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

between us, to make amends for my thoughtlessness.

Maybe I could make amends to Dierdre, at least. As she approached, I dropped my
travel bag and hugged her.

"How you holding up, Aunt Dee?"

I could read the pain in her eyes, but she shrugged in a way she shared with
many residents of this fragile island: a stoic acceptance of the sort of
calamities-- floods, hurricanes, fires -- which had always been part of life on
Chincoteague. "Better," she said, trying for a smile, "now that you're here. But
come on, come in, let me take that." Faster than the eye could follow she'd
grabbed my travel bag and was bustling into the house -- happy, I suspect, to
have someone to look after again.

Both Aunt Dee and Uncle Evan were "Teaguers" -- island natives. (Non-natives,
even long-time residents who weren't born here, were invariably known as
"come-heres" or "come-latelys.") My mother left Chincoteague for college and,
after that, Baltimore, but her brother Evan stayed behind, becoming a "waterman"
-- a fisherman -- and marrying his high school sweetheart, Dierdre. They were
never able to have children of their own, which could account for why they so
readily agreed to play host to a surly, restless ten-year-old city brat.

"You were a handful," she admitted, half an hour later, over cake and coffee.
"But you settled down soon enough."

I smiled. "Yeah. But only after hijacking Uncle Evan's skiff." By the end of my
first week on Chincoteague I'd contracted a near-terminal case of island fever;
bored out of my mind, I liberated a small dinghy Evan had been restoring in his
back yard, launched it (not without a skinned knee) into the channel, and
tried-- insane as it may sound, in retrospect -- to paddle back to the mainland.

Dierdre laughed, eyes bright for the first time since I'd seen her. "When he
found out what you'd done, I thought he was going to shellac your behind, but
good. But when he caught up with you and saw you'd made it all the way to Willis
Point, he told me, 'Dierdre, the boy may have the makin's of a waterman,' and
after that, you could do no wrong, even when you did."

"Maybe I should have listened to him," I said. "There are days when trawling for
flounder off Tom's Cove sounds a lot more appealing than putting out a trade
magazine."

"Oh no," she said quickly, "it was hard work, Steven, a hard way to make a
living. He loved it, but I think you have to love it, to keep at it, year in and
year out."

I hesitated a moment. "Where. . . was he?" I said, finally broaching the subject
we had so far avoided. "When it happened?"

Her eyes clouded over. "Right there," she said, nodding to the old leather