"Шервуд Андерсен. Марширующие люди (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

thought before that there was something fancy and pretentious about
it. It did not fit a bakery cart boy. He wished it might have been
plain John or Jim or Fred. A quiver of irritation at his mother passed
through him. "She might have used more sense," he muttered.

And then the thought came to him that his father might have chosen the
name. That checked his flight toward universal hatred and he began
pushing the cart forward again, a more genial current of thought
running through his mind. The tall boy loved the memory of his father,
"Cracked McGregor." "They called him 'Cracked' until that became his
name," he thought. "Now they are at me." The thought renewed a feeling
of fellowship between himself and his dead father--it softened him.
When he reached the first of the bleak miners' houses a smile played
about the corners of his huge mouth.

In his day Cracked McGregor had not borne a good reputation in Coal
Creek. He was a tall silent man with something morose and dangerous
about him. He inspired fear born of hatred. In the mines he worked
silently and with fiery energy, hating his fellow miners among whom he
was thought to be "a bit off his head." They it was who named him
"Cracked" McGregor and they avoided him while subscribing to the
common opinion that he was the best miner in the district. Like his
fellow workers he occasionally got drunk. When he went into the saloon
where other men stood in groups buying drinks for each other he bought
only for himself. Once a stranger, a fat man who sold liquor for a
wholesale house, approached and slapped him on the back. "Come, cheer
up and have a drink with me," he said. Cracked McGregor turned and
knocked the stranger to the floor. When the fat man was down he kicked
him and glared at the crowd in the room. Then he walked slowly out at
the door staring around and hoping some one would interfere.

In his house also Cracked McGregor was silent. When he spoke at all he
spoke kindly and looked into the eyes of his wife with an eager
expectant air. To his red-haired son he seemed to be forever pouring
forth a kind of dumb affection. Taking the boy in his arms he sat for
hours rocking back and forth and saying nothing. When the boy was ill
or troubled by strange dreams at night the feel of his father's arms
about him quieted him. In his arms the boy went to sleep happily. In
the mind of the father there was a single recurring thought, "We have
but the one bairn, we'll not put him into the hole in the ground," he
said, looking eagerly to the mother for approval.

Twice had Cracked McGregor walked with his son on a Sunday afternoon.
Taking the lad by the hand the miner went up the face of the hill,
past the last of the miners' houses, through the grove of pine trees
at the summit and on over the hill into sight of a wide valley on the
farther side. When he walked he twisted his head far to one side like
one listening. A falling timber in the mines had given him a deformed
shoulder and left a great scar on his face, partly covered by a red
beard filled with coal dust. The blow that had deformed his shoulder