"Chalker, Jack L - DG1 - The River of the Dancing Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

well; she has a kid by him, too. But so long as she don't marry

him, I'm stuck."
"You have a kid?"

He nodded. "A son. Irving. Lousy name, but it was the one
uncle he had on her side who had money. Not that it got us
or him anything. I love him, but I almost never see him."
"Because you're on the road?"

"Naw. You'd be surprised what you can work. I'm supposed
to have visitation rights, but somehow he's always away when
I come visiting. She don't want him to see me, get to know
me instead of her current as his daddy. Uh-uh."
"Couldn't you go to court on that?"
He laughed. "Honey, them courts will slap me in jail so
fast if I miss a payment to her it isn't funny -- but tell her to
live up to her end of the bargain? Yeah, they'll tell her, and
that's that. Tell her and tell her and tell her. Until, one day,
you realize that the old joke's true -- she got the gold mine in
the settlement and I got the shaft. Oh, I suppose I could make
an unholy mess trying to get custody, but I'd never win. I'd
have to give up truckin', and truckin's all I know how to do.
And I'd probably lose, anyway -- nine out of ten men do. Even
if I won -- hell, it's been near five years." He sighed. "I guess
at this stage he's better off. I hope so."

"I hope so, too," she responded, sounding genuinely touched,

JACK L. CHALKER 9

with the oddly pleasing guilt felt when, sunk deep in self-pity,
you find a fellow sufferer.

They rode in near silence for the next few minutes, a silence
broken only by the occasional crackle from the CB and a report
of this or that or two jerks talking away at each other when
they could just as easily have used a telephone and kept the
world out.

Finally he said, "I guess from what you say that your mar-
riage didn't work out either."

"Yeah, you could say that. He was an Air Force sergeant
at Lackland. A drill instructor in basic. We met in a bar and
got drunk on the town. He was older and a very lonely man,
and, well, you know what I was going through. We just kinda
fell into it. He was a pretty rough character, and after all the
early fun had worn off and we'd settled down, he'd come home
at night and take all his frustrations out on me. It really got to