"Carol Emshwiller - Water Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

Water Master
by Carol Emshwiller

If the Water Master says, yes, then your apple trees will grow. If he says, yes, you'll take a bath, have a
drink, and you might even have a little patch of grass.

He checks the irrigation ditches and gates all day long. Leans over to pinch the sand between his fingers.
Never looks up to see the birds or the mountains. Never notices the sky except as it's reflected in his
water. He has to watch for secret ditches or for open gates that are supposed to be closed.

When I say, Hello, and he answers the same, he doesn't look up. I don't know what color his eyes are.
Blue, I would imagine. I would hope. He always wears a wide brimmed black hat pulled down low. I
don't know what his face looks like except that it's lean and lined. I don't suppose he cares who I am.
Besides, I only grow prickly pears, squaw tea, tepary beans, and mesquite pods. I don't need the Water
Master's water. At least not much of it.

Water is what's on his mind and rightly so. I can understand that. Nothing is better, how it bubbles up
and sparkles, silvery in the sun, frothing, foaming as it rushes, roaring down from way up there to here.
How it leaps so high over rocks. How it trembles in backwater pools. How it tastes. Cool.тАж Cold.тАж
How dangerous it can be.

Those who steal water are the worst, therefore the Water Master wears a bullet proof book of "The
Hundred Best Loved Poems" over his heart (given to him by the town. We need to keep him healthy)
and pistols at his sides. Shoot first, think afterwards, that's what a Water Master does. Has to do. Those
who open gates in the middle of the night after the Water Master has closed them тАж those people are in
trouble even if they think they're doing all right so far.

He lives way up by his dam, in a big house or so they say. All the things to build it but the stones came up
on mules. Furnishings, too: Bathtubs, beds, mirrors so large you wouldn't think they could get around the
switchbacks. I've heard tell there's an orchard and grapes and artichokes and rose bushes. There's plenty
of water up there, that's where it comes from.

Even so, I'm sorry for him, looking at the ground all day long, seeing not much more than lizards. Lizards
down here that is, goodness knows what crawls around up there. It's a hard, long climb to where he lives
but he goes up and down almost every day, checking our raging river as he goes.

His name is Amos Acularious, but nobody calls him anything but Water Master. I think his grandparents
and parents were shepherds. I wonder how one gets from shepherd to Water Master? It doesn't seem
right. They say it's the river, chooses its own master. I don't believe it. And even if true, why would it
choose a shepherd?

Even though all those Acularius's were nothing but shepherds, and even though Amos Acularius is so thin
there's nothing much to him, and even though he wears a fringed jacket which makes him look even
thinner, every girl would like to marry the Water Master and live in that big house. They've heard how
shiny the floors are, how the roof gleams with copper, how water runs, icy cold, from half the faucets and
even, though hard to believe, hot from the other half.

I, on the other hand, have long since decided never to marry. In fact that's been my policy from the start.
It was because of diapers. (I changed my first diaper at the age of seven.) Because of dishes, too. (As
the oldest child in my family, I had plenty of both those.) Besides, by now I'm too old for marriage,