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

 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
him. There was something about the piece that was fiendish, something
he
just couldn't seem to get right no matter how careful he was and no
matter
how slow he worked and no matter how hard he tried. And just like she'd
told him, the longer he worked at it, the more often he lost his
temper.
Till the afternoon came when he flung his latest try right through the
shop window, and it cost him forty-seven dollars to fix, and he still