"Duncan,.Lois.-.Summer.Of.Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"She only arrived yesterday," I said. "And it was like this the first time they saw each other. There's just something about her that Trickle doesn't like and he's reacting to it."
"Well, he had better stop reacting," Mother said shortly. "A dog that turns vicious does not belong in a home like ours."
"You don't mean you'dЧyou'd get rid of him!" I exclaimed in horror. "Trickle's mine! He's one of the family!"
"It would break my heart," Mother said. "He is like one of the family. But he's a dog, and if we have to make a choice between a dog and people, people come first. My sister's only child means a great deal more to me than any animal, even Trickle. So let's just hope nothing like this occurs again."
There was an awkward silence while we all stood around and looked at each other. Then Carolyn said tentatively, "Well, I guess I'd better be going. I've got some stuff to do at home and some books to take to the library and things like that."
She didn't really, I could tell. She was uncomfortable with the friction between Mother and me, and I could not blame her.
"Why don't we get together tonight?" I suggested. "I could come over to your house and we could play records or something."
"All right," Carolyn started to say, but Mother broke in before she could form the words.
"Rachel, this is only Julia's second day here."
"I know," I said, "butЧ"
"You were gone all yesterday evening. I think tonight it would be very nice if you stayed home and spent some time making your cousin feel welcome."
"Okay," I said. "Okay, okay, okay."
"Rae, I don't like that tone of voice."
"I've got to be going," Carolyn said hurriedly. "I've just got tons to do, really. Tell Julia good-bye for me. I really enjoyed meeting her."
"Thank you, Carolyn," Mother said. "I'll tell her."
The day that had begun so pleasantly seemed somehow to have fallen apart. I walked my friend to the door and watched her start off down the street and came back inside.
Mother had vanished. I opened the door that led from the kitchen into the garage and heard the clinking of bottles coming from the storeroom which Dad had converted for her into a darkroom. I knew she was mixing chemicals and was probably going to start an afternoon of printing. Any other time I would have rapped on the door and asked if I could join her; I enjoyed helping her in the darkroom.
At the moment, however, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I'd had enough of being lectured without deliberately letting myself in for another siege of it. I was sure that whatever I did would be wrong, and Mother would jump all over me, and I'd snap back at her.
The afternoon loomed long and empty with nothing to fill it. I wished now I had started earlier to look for a summer job so that I might have had a real chance of finding one. The places where I had left my name had all been discouraging; when they hired summer help it was usually students from the University. I would have liked to have gone to the pool, but there was no way to get there. I would have enjoyed playing records, but the stereo was upstairs in the bedroom which now was half Julia's. She had gone into it and shut the door, and there was no way I could feel at ease with the idea of bursting in upon her.
I didn't realize it at the time, but this was to be the first of many such afternoons during that long, strange summer.
I wound up at last in the backyard with a couple of Dad's old issues of National Geographic. I leafed through them idly, looking at the pictures and pausing occasionally to read the captions. In one of them there was an article on Africa. It was illustrated by a photograph of a witch doctor involved in some sort of native ceremony. His face and body were painted in brilliant colors, his arms were raised, and his eyes were glaring straight at the camera.
The impact of those eyes was extraordinary, even in a picture. They seemed to exert a force so powerful that it could not be confined by the printed page. Was this, I wondered, the kind of thing Professor Jarvis gave his lectures about? Did people like this really perform magic?
The caption beneath the picture said that this man was practicing macumba, a form of sorcery which permitted its practitioners to kill at a distance with the concentrated power of their thoughts.
Ridiculous, I told myself, but could not help giving a little shudder as I turned the page.
I finished that magazine and laid it aside and picked up the other. The sun moved slowly down the curve of the sky and the shadow of the elm tree crept toward me until at last the leaf patterns sprinkled themselves across my lap. Eventually it was time to go in and scrub the potatoes and put them in the oven, and while I was doing that Bobby came in with a lump on his head from having been hit with a softball.
"That's a dumb name for it," lie told me. "There's nothing soft about it."
I helped him put ice on his forehead to diminish the swelling, and then Mother came in from the darkroom carrying her prints. She spread them out on the kitchen table to evaluate them, and while that was going on Dad got home from work, and Peter soon after him, and things seemed normal again.
NormalЧand yet, not quite.
Julia came down to dinner dressed in a pair of her new jeans and the Indian blouse. Her face was pale, and she looked tired and drained of energy. Everyone pounced upon her as though she had been gone for years, and Peter even went so far as to pull out her chair.
"How are you, dear?" Mother asked anxiously. "Is your ankle feeling better?"
"Her ankle?" Dad said. "What happened to her ankle?"
"It was an unbelievable thing," Mother said, and told him what had occurred that morning. Dad's face darkened as he listened, and Peter looked so angry that I was afraid he was going to get up and go looking for Trickle that very moment.
"Wait till I get my hands on that dog," he said grimly. "I'll teach him to go around biting people. Where is he, anyway?"
"I don't know," I said. "He's gone." I felt very much like crying.
"When he comes back," Dad said, "I don't want Mm in this house. We're not going to risk this sort of thing happening again."
"Not come in the house!" I exclaimed. "But he lives in this house! It's his home!"
"It's summer," Dad said. "It's beautiful weather. He can stay outside. And I don't want him running loose either. One episode of this kind is enough."
"You mean I'll have to tie him?" I asked. The thought of poor Trickle staked out in the yard like a fierce beast was so absurd that I wanted to laugh, and I knew that if I started laughing I would never be able to stop. I could feel the laughter building up inside me, mixing with the tears. "I can't tie him, I just can't! He'd hate it so!"
"Not as much as he'll hate what I'm going to do with him if he so much as growls at Julia another time." It was Peter who said this, squaring his skinny shoulders and sticking out his jaw in a determined fashion as though he were offering to fight a lion single-handed to protect his beautiful lady. It was all so ridiculous and at the same time so awful. I looked up and down the table at the faces of my family, the people I loved most in the world, and except for Bobby who was too busy wrestling with the catsup bottle to take part in the conversation, they were regarding me as coldly as though I were an unpleasant stranger.
"I don't want any more argument," Dad said. "Either Trickle stays outside or we get rid of him altogether. An animal who begins to beЧ"
He was interrupted by the doorbell. Bobby got up to answer it and came back in with Mike.
"Hi," he said. "I didn't mean to break in on dinner. I'll come back later." It was like a burst of sunshine into a gloom-filled room, and we all relaxed a little.
"Don't be silly," Mother told him. "We're always glad to see you. Have you eaten yet? There's plenty if you'd like to join us."
"No, thanks. Mom's got things cooking at our house. I just ran over for a minute."
Mike straddled the arm of the sofa and perched there, a little higher than the rest of us, looking down into all of our plates. Glancing up at him, I thought how handsome he was with his face already beginning to pick up its summer tan and his hair fluffed out in a sort of halo around his head from the day spent in the sun and water.
He grinned at me and winked in way of private greeting, and I felt better than I had all afternoon.
"How was work?" I asked. "Do you think you're going to like it?"
"Great. Fantastic. Nothing to do but sit on my tower and watch the pretty girls in their new swimming suits."
"I got a suit today," Julia said. "Rae and Carolyn helped me pick it out. It's awfully pretty."
"Really? How nice." Mother smiled across at her. "In all the excitement over the Trickle attack I never did get around to asking about the morning's shopping. That's a new blouse you're wearing, isn't it? Did you find some other things?"