"Cory Doctorow - A Place So Foreign" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dodd Christina)

me.

He smiled, and stretched his thick moustache across his face. "James, I know you
love the store, but it's already been decided. Once you've been to France,
you'll see that it has wonders that beat anything that store can deliver."



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"Nothing's better than the store," I said.

He laughed and rumpled my hair. "Don't be so sure, son. There are more things in
heaven and earth then are dreamed of in your philosophy." It was one of his
sayings, from Shakespeare, who he'd studied back east, before I was born. It
meant that the discussion was closed.

I decided to withhold judgement until I saw France, but still couldn't shake the
feeling that my Pa was going soft in the head. Mr Johnstone wasn't fit to run an
apple-cart. He was short and skinny and soft, not like my Pa, who, as far as I
was concerned, was the biggest, strongest man in the whole world. I loved my Pa.

#

Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up our
team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All my
chums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal Oly
Sweynsdatter that I'd give him my coonskin cap to wear until we came back. But
instead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail and
salt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Pa
and me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama and
hunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. Mama said, "You just hush up
now, James. There's parts of this trip that we couldn't tell you about before we
left, but you're going to have to stay quiet and hold onto your questions until
we get to where we're going."

I nearly said, "To where we're going?" but I didn't, because Mama had never
looked so serious in all my born days. So I spent an hour hunkered down in
there, listening to the clatter of the wheels and trying to guess where we were
going. When I heard the trap stop and a set of wooden doors close, all my
guesses dried up and blew away, because I couldn't think of anywhere we would've
heard those sounds out in the desert.

So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very own
horsebarn, having made a circle around town and back to where we'd started from!
Mama held a finger up to her lips and then took Mr Johnstone's soft, girlish
hand as he helped her down from the trap.

My Pa and Mr Johnstone started shifting one of the piles of hay-bales that