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

recliner in the comer. "He'd had some angina, the month before, but we really
had no idea. No warning." She looked down. "I know the Lord has His reasons,
but. . . I must admit, I'm hard-pressed to see how He could need Evan more than
I do."

I looked at the chair in which he'd spent his last moments, and felt an odd
anger, a vague sense of. . . injustice. It must have showed on my face, because
Dierdre just nodded sadly. "He should have been out there when it came," she
said, glancing toward the waters of the bay. "It would've been awful for me --
his boat being late; the search-- but even so. He loved the water; loved the
sea. That was where he should're passed on. . . not in some fatty old chair in
his living room. Out there, in his element."

I didn't want to go see him; didn't want it all to become real. But of course it
was real, whether I wanted it to be or not. And so, too soon, we were in Salyers
Funeral Home, and I was gazing down at Evan-- at his creased, craggy face; at
his big hands, calloused from years of dragging nets and shucking oysters; at
his scarecrow-thin body laid out in a simple black suit -- and my memories truly
became memories, then. Until that moment, I could pretend that I could come back
here. . . join him for an afternoon on his boat. . . go wading for clams with
him. Now all that belonged irrevocably, and only, to the past.

The satin lining of the casket, the crushed velvet pillow on which his head
lay-- Evan would have snorted derisively at them. A little too frou-frou for me,
he would've said -- and it was then I remembered something he'd once told me. I
turned to Aunt Dierdre. "Didn't Uncle Evan want to be cremated?" I asked. "His
ashes scattered across the bay?"

Dierdre looked embarrassed; almost guilty. "I. . . I just couldn't, Steven," she
said quietly. "It seems so. . . final. I want a place I can go to, to visit him.
He was out there, on the water, for so much of our life together. . . I'd like
him near me, now, for as long as I have left." She looked away. "Is that selfish
of me?"

I shook my head, and didn't protest.

What would have happened, I wonder, if I had?

The funeral was scheduled for the next day. I made dinner reservations for seven
o'clock at the Village Restaurant for Aunt Dee and myself; that left me with an
hour or so of free time. Stiff and sore from the long drive, I decided to take a
swim on Assateague, another barrier island-- and wildlife refuge-- due east of
Chincoteague. Both islands are rife with tourists at the height of summer, but
this was mid-September, and though the ocean was still warm, the beach was only
sparsely populated, particularly this late in the day. I laid my towel and car
keys on a sand dune, peeled off my T-shirt, and dove into the water-- limbering
up with a few kicks, then swimming parallel to the shore for about ten minutes
before flipping over on my back and floating there in the waning sun.

As I floated, the sun a red mist beyond my shut eyelids, I felt the slow,