"Donnelly, Marcos - El Hijo De Hernez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Donnelly Marcos)

He hesitated because the audience shut up, all at once. He saw why when he
looked to his left, our right: Mama had stood. Father Galloway, with skin like
nighttime and a permanent face of worry, stepped in front of the Save-Our-Cities
lady to talk through her microphone. "If we could yield the floor for a moment,
I believe La Viuda de Hernez has a comment to make." Most everybody still called
Mama that, "the Widow of Hernez," even though it was five years since my father
got killed down on Imperial. Mama liked being called La Viuda.

She didn't use the microphone. "Fifty million dollars since 1990. That would be
eight years. Mr. Pietr, how many people would you say live in the Fifteenth
District?"

All our heads turned to find Mr. Pietr. He wasn't hard to spot, tall, lanky, and
paler than any Anglo I'd ever seen. Mr. Pietr stood to answer, the way he made
us do in class. "I would guess around forty thousand, Senora." He said senora
funny, all swallowed and white-like.

"That seems to be an arithmetic problem, doesn't it?" Mama said. "I wonder how
much that would be just for me, just for one day."

More movement in the audience -- Zane Gerard, Lucinda Ramirez, Tyque Raymond,
everybody else from my class shifting all nervous because they knew what was
coming. Mr. Pietr looked around until he found the first student who hadn't
disappeared in a slouch.

"Jose Hernez," he said.

I hated when people called me Jose.

I stood.

"Could you solve that problem for us?"

I caught the Mayor's man rolling his eyes. The Save-Our-Cities lady looked
distracted, maybe a little confused that she was no longer the center of
attention. Mama had a smile, tight and proper.

I closed my eyes and listened for it. I could remember the exact tune, the pipe
song for math class. I could see Mr. Pietr playing, I could feel the breeze
blowing numbers all around me, and I saw the right numbers lining up and
behaving themselves for me when I told them to. Fifty million dollars was
divided by eight years, which was split for forty thousand people in the
Fifteenth District, and a portion I gave to my mother who I saw bubble apart
into three hundred and sixty-five days, all in a rectangle of seventy-three rows
by five columns, which was the only way I could make them float neatly. I
reached out, took one bubble, and read it.

I opened my eyes. "Forty-two cents, plus eighty-one one hundredths of a penny if
you round up." I checked over to Zane Gerard. He was nodding at me. I knew that
even though it wasn't his math problem, he couldn't resist working it, too. None