"Bradbury, Ray - The Illustrated Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

Dad nodded each time I spoke and smiled and slapped my chest lightly in approval. We talked. We did not talk of rockets or space, but we talked of Mexico, where we had driven once in an ancient car, and of the butterflies we had caught in the rain forests of green warm Mexico at noon, seeing the hundred butterflies sucked to our radiator, dying there, beating their blue and crimson wings, twitching, beautiful, and sad. We talked of such Things instead of the things I wanted to talk about. And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sounds he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with a rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds. He shut his eyes to listen. I would see him listening to the lawn mower as he cut the grass by hand instead of using the remote-control device, and I would see him smelling the cut grass as it sprayed up at him behind the mower in a green fount.

УDoug,Ф be said, about five in the afternoon, as we were picking up our towels and heading back along the beach near the surf, УI want you to promise me something.Ф

УWhat?Ф

УDonТt ever be a Rocket Man.Ф

I stopped.

УI mean it,Ф he said. УBecause when youТre out there you want to be here, and when youТre here you want to be out there. DonТt start that. DonТt let it get hold of you.Ф

УButЧФ

УYou donТt know what it is. Every time IТm out there I think, If I ever get back to Earth IТll stay there; IТll never go out again. But I go out, and I guess IТll always go out.Ф

УIТve thought about being a Rocket Man for a long time,Ф I said,

He didnТt hear me. УI try to stay here. Last Saturday when I got home I started trying so damned hard to stay here.Ф

I remembered him in the garden, sweating, and all the traveling and doing and listening, and I knew that he did this to convince himself that the sea and the towns and the land and his family were the only real things and the good things. But I knew where he would be tonight: looking at the jewelry in Orion from our front porch.

УPromise me you wonТt be like me,Ф he said.

I hesitated awhile. УOkay,Ф I said.

He shook my hand. УGood boy,Ф he said.



The dinner was fine that night. Mom had run about the kitchen with handfuls of cinnamon and dough and pots and pans tinkling, and now a great turkey fumed on the table, with dressing, cranberry sauce, peas, and pumpkin pie.

УIn the middle of August?Ф said Dad, amazed.

УYou wonТt be here for Thanksgiving.Ф

УSo I wonТt.Ф

He sniffed it. He lifted each lid from each tureen and let the flavor steam over his sunburned face. He said УAhФ to each. He looked at the room and his hands. He gazed at the pictures on the wall, the chairs, the table, me, and Mom. He cleared his throat. I saw him make up his mind. УLilly?Ф

УYes?Ф Mom looked across her table which she had set like a wonderful silver trap, a miraculous gravy pit into which, like a struggling beast of the past caught in a tar pool, her husband might at last be caught and held, gazing out through a jail of wishbones, safe forever. Her eyes sparkled.

УLilly,Ф said Dad.

Go on, I thought crazily. Say it, quick; say youТll stay home this time, for good, and never go away; say it!

Just then a passing helicopter jarred the room and the windowpane shook with a crystal sound. Dad glanced at the window.

The blue stars of evening were there, and the red planet Mars was rising in the East.