"Brennert, Alan - Man Who Loved" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brennert Alan)

ALAN BRENNERT

THE MAN WHO LOVED THE SEA

It's a long haul from practically anywhere to Chincoteague: a barrier island off
the eastern shore of Virginia, it's completely inaccessible by train, and the
nearest major airports are hours away -- in Baltimore, or Washington. I left
Atlanta at eight A.M. Thursday morning, arrived in D.C. a little after ten, and
was on the road by eleven: across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, stop-and-go through
a numbing procession of small dull towns, lunch a burger at Hardees, then back
behind the wheel. The little Ford Escort weathered the journey better than I
did: by the time I finally crossed Wallops Island into Chincoteague, I felt hot,
tired, irritable -- same as I'd felt twenty years before, when my parents, in
the throes of the marriage spasms which would ultimately end in divorce, brought
me here for my first summer with Uncle Evan and Aunt Dierdre.

But the minute I started across the Black Narrows Bridge-- the moment I drew my
first breath of the briny air, and saw my first great blue heron loping casually
through the marshland below -- my fatigue and irritation receded like a tide,
and the memory of two glorious summers came back in a rush, etched brightly onto
everything I saw.

I hadn't been here in almost five years, but in many ways the town didn't look
all that different than it had even twenty years ago. There was still only one
stoplight on Main Street, and the town dock remained sleepy to the point of
narcolepsy. Gone were the neighborhood stores known only by their owners' names
-- Dave Birch's store; Charlie Gold's store -- but the storefronts along Main
were still small, mom-and-pop operations, not a single tri-level, escalatored
shopping mall anywhere to be seen. Further south (or "down the marsh," as they
said here) one-story bungalows with screened-in porches fronted the tidal flat;
kids drove five-speeds across neatly mowed lawns; out on the channel, motorboats
traced foam contrails in the water.

It was so much like the Chincoteague of my youth that for a moment I forgot what
brought me here; for a moment, as I pulled into the driveway of the white
clapboard house on Margarets Lane, I half-expected to see the tall, rangy figure
of Uncle Evan ambling out of the house to greet me.

But it was Aunt Dierdre -- heavy-set, middling height, white-haired -who
appeared on the front steps as I pulled my travel bag from the trunk, and she
was alone.

"Steven? You came --"

Though she didn't intend them to, the words cut deep: You came. For too long I
hadn't come. For the five years I'd been married to Rose, I'd been too busy with
my own life -- had only spoken to Dee and Evan by phone, the occasional holiday
call. And now Evan was gone, and it was too late to make up for the lost time