"Farmer,.Phillip.Jose.-.A.Barnstormer.In.Oz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

One day, when he was eleven, he brought the subject up. He asked her if she had indeed been telling him the truth or was she merely entertaining him and making him feel important because his mother had been the heroine of a child's

book?

She had gotten angry, though not for long. She had taken him into her bedroom and unlocked a little bureau. Out of the drawer she took a small iron box. She unlocked that and took from it, not the treasure he had expected, jewels or gold or a dagger, but a common steel housekey.

"Mother said, 'This is the key to the door of the house that was carried by the tornado to the land of the Munchkins.' "

Stover had gazed awestricken at it.

" 'I wish that Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were still alive,' Mother said. 'They could tell you that, after I'd returned from the Quadling country, I had a shining spot on my forehead. It was visible at day, and at night it gleamed brightly. That was the mark that the witch of the North set on my forehead to indicate that I was under her protection. That mark was the main reason why my aunt and uncle believed my story. But they were not dumb. They knew that I'd be subject to all sorts of publicity and pestering by curiosity-seekers and newspaper reporters and that I'd be ridiculed and mocked or exploited. They made me put face-powder on it. They also told me to keep quiet about where I'd been. But I couldn't help telling other children. They told their parents, and word got around. Of course, I was bound to be a celebrity, since everybody thought that the tornado had carried me and the house off, and I was a seven days' wonder when I showed up. But Uncle Henry put out that I'd been wandering around all that time and that I'd had amnesiaЧforgot who I wasЧand had also suffered from brain fever. That's what he told Mr. Baum when he came out to see me.' "

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Philip Josг Fanner

Stover continued, "Uncle Henry had assumed that Dorothy was dead, and he wanted to hold services for her. But Aunt Em told him that they wouldn't consider her dead until it was proven. She had faith that Dorothy still lived, and she prayed a lot for her."

"Surely the newspapers would at least have reported that she had appeared after she was thought to be dead? The reporters would have wanted her story of how she'd survived."

"Yes, especially in that small community where even a tea party was a hot item. The story about her seemingly miraculous escape from death and her amnesia and all that was printed. My mother kept it in a scrapbook and showed it to me."

"Why did this Baum put Dorothy in the state of Kansas?" "I don't know. Maybe he didn't want to be sued by my

mother. As I said, he fictionalized her story, put stuflF in it that

didn't happen."

He told Glinda about the chapter in which Dorothy and her companions on the quest, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodman, Toto the dog, and the Scarecrow, discovered a city of living dolls.

"Even Baum's most ardent admirers feel that that chapter had no place there, that it was contrived and didn't work. But he did other things, too, all accountable by his desire to write a children's book. It had to be quick and simple reading, and the action had to move smoothly and swiftly. Thus, he ignored the fact that the people of your world would not speak English. He didn't tell the truth, which was that Mother didn't set out at once on the Yellow Brick Road. She had to stay where she'd landed for a month in order to learn the Munchkin language. She's a whizbang at picking up foreign tongues. I'm pretty good, but she outshines me by far."

"All this is interesting," the queen said. "But you still haven't told me of her later life."

"Sorry. I have to fill in the background. Otherwise, you won't know what I'm talking about."

Glinda smiled and said, "I may know more than you think I do."

Hank stared at her for a moment. "I wouldn't be surprised. I'll ask you some time what you mean by that."

His mother had lived the hard struggling life of a Dakota . farmgirl until she was almost sixteen. She'd gone to the local grade school and high school and also read much whenever she had the chance.

"Which wasn't often, since she helped with the house chores and even with the plowing and reaping."

But life as a whole was easier and better than before her visit to the other world. Dorothy was hardheaded but not so much that she wasn't also somewhat superstitious. She attributed the improvement to, one, the blessing the North Witch had given her and, two, to the housekey. That had become a semimagical token. But when Uncle Henry was killed by the kick of a mule and, two weeks later, Aunt Em died of a heart attack, Dorothy thought her luck had run out.

"However, she realized some profit from the sale of the farm. She couldn't get her hands on the lump sum because she was a ward of the court, and it was doled out to her for her living expenses and education. She quit high school and went to a business college in Iowa. Then she told the lawyers handling her affairs that she was going to New York to be a stenographer and secretary. They objected, but she went anyway. She got a job by lying about her age. At the same time, she looked for openings in dramas or musical comedies. Mother wasЧis, even at forty-oneЧa good-looker."

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