"Avram Davidson - Or The Grasses Grow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

Or the Grasses
Grow

AVRAM DAVIDSON

About halfway along the narrow and ill-paved county road between Crosby and
Spanish Flats (all dips and hollows shimmering falsely like water in the heat
till you get right up close to them), the road to Tickisall Agency branches
off. No pretense of concrete or macadam-or even grading-deceives the chance or
rarely purposeful traveler. Federal, state, and county governments have better
things to do with their money: Tickisall pays no taxes, its handful of
residents have only recently been accorded the vote, and that grudgingly: an
out-of-state judge unexpectedly on the circuit. Man had no idea of the problem
involved. Courts going to hell anyway.
The sun-baked earth is cracked and riven. A few dirty sheep and a handful of
scrub cows share its scanty herbage with an occasional sway-backed horse or
stunted burro.

Here and there a gaunt automobile rests in the thin shadow of a board shack
and a child, startled doubtless by the smooth sound of a strange motor, runs
like a lizard through the dusty wastes to hide, and then to peer. Melon vines
dried past all hope of fruit lie in patches next to whispery, tindery
cornstalks.
And in the midst of all this, next to the only spring which never goes dry,
are the only painted buildings, the only decent buildings, in the area. In the
middle of the green lawn is a pole with the flag, and right behind the pole,
over the front door, the sign: U. S. BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. TICKISALL
AGENCY. OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

Before Uncle Fox-Head sat a basket with four different kinds of clay, and next
to the basket was a medicine gourd full of water. The old man rolled the clay
between his moistened palms, singing in a low voice. Then he washed his hands
and sprinkled them with pollen. Then he took up the prayer sticks, made of
juniper (once there had been juniper trees on the Reservation, once there had
been many trees) and painted with the signs of Thunder, Sun, Moon, Rain,
Lightning; with the feathers tied to them-once there bad been birds, too . . .

Oh, people-of-the-Hidden-Places,
Oh, take our message to the Hidden Places,
Swiftly, swiftly, now,

the old man chanted, shaking the medicine sticks.

Oh, you Swift Ones, People-with-no-legs,
Take our message to the People-with-no-bodies,
Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The old man's skin was like a cracked, worn moccasin. With his turkey-claw
hand he took up the gourd rattle, shook it: west~ south, up, down, east north.