"Goonan, Kathleen Ann - The Day The Dam Broke" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goonan Kathleen Ann)

But I see that you want real people, real settings, real things happening, not
an old lady's rumination (truth to tell I look even younger than I did, now, and
so of course do you, all new and unwrinkled, emerging from your cocoon. The wild
buffalo would call me medicine woman and bow on their shaggy knees and the
Puritans would call me witch and the pomos would call me visionary genius. I
know this because when the blizzards wrap me round with whiteness I sometimes
call up my grandfather, and we discuss such weighty matters and wish he still
had a mouth with which to eat my very good buffalo-buttermilk cornbread).
Perhaps I like it here so much because it's all edges--the edge of a survivable
climate; the edge of myself, quite sharp; perhaps sharper than you bargained
for. A different edge is not far from you, either, I'm afraid. Yes, yes, the
plague. Allow me to stuff another log into the stove. (Crunch of embers, rain of
orange sparks flying upward.) I buffaloed this log in, up and over the high
pass, snagged last month from the Pointed Fir Lodge, a guestless retro-hotel in
ski country. It has a stone fireplace big enough to hold this entire cabin.
Perhaps we could meet there some day, at dawn, when the blue clean lake is still
and the geese rise suddenly, with wild cries, from the reeds on the far shore.
There is an enormous shed there, filled with logs surrounded with various
mechanical aids to help move them. The guests had to have their show, and the
lodge had laid in about a hundred such logs. This giant is aged and perfect like
all of them, unrotted, requiring only cutting to twenty-four inch lengths and
splitting. Only, I say, but I've devised interesting mechanical solutions to
that problem. Wedges help.
As it burns I am reminded of the first log, which was in side, ready for the
fireplace in the almost-deserted lodge. I pulled just-liberated Mildred balking
up the stone steps, the hollow clomp of her hooves in the deserted lobby echoing
from the peeled log rafters three stories above. Golden light poured in the many
windows. I felt so alive as I tied the log, secured it to her harness, shouted
Hyah! and she headed out the door. Behind the hotel at the log shed was the big
winch they used to handle the logs, and I got it onto the wagon. Sure, my cabin
is surrounded by forest, heavy, mature forest but it's more work to fell a tree
than you might think. Besides, this log is always the same log, the first one.
When I burn it, I burn that lonely trip from Columbus on the empty train. I
cried a lot on that trip. The vacant town was the last stop the robot train made
when I fled crazed Columbus and I have an anniversary dinner there once a year,
April 23rd, with G.E. lying at my feet as I look out on the azure lake, drink a
priceless bottle of wine as candlelight winks off the etched pine on the wine
glass, and wish for You to step off the train which is still in good working
order. It arrives annually on that night (except for one irregu lar year when it
was probably sitting on a siding repairing itself) at 9:28. You get my drift?
Of course I might have stayed there at the retro resort but the lodge was quite
drafty since the windows were not self- healing and it was simply far too big.
The sunsets were glorious though and I wished for You to share them with. So
after search ing the town I discovered Mildred lowing in a field, lonely but
with plenty to eat. She had evidently pulled a sleigh for tour ists; I found it
in a barn. Of course G.E. got in the way whe never possible and ran off with the
first harness I found; she was still a floppy adolescent at the time. I was
surprised that there was only one dead person in town, a young woman whose badge
read Alice Stamhall who was slumped behind the check-in desk, dead, though
somewhat preserved by the cold. I think she owned the Lodge. The license was in