"Tom Easton - Unto the Last Generation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

sill from the carpeted floor of the main house.

Ox was stronger too. That was why everyone called him Ox.

He also did what he was told. His rash was just as bad as Felix's, but he didn't scratch, except when
something moved in the long hair he pulled back and tied behind his neck. Felix kept his own hair
chopped short.

Ma had dug a stub of crayon from a drawer. Now, tongue protruding through the gaps in her yellow
teeth, she was carefully drawing a purple horizon line on the side of the fridge. A purple sun bulged above
the line. Rays looked like spiky hair.

She was standing back, cocking her head first right, then left, considering. She was leaning forward once
more, adding a potato-shaped nose and round eyes. "Sunspots," she said.

"No fingers," said Pa. "No fuckin' Kilroy."

She added eyebrow lines that gave the solar face a glower. She shrugged. "Fuckin's right," she said.
"Rain or shine, we're screwed. Storms try to wash us out to sea. Sun fries the crops."

"Not the apple trees."

Ma noticed where Pa was looking, toward the shelf on which he kept the jugs of applejack he distilled
each winter. "You stay out of that shit," she said.

Pa grunted and scratched his cheek. A moment later he got off his stool and stepped behind the partition
that hid his and Ma's bed. Ma made a face and muttered, "Think he listens!"

Watching his father scratch had reawakened Felix's own itches, but he managed to refrain from repeating
his father's gesture. He didn't want Ma picking on him again, or too. Not any more than was absolutely
necessary.
It was hard, though. He tried to imagine his own face. Brown eyes, black hair, narrow nose, thin lips,
prominent cheekbones, a bit of Ma, a bit of Pa. He had just enough beard to use the word, a little more
than Ox, not near as much as Pa. Not as much rash there, either, and an imagined finger was
approaching, scratching. He tried to tell himself the itch was less.

He sighed. He leaned one shoulder against the barrel beside his end of the sofa. It gave, betraying how
nearly empty it was. His stomach growled, and he thought of the other two barrels beyond it. Neither one
was any fuller.

The faded blue of the barrels' substance whispered that they could not last forever. They were remnants
of another age, irreplaceable until someone learned how to duplicate them in wood. Their scanty
contents, on the other hand, could be renewed, even though it would be months before the next harvest.
He grimaced and wished potatoes were not the hardiest crop they had.

Besides the apples. They had dried enough of them last fall. But the winter rains had been constant, the
air heavy with moisture, and the mold had eaten them.

Uncle Alva leaned toward the bucket near the fridge. "Full," he muttered as he picked it up by its bail,
carried it to the sink beside the fridge, and emptied it. The water gurgled down the drain and through the