"Brad Ferguson - The World Next Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferguson Brad)

to tax us? We don't have the crops to spare for taxes, and our town has
been doing a good job of hiding away nice and quiet in these mountains.
I also asked if we were going to be doing something about getting me a
new typewriter ribbon. The mayor says he wants typed minutes
тАФ he says they mean we're still civilized and a going concern, and he's
not wrong about that тАФ but I've been re-inking this same damn ribbon for
more than ten years, and it's got big holes in it, especially at the ends
where the keys hammer away before the typewriter catches its breath and
reverses the ribbon. I'm also running out of ink. I said I'd be willing to go
with some people into a big town like Tupper Lake to see if there's a few
ribbons left in the stores there, but the mayor said he can't spare the
people; there's bandits all over the place and it would be dangerous to go
into a big, empty town like Tupper. He said maybe somebody could make
a new ribbon for me. I said fine, but where are you going to get a long
piece of cotton that's not falling apart? If I'm going to be town scribe, I
told him, I have got to have something to scribe with.
At least we don't have to try and make paper, which I think would be
impossible. The old school's still got a lot of paper in it. The Hygiene
Committee's been doing a good job of keeping the building free of vermin,
so the paper should last. If I don't have a newspaper anymore, at least I
have this journal and the Town Hall chalkboard, so I'm still a
newspaperman.
September 30
Another meeting on that Jubilee. Half the town now seems to want to
do something тАФ send a representative, hold a picnic, whatever. Maybe
they think Camelot's going to come back. The other half agrees (with me)
that the Jubilee is just an excuse to blow the President's horn for him, and
that if it hadn't been for the war, the President would have been out of
office in '68, maybe even '64. Giving him a toot for still being in office is
an unnecessary reminder of the war, and maybe even a reward for having
half-caused it.
I wonder who the ass-kisser was that came up with the idea for the
Jubilee? Some general in charge of public relations? At least we know it
wasn't a congressman. If we've lost a lot, we at least got rid of the
goddamn congressmen.
October 2
Jess, the fool, went out in a pouring rain today to check on his beet
crop. The poor idiot. At least the winds were from the northwest, up
Montreal way. It's pretty clean up there; maybe Jess is okay, but we've got
no way to check. Jess' wife is frantic. I don't blame her. I also wonder if
we've lost that beet crop, not to mention his corn and everyone else's
crops, too. Damn, damn, damn.
October 5
Funny thing happened. I was talking to Dick LeClerc this morning, just
passing the time at his trading post. Dick mentioned he hasn't been
sleeping well lately. He says he had a dream last night in which he's in his
store, but it's not the trading post. It's bigger and cleaner, for one thing,
and there are electric lights and freezers and shopping carts, like in those
city supermarkets from before the war. The thing he remembers best from
the dream is his cash register. It's a little white thing, he says, but it had