"Tom Easton - Down on the Truck Farm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

DOWN ON THE TRUCK FARM

Thomas A. Easton

First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1990




The house was a Swiss chalet with a cantilevered deck. It looked like it would be quite at home on a mountainside,
overhung by beetling cliffs, overlooking some deep valley through which ran a far-off thread of silver. Jimmy Brane
could close his eyes and imagine the thin whistle of mountain wind, the echoing yodels of distant shepherds, the
bleating of sheep and goats in some meadow just around the bulge of the alp. He didn't have to imagine the smell of
honeysuckle.

He knew he should laugh at himself, but he just didn't have the energy. The house was supported not by a mountain
but by a massive gengineered beanstalk, stiffened by a single concrete pillar. The deck was overhung by bean leaves
the size of tabletops, and it overlooked only the yard next door.

It was no coincidence that Jimmy was leaning on the deck's railing and staring at that yard now. That was where his
best friend, Tommy, had lived. Now Tommy's mother lay stretched out on a towel, dark haired and nearly bare,
sunbathing, sipping again and again, as she did all day, every day, at.... Until very recently, she had always been
puttering about her pumpkin house, touching up the sealants that had been sprayed onto the dried shell, washing
windows, pruning the vine that still provided shade. But she had once fooled around with the chalet's previous owner,
and Tommy had found out. He had, in fact, learned that the man he had always called his father bore to him no blood
relationship at all. That was when he had run away.

Tommy hadn't even waited to graduate from high school. He had cut and run, leaving Jimmy to peer over the railing at
the ground below and think that, yes, he was high enough. High school was behind him now, and he didn't want to go
to college--he hadn't even applied!--and he didn't want a job and his best friend was God knew where. He could climb
up on the railing and bend his knees and dive out past the gnarly twists of bean stem and the billows of honeysuckle
blossoms, their viney stems twined around the beanstalk, arch his body against the sky, and plunge down headfirst
upon the flagstoned patch that held the family's Neoform Armadon.

Instead, he leaned over the railing to wave away a drunken hummingbird and pluck a choice honeysuckle blossom, the
size of a wine glass, its narrow base plump with nectar. He held it up to the light, marveling at its shadings of rose and
cream, at how quickly the vine had grown that spring when the seed had appeared, dropped by some high-flying bird
or planted by a wandering jonnyseeder, in the soil below. There had been no such thing just the year before. Now they
were everywhere, and some people said they were a problem. But....

Tommy's mother, Petra, had just plucked another for herself. He gestured with his own, though he knew she would not
see his acknowledgement of what they shared. Then he tipped the blossom up and drained its liquid contents down
his throat. He shuddered at the cloying sweetness, but he did not regret the dose. There was a self-fermented alcoholic
tingle as well, and beneath that a mellowing, relaxing, euphoric haze. He stopped caring about friends, jobs, schools,
long falls to nowhere, everything except reaching for another blossom.

"Hey, Ma! He's been suckin' honey again!"

Jimmy opened one eye. That was his kid brother, Caleb, taking a thirteen-year-old's malicious pleasure in the shit that
was about to fly Jimmy's way. He was standing in the half-open door to the house, staring, grinning, at Jimmy