"Thomas A. Easton - When life hands you a Lemming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

hooves jutted from top and bottom, the limbs themselves reduced to vestigial stumps. It had no neck, its
head arising from the shoulders, the mouth and throat aimed permanently upward to meet the sink's
drainpipe, its snout whuffling against the underside of the metal basin. It rested on broad haunches,
plugged into a second pipe in the floor of the cabinet, fulfilling its intended function as an intermediate link
in the plumbing.

The garbage disposal's odor suggested animal warmth, with only a faint pungency. There was no problem
there. But yes, we definitely needed to make it prettier. Until this morning, that had been my job. Now...
"Sorry, Freddy," I said. "I've got to figure out how to make Archie stay home."

It was too late for Archie, of course. It was also wasted effort. My mind was blank. And as soon as the
Directive From On High came down, telling all us lowly technical types to get cracking on the "lemming
effect," I did what I always do when I draw a blank.

I took a field trip. I packed up my wife and daughters and headed for the coast of Maine. We drove the
Escort. On the way, I noted that there were a lot fewer Roachsters on the road. Civilian models, anyway.
There were plenty of police models, cruising with their giant claws at the ready. I had never been
surprised that putting Roachsters on the market had cut speeding drastically. Crime was down, too, ever
since a Brooklyn cop had used his Roachster to tear through the wall of a third-story apartment and grab
a suspected dope dealer. On the other hand, most people now called cops "roaches."

It was an easy trip to justify, since the "lemming effect" definitely involved the coast, and since lobsters
equally definitely were a Down East thing. I didn't go to Florida or New York because I don't like
unengineered roaches. And besides, I had grown up in Maine, the town I was going to was full of old
friends and family, it was summer, we owned a cottage near the shore, and I had high hopes for the
fishing. I figured a week or two would vent enough of the Cambridge and General Bodies pressure to let
me think clearly again.

And it wasn't a long trip, either. From Cambridge to the Maine border was only an hour. But still, our
spirits lifted when the high arch of the Kittery bridge hove into view. As we crossed the line, like every
other expatriate Mainer I had ever talked to, we burst into song. Ours was "We're home because we're
home because we're...."

The landscape wasn't really any different from that of New Hampshire behind us. We could see motels,
stores, restaurants, and houses thronging on nearby land, though the Interstate was mercifully clean. On
the other hand, the summer traffic was as thick as in the Boston suburbs. But the land felt different. We
relaxed, and I said to Betsy, as I did every time we entered Maine, "Someday, honey. Someday we'll
chuck it all and move up here for good."

"Amen," was her reply. Sadie, our older girl, had another opinion: "We can't! I wouldn't have any friends!
And Jeff...." Amy, two years younger, said nothing, though I knew that she too would hate to leave her
school and friends.

Once we had unpacked the car, I let my wife handle the obligatory visits to great aunts and second
cousins. She took Sadie with her. Amy preferred fishing, and I took her with me to the town dock.

At the bait shack, I didn't see Old Ben Harms, who usually ran the shack. It was his boy, Young Ben,
who stood behind the counter. We had known each other in high school, but our ways had parted at
graduation. When I asked him where his dad was, he told me, "Had to go down to Bangor for a
treatment. Got cancer, y'know."