright packages. We return to the car and unload the two carts we have
filled. Betty loves to shop. Her eyes become glazed as she inches up and down the aisles. She buys
everything that is on sale, whether we need it or not. She thinks she is saving money. I am always
tempted to point out to her that the only realistic way to save money is not to spend it, but I never do.
With the money I make, there is no need to be frugal.
The supermarket is four blocks from our house. We drive home beneath a sky to which smoke from
the mill has lent a yellowish cast. Many of the business places we pass are closed, their windows
boarded up. There are numerous houses for sale. Employment at the mill is not what it once was, and
although on the surface Chenango is still big and bustling, it has been gradually dying for years. My
grandfather used to tell me how it used to be in the old days. There were twenty thousand men working
in the mill then, and the unemployed used to beg at the gates to be let in so they could apply for work.
No one dreamed in those days that the mill would ever die. It was as dependable as the sun coming up in
the morning. But my grandfather is no longer interested in such matters. He is too busy in Florida playing
golf.

Saturday afternoon I cut the lawn. It takes me only fifteen minutes. Afterward I replace a cellar
window one of the neighborhood kids broke. Late in the afternoon I have a bottle of beer and sit on the
back porch steps, watching Janet and Little Chuck play. We have steak for supper—tenderloin.
Afterward I watch TV for a while; then Betty and I get dressed to go out. She puts the kids to bed, and
a teenage girl from down the street comes in to babysit.
We go to Braidish's. We almost always go there Saturday night when I have the weekend off.
Tonight we go with Ron and Dolores Krupak. Ron works with me at the mill, and he and Dolores are
about our age. Braidish's is located near the outskirts of Chenango and is a notch or two above the
average gin mill. On Saturday nights a dance band comes in at nine and plays till two.
We take a table near the dance floor and have a few rounds while the band is setting up. Betty drinks
screwdrivers; the rest of us order beer. Usually she confines herself to two or three drinks, but tonight,
even before we begin to dance, she has four. The band is an old people's band—it plays Lawrence Welk
style and alternates between old favorites and modern numbers, which it plays exactly the same way it
plays the old favorites. Tame stuff, but when you have a wife and two kids, it's time to start being tame.
Between dances the four of us talk of this and that, but never once does one of us mention the mill.
Mostly we talk about our kids. Ron and Dolores have two boys and a girl. Betty keeps downing
screwdrivers. I tell her to ease up, but she only grins and says Saturday night only comes once a week.
She is tipsy when at last we leave. We go for coffee at an all-night diner. After one swallow of hers Betty
gets sick and runs for the women's room. Dolores helps her back to the table. Shortly afterward we
leave. Both Ron and I have driven our cars. As soon as I get home, I pay the babysitter and tell her she