"Fish, Patricia - The Chipmunk Rat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fish Patricia)

THE CHIPMUNK RAT
By Patricia Fish

УIТve never got over. . .what happened,Ф Joana said, reintroducing that
subject and opening old wounds that never heal. How can they? Joana picks the
scab every FatherТs Day, and every FatherТs Day we endure another day of
angst, as Joana begins her suffering rant.
УIf IТd only known. I thought it was a rat, Mare. The thing looked like a rat
to me.Ф
I knew it had looked like a rat. ItТs not as if Joana hadnТt patiently
explained this to me every single year for the last seventeen. I sighed and
resigned myself to the annual re-hash. We visit our fatherТs grave every
FatherТs Day. We visit because it is FatherТs Day and because he was killed by
Joana on FatherТs Day. Shot by his own rifle because my sister thought he was
a rat.
Which he was.
Only, of course, this is not quite what Joana means.
She was shooting at a chipmunk that she thought was a rat. Only she hit our
father directly in the head. Bent over his vegetable garden the way he was,
with his mop of copper hair the only thing visible from the porch, he could
well have looked like what Joana called a rat. But it was a chipmunk she was
shooting at, that she thought was a rat. My fatherТs hair, reddish and
streaked blonde from is many hours in the garden, looked very much like a
chipmunk, all down close to the ground as he was and pulling weeds.
It gets a bit confusing.
Then Joana was only eleven at the time. WeТd only lived on that tiny lot at
the foot of the Appalachian Mountains for a year. It was a lovely place,
situated directly on a sparkling lake. The lot sloped down to the water in a
gentle manner that caused the land to bow slightly to the morning sun. The
vegetables liked this. Our father liked that.
That first year was spent in a fury of construction and repair activity. The
slope of the lot was of first concern, because erosion was a continual
problem. All of our neighbors had shored up the land by a series of concrete
sidewalks, bulkheads, and berms. My father spent the better part of that year
doing the same.
We came from the city, our family. My father announced we would be moving and
within the week, we were.
It was an abrupt environmental change for both Joana and myself. I was just
about to enter high school. My heart was crushed when I had to move so many
miles from the friends I had made and had hoped to graduate with. Joana was
less upset than me.
First, she had me. I had always been her protector and confidante. It didnТt
matter if we lived in a tiny row home behind some smelly grocery store, or
there, on that sloping lot directly on a lake, where my father was killed
because Joana thought he was a rat.
YouТve got to know something about rats. TheyТre scary. In fact, Joana and I
did live in a tiny row home behind a smelly grocery store just before we moved
out to Cumberland. We had plenty of rats, thanks to УGeorgeТs Grocery,Ф
adjacent to an alley that separated our house from the back of the store.
The employees of GeorgeТs Grocery regularly, in those days of environmental