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

"There," she said finally. "That's it. That's how the last piece would
look."
She held it out to him, and he took it and turned it over and over in his
hands, marveling.
"Granny," he said slowly, "there isn't anything in this blessed world that
looks like that!"
"Maybe not before," she said. "But now there is. And you're holding it."
"But it's got to be metal. And glass. Stuff like that."
"Yes."
"Well, there isn't anything like this made of metal and glass and wire,
Granny. I've been looking since I was just a little ol' kid, day and
night. I never go anywhere that I don't keep my eye peeled, all the time,
just in case I'll see a piece that goes to the grid. And I know there's no
piece like that one to be had."
"You've done well, Johnny Beau," she said.
"It's taken me all my life."
"All twenty years of it."
"That's all the life I've got, so far," he said stubbornly. "And I've
mostly spent it working on that grid. When everybody else was out having
fun, lots and lots of times, I've been looking for the pieces. You know
that."
"I do. You're a good boy, Johnny Beau."
"And now you show me this monstrosity, and tell me we're stuck here till I
find it someplace!"
"Well," she said, "I'm telling you the plain truth."
She reached over with one skinny hand and patted the piece of crochet work
he was holding. "Stretched out flat," she said, "it would be thirteen
inches long. And it's got seven turns to it - that have all got seven
turns to them. And some of those ... well, you see the way of it, Johnny."

"Lord!"
The old woman chuckled, and that annoyed him
"I can't find it," he said,"and I know that. I could look my whole life
long and nevcr find it. But I can make it. That would be just as good,
wouldn't it?~
"It's been tried," she said. "Many and many a time. There's lots of us
knew this piece was going to be hard to come by, and lots that tried to
make it, against the day it would be all there was left to find."
"And?"
"And it never works, because it has all the wrong thoughts with it, every
time. People get mad, trying to get it right, and then it's spoiled."
"I won't get mad," he declared.
The Granny just smiled, and told him to go on about his business and let
her get on with hers. And he went off muttering to himself, the crocheted
thing clutched in his right hand, where he wouldn't lose it, to give it a
try.

Johnny Beau was good with his hands and good with tools. He knew metal,
and he knew shaping. He went at the task with his mind clear and calm,
determined to stay that way. But it was just like Granny Motley had told