"Elgin, Suzette Haden - What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

"Well, let it pass, Johnny Beau. If she comes out and starts in on you,
just you yes-ma'am her and tell her it was me that ordered it done, and
let her come up and talk to me about it if she likes. And mind you, don't
sass her, or look smart-aleck, or even think smart-aleck. She's a good
woman in her way, for a city woman, and it's not her fault she's ignorant.
You mind your manners with her."
"She may not come down," Delmer observed. "I think she's gotten real
discouraged about it all."

Delmer was right: Hannah Bridges did not go down to the creekbank and
confront them. As he'd said, she'd been through so many useless wrangles
on this subject that she'd about given up hope. And Harry had told her
last time to keep still. "These people are my customers, Hannah!" he'd
scolded her. "How do you expect me to sell groceries to people if you
spend half your time chewing them out?"
"Harry," she said, "I'm sorry. But it's just disgusting! Have you seen
that Lee Wommack's yard lately? Harry, you can't tell me there's any
excuse for somebody filling up every last inch of empty space around his
house with old junk cars, and old washing machines, and old bedsprings,
and pieces of tractors, and -- "
"Just stop, Hannah." He'd cut her off sharply, and that wasn't like Harry,
who was as polite a man as she had ever known. "Just let it be," he said.
"But Harry, don't you think that-"
And he'd cut her off again! "Hannah, if you want to eat this year, you'll
let it be!" he'd said angrily. "You say anything you like to me, here in
this house, and I'll listen. I'll even agree with you. But you've got to
quit lecturing people about what they do with their own property on their
own land!"
And he'd gone off to the store, slamming the back door behind him as he
went, and left her standing there astonished. It was clear to her that he
really meant it; she didn't remember Harry ever slamming a door before in
all their years together, not even when he'd had good reason.
Remembering that now, she stood at her window peering out as the two young
men went about their dreadful task. Watching while the pretty view of the
swift, clear water and the grassy banks and the sycamore tree was
destroyed by the addition of a twisted pile of black and rusty scrap
metal! It had been a car or a truck, she guessed. And they were leaving it
there, dumping it, right in the middle of the creek. It made her sick.
Only the fact that she loved Harry, and the memory of the way he had
slammed the door, kept her from going down and attacking the two Motleys
with a garden rake, or anything else she could put her hands on quickly
that might damage them. What kind of lunatic would dump a wrecked truck in
the middle of a beautiful little creek and turn it into an eyesore like
that? What kind of Ozark madness did it take to think up such obscenities
and carry them out, in broad daylight, in front of God and everybody?
"Animals!" Hannah shrieked from behind the glass, not caring that they
couldn't hear her. It made her feel better, whether they heard her or not.
"You animals!"
It made no difference to them, of course. Both of them had backed away
from the creek's edge, with their silly baseball caps pulled down over