"Esther M. Friesner - Jesus at Bat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

occasional corporate family popping in from points unknown to settle down
amongst the simple natives to swap beads 'n' trinkets until Daddy's company
shipped the poor bastard somewhere else.

"L.A., huh? Nice tan. Okay, kid, what's your name?"

"Yeshua ben Jose."

Was that an accent? Accents made Victor nervous. So did names that sounded
like
they ought to be stuffed in a pita pocket instead of spread on Wonder Bread.

"Yeshu -- what?"

"Yeshua ben Jose, sir." The kid pounded a fist into his glove. "Can I play?"

Victor thumbed back the brim of his cap. "You're not from L.A., are you, son?"

"No, sir." The boy didn't volunteer anything more. In another kid, you could
put
it down to obnoxiousness, but this one's face was empty of anything except a
clear-burning eagerness to please. It wasn't natural and it made Victor's
teeth
curl.

"You wanna tell me where you are from?"

"Israel."

A big fat wrinkled Uh-oh tickertaped across Victor's face and stayed there
until
he heard the kid go on to say: "Last thing I was in Jerusalem, but I was born
in
Bethlehem and --"

"Bethlehem?" It was like saying Paris to someone from Kentucky. Notre Dame and
la Tour Eiffel just didn't show up in the equation. "Oh, hey, fine, that's all
right, then. My mother's people came from Bethlehem," Victor said. He clapped
the boy on the shoulder. "So your father work in the steel mills before or
what?"

For the first time, the boy looked doubtful. "My father works just about
everywhere."

"No fooling. It's a pain, isn't it?" Victor was starting to feel sorry for the
kid. Hard enough row to hoe, coming all the way from Israel where things kept
going kaboom! Harder when your old man couldn't hold down a job and had to
keep
switching positions and places to live and even countries just to cam a
living.